From: RICHARD ALDER

The day started as any other. Same routine of signing on duty and getting the engines off the pit, coupling up to the train, doing brake test, and meandering out of the yard. It was the BL5 going out of P'burg on a hot July day in '74. We had to take siding in Frenchtown to let the Northbound BL2 bye. When we got to Trenton we were delayed at FAIR tower. After about an hour, we finally got the signal to enter the main.

We crossed the Delaware River into Morrisville where we made a set-off. After making the set-off, we recoupled and headed South for what should have been a non-stop trip to Edgemore (Wilmington, Del). We were just about to enter Philadelphia when the signals and catenary went dead. A major fire broke out in the area of ZOO tower that knocked out power. It was rush hour and we were the only train in the area at that time with DIESEL power. I never witnessed such chaos and a real team effort to get things rolling again. Our engines were pulled from our train and went right to ZOO tower to pump air into the plant in order to operate switches. All movements were done using any available diesel that could be found. MP54s, GG1s, E44s, Metroliners - all ELECTRIC units stalled and had to be
pulled/pushed by diesels. What a show. A tremendous effort by all involved. On duty that day - 26 hrs.

R. L. Alder, Freight trainman
Penn Central N.J. Division

From: RICHARD ALDER


I don't remember the train I was on at the time, but we had gone overboard (exceeded our legal on-duty time) while sitting on the High Line in Philadelphia. Our crew was relieved there and we walked over to 30th St. Station to sign off. Anyway, somewhere between the High Line and the station, a wasp managed to get up my pant leg (even though I was wearing cuff straps) and waited to start stinging me until we were in the main waiting room, which by the way was packed. I had no choice but to drop my pants to get him out. He kinda made it all the way up. There I am in the middle of the waiting room of 30th Street station with my pants down and my buddies laughing hysterically, and people gawking like I was the entertainment for the day. It seemed forever waiting for the elevator to take us up to "S" office. Talk about embarrassing. I don't know what it is, but weird things happened to me in Philadelphia.
Till next time...
Courtesy of Mr. Rich Alder.

From: RICK


I was living in Baltimore at the time and had a friend that was a train buff.  His grandfather worked as an engineman on GG1 locomotives.  At the time, around 1975, it was not all that hard to get a railroad job.  I went down to the Baltimore station one day and filled out an application and was told I would hear from the railroad soon.  After about a week, probably while they were investigating my background, I did hear from them.  It was incredible, but I had been hired as an operator - actually a trainee.
In those days, you had to spend a week with a real tower operator to train on all the various job requirements.  This training was called "posting" on the railroad and after you posted a week, if you felt you had the job down, you would be assigned a tower.  If you needed more time you would be granted more posting time although this was frowned on by all, the railroad, and the tower ops.  It made it look as if you were slow in learning, and it made it look bad on the tower op that had just trained you.  Also the railroad didn't want to spend another week's pay to have you sit there watching trains go by and going over what you should have already known.  I never saw anyone that asked for more than a week training (posting) and  mostly everyone agreed that a week was enough.  Also once in the tower by yourself, if you had problems or questions you could call the dispatcher or other ops on the block line.   The block line was in every tower and it was nothing more than a speaker phone system hooked up to every tower within a ten mile range.
If I was working Bay Tower and needed to call the op at Edgewood Tower I would punch in his three numbers and be instantly connected.  It was entirely railroad maintained, sort of like an in-house phone system.  It worked great too; there were never any problems - even during storms.  Most of the ops would keep their line set so they could hear the tower to the north of them and the tower to the south of them, that way you always knew when a train was approaching you.
Mostly, every day was the same.  You arrived at your tower and relieved another operator.  There were big huge train sheets, poster sized, that each tower maintained.  You would initial the train sheet of the op you were relieving, including the weather at the time, the date and time, and any train orders that were currently in effect.  Then, for the whole shift, you would write down every train that passed your tower and the time it passed. If you made any switch moves, like taking a train from mainline one to mainline two, you wrote that down also.  Also, there were BDA's and BDR's that you wrote down.  A BDA meant BLOCKING DEVICE APPLIED and you did that when you actually placed a metal device on the switch controls so that you couldn't throw a particular switch.  You might have a track out of service while there was a work train on it doing maintenance on the rail, or a crew working on the catenary, and you didn't want another train entering the same track.  You recorded this on your train sheet as BDA - then the switch and signal numbers involved, and the time applied.
Once the work was over and the train clear, you would put the track back in service, and remove the blocking device.  Then you would write down BDR for BLOCKING DEVICE REMOVED and the time, etc.  There was a lot of paper work involved in working a tower.
Then there were train orders.  The dispatcher would issued train orders that were called "19" orders,  for Form 19.  It was a smaller sheet, about half an 8x11 sheet, and would contain the train number issued to, the location of the train, and the order.  It would look like this :
     Order       No. 129
     Date         3-3-2000
     To            Train No. 116
     At             Milepost 96.08
     To            C & E   (this meant to conductor & engineman)
     _____________________________________________________________

     Train No 116 north on track two at milepost 96.08 hold until
     passed by Train No. 109 south on track two and upon receiving
     clear signal indication contact operator at Bay Tower and resume
     northward movement.

     Time Effective:______AM PM      Operator_____________________
     Received by ________________________________________________


This is just one form of train order information as there could be hundreds of different messages.  There were clearance forms that were smaller and simpler to use and all they did was clear a train for movement out of a block after being held for whatever reasons.

This is just part one of a lot of info I could tell you regarding the best railroad ever ran, the Northeast Corridor and Amtrak. I will send you stories of my days as a train dispatcher also, and there were some stories from back then, believe me!


Rick

From: RICK


My first tower job was Union Junction at Baltimore Station.  Union was a very old and historical tower, and at one time, during the war years, only women worked the towers...didn't know that did you? The men were all either electrical workers or enginemen, and the rest of the men were at war while the women worked the towers! A little trivia for you!
When I came to work my first week as an op, I was nervous as could be. I was afraid of routing a train down a wrong track or something like that, but as God was with me in those towers, I never caused any wrecks or any troubles like that.
During the first week alone I did it all by the book......no radio, no newspapers, nothing that was not allowed.  But like any job, as time goes by, you learn the ropes and you start to feel comfortable in the job, and you settle in and start to relax.
I never used a TV in the towers but I did read a lot.  For a while, mostly newspapers and rule books!  I got to where I knew almost every rule they wrote!   It is regulations that you MUST have your rulebooks with you when you are on duty.  If one of the Carrier's (they call the railroad "the Carrier" instead of "the Company") managers came into the tower for something, you had better have your rule books with you. They were very strong on that.   Another thing was you had better not have any alcohol in the tower or IN YOU!   This was known as rule G in the rule books and was enforced by management very strongly.  I never drank a drop in my life, so I was ok, but I heard a lot of stories of ops that would drink while on the job, but managed to conceal it very well. There was never a drug problem on the railroad while I was there, only booze for some reason!
But nobody I knew was what I would call a drunk, they just had a drink now and then.  A lot of problems in people's lives were the result of working for the railroad.  That's true even today.  The worst thing about railroad work is the shifts.  You might work any hour of the day or night and almost always work holidays.  I still do, even with all my years of service.  I have worked every holiday there is, Christmas, New Years, Thanksgiving, etc .   There are long lonely hours on the railroad.
But you know it going into it and you live with it.
There are other benefits that make up for it.  For me, being a train buff it's like getting paid for my hobby!  I can ride and watch trains free and go places an ordinary train buff couldn't, like CETC, the DX Center in Philly, or in the engines themselves. Stuff like that.  Also, Amtrak lets the dispatchers ride in the engine on a passenger run (and get paid for it!),  to familiarize them with the physical characteristics of the territory they are responsible for.  This I love! Then you make friends with enginemen and conductors, and that always helps when you want to do something on the railroad out of the ordinary, like take your buddy or wife on a run up in the engine! Also, I was there when the GG1's were there, and believe me, they were something else!   Big and brawny and full of power but they were small in the cab.  Only the engineer could fit on the right side and only one man on the left. Gosh they were designed small.  You could stand behind the engineer to watch the scenery, but you had to scrunch down and bend over so much, it wasn't worth it.  They were noisy too!  If you were cranking at 100 mph you couldn't hear yourself think in the cab! They were hot in the summer and freezing in the winter! The AEM7's are very good but my favorite is still the Metroliner's.
I will send you some Metroliner stories one day.  And some AEM7 stories too.
I got off the point of the tower jobs. Sorry!
Basically the tower jobs were sweet!   If you were a rail buff, it was the best job on the railroad.  I learned from some other ops that were also train buffs to always have a camera with me because you never knew what you might see on the railroad.
Here is an example:
One night it was like four in the morning, winter time and cold. It was raining with snow mixed in.  I was working Edgewood tower and was enjoying a nice slow night.  At that hour, the only thing we were running were freight trains.
The op at Perryville mentioned over the block line that any of us ops that were train buffs might want to keep an eye out on a certain freight train that was just passing his interlocking.
It took it about a half hour to get to me, but when I knew it was about five minutes away, I put on the winter coat and went down the steps and waited by the tower.
Get this:  At the head of the freight train were three diesels and right behind them were two BRAND NEW AEM7's!!!!
They were dead in tow, which meant their pants were down....that's railroad talk for their pantographs were down.  They were towing them to DC after painting them at Wilmington shops.
It was the coolest thing I ever saw: two brand new AEM7's coupled onto the freight train's diesel power!!!!  I'll never forget that sight!
It's small things like that, that made tower work interesting and fun.
We saw other special moves, some military equipment that was moved, but we were cautioned by management never to talk about that to anyone, even other railroaders .
Then there were storms!  Usually they didn't affect the railroad, but once in a while they would knock out signal power and we would loose all signals - maybe from Edgewood to Wilmington!
Everything slowed down then.  Trains would have to be ran by train order and their speed would be very restricted, which made every train arrive late at its destination.
We would be very busy in the towers when this happened.
A lot of train orders would be issued from the train dispatcher over the block line to us ops in the towers, then we had to repeat them to each engineman, and he had to repeat it back to us! But the railroad kept moving, no matter what.

Rick

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