Like It Never Happened

The inside of a caboose....home away from home.

If you were a railroader for any length of time, you have heard hundreds of stories. Most were colorful recollections of past events sometimes so farfetched they would be hard to believe especially for non railroaders  The stories were always exciting, many times humorous and occasionally true.

           

One such story involves a particular train crew back in the day when the average length of a train was about a mile, every train had a caboose and the crews were made up of an engineer, head brakeman and sometimes a fireman on the locomotives and a conductor and rear brakeman on the caboose. Everyone on the crew had responsibilities during a trip. While the engineer and the conductor both had the bulk of the responsibilities, it was the conductor who was charged with the responsibility of getting all the work done in route in a proper manner and taking care of most of the paperwork.

          

If conductors had been ranked as to their abilities, personality and work ethics, this particular conductor would be ranked at the very bottom. He was know by all to be lazy, hard to get along with and may have dabbled in the consumption of alcoholic beverages before, during and after going on duty. It was not unusual for this conductor to sack out on one of the caboose bunks and sleep though the entire trip and any of the work done in route.

          

Even though most of the crews were aware of this conductor's problems, it was not the common practice at that time to turn in or report fellow employees. However it was not uncommon for crews to handle these type situations themselves without involving management. The day had come for this crew to take action. The crew all met at the yard office at their on duty point. As usual, the conductor was late arriving. The engineer and the two brakemen conceived a plan that was to take place on this trip that would hopefully serve as a wake up call for the wayward conductor.

          

The conductor finally arrived, the crew boarded their train and while the rest of the crew were performing their required duties in preparation for departure the conductor made himself comfortable on the caboose bunk. Shortly the crew departed the terminal on their six thousand feet of train. As expected the conductor was asleep and snoring within a few minutes of departure. After assuring the unconscious state of his conductor, the rear brakeman went to the rear of the caboose and removed the face of the air gauge. Train's braking power is provided by air. There has to be a certain amount of air pressure maintained throughout the train for the brakes to properly function. This gauge is there to provide the crew on the caboose with the ability to determine that there is adequate air pressure all the way to the rear of the train. After removing the air gauge face, the rear brakeman forced the indicator arrow down to zero and secured it there with a piece of gum.

          

This would cause an unsuspecting person to think that there was no air pressure to the caboose, thus there was no means of applying the brakes on the rear of the train. After completing his task the rear brakeman picked up the train radio handset and clicked the transmission button three times. This was the predetermined signal to the engineer that the gauge had been disabled and the conductor was asleep. By this time the train was moving about fifty-five miles per hour.

         

Upon hearing the signal from the caboose the engineer picked up the radio handset and began to transmit, "Emergency, emergency , emergency! Our train has come uncoupled and pulled apart about halfway back in the train! I will let you know when we have come to a stop on the head end of the train!"

          

Hearing this transmission on the loud speaker on the caboose, the conductor sits up quickly on the bunk and turns to the side window and peers out at the telegraph poles flying by the window. He then jumps up and staggers back to the rear of the caboose and looks up at the air gauge showing zero air pressure.

           

About that time, the engineer again comes on the radio and states, "The head end of the train is coming to a stop right..........NOW!"

          

The conductor, the color now gone from his face, again looked out the window at the telegraph poles flying by at fifty-five miles per hour, looked up at the air gauge one more time, and with a pathetic groan of profanity and his eyes rolling upward, fell to the caboose floor like a limp dish rag.

          

After assuring that the conductor was still breathing and had only passed out, the rear brakeman drug him back to the bunk and made him comfortable. He then went back to the air gauge and restored it to normal operation and climbed up into the cupola as if nothing had happened. Within a few minutes the old conductor sat up, looked out the window at the passing scenery then walked back to the rear of the caboose. After checking the air gauge, the conductor looked up at the brakeman and said with a shaky voice, "What's going on?"

          

The rear brakeman responded in a calm relaxed tone, "Not much, what's going on with you?"

          

The conductor waddled back to his desk and sat down. There was nothing said the rest of the trip. It appeared that the plan had worked. No one ever had a problem with that particular conductor again--- he retired.