MC, darn near everything goes over the hump, but a lot gets held in the retarders…or stopped and allowed to drift out (our CROs know which tracks will give them the desired result). The Bethgons still have steel in them where it counts (we often get stragglers that have been set out of their unit trains). Stack cars (loaded ones) are rare, but we still get them…they’re not allowed to hit. I wish we didn’t get the autos in our shoves, because they take extra time to handle properly, and the loads and empties really eat up the classification space. But that’s the business here…and I can pretty well guarantee you’ll never see cars handled the way we do it anywhere else (I think we do pretty well, considering).
Hi Friends,
Quite a few years ago I worked at a manufacturing plant called Moorehead boiler.
My partner and I spent a month building a grain dryer for Cargill that was 75 feet long and weighed about 150 tons. We shipped it stratling two flat cars and on piviots on both ends. It was cylinder shaped and was more like a boiler with 20 six inch flues. The whole thing was acid resistant and abrasive resistant stainless steel. Very pricey. It took two whole days to get it out of the shop and into the two flats. Half a mile away sat the burlington northern hump yard in Columbia hights MN. (northtown yard) It no longer classifies I believe.
We painted on all sides DO NOT HUMP !
Burlington DID.
Four days later we got the flats back and that dryer was kinked right in the middle and IT had a nice HUMP too.
One of the hardest things I had to do was cut apart that stupid thing to try to save as much of it as we could. This type of Stainless doesn’t saw, grind or flame cut. I had to air arc it. [banghead]
At the time I hated burlington northern. The pinheads
I’m sure they got a nice bill but I wanted to go KICK BUTT after all the hours of repair work I had to do.
If it says don’t hump there has to be a reason.
Sooblue
Look directly at the both idiots in both the tower and out pulling pins, anything straddling two flats has to be shoved to the first joint, then a bumper car shoved down to that joint, before you can let anything fall against it, or hump something down on top, much less shoving the hump with the two cars in the first place, it aint like this is rocket science…
Ed
Hey Sooblue - long time, no hear! Glad to see you are still out there!
Mookie
Ed
we make egg shell couplings here ( you know the kind heard 1/2 mile away with the earth quake feel) it was just a little kick.
Mostly the only cars I see with a “Do Not Hump” sign is usually a special car that holds something special or passenger cars
Wabash, I’ve been know to knock the bark off a couple of them myself, but still, a boiler on two flats, uh…Duh!
Ed
Hi Ed,
It was amazing how much that steel tube humped up. It had half inch stainless steel walls and all the interior suports and flue sheets. I didn’t know that there was that much flex in the couplers.
Sooblue
Hi Mookie,
I’m still here
Say! I was just out to Lincoln a few weeks ago. I’ll be back later this summer. I can hardly wait to be able to walk through the rose garden and the sunken garden and go out to frontier park. I brought my 7 year old daughter out a few weeks ago and we climbed on the indian at the park. It was a little cold still though.
I love lincoln. just far enough to feel like a major trip and lots to see.
Sooblue
Ed
I understand completly the one i love the most is the guy who was so rough with his train yarding one night that the 3 car loads( auto racks) of new cars had the alarms going off in them. lights and horns… i had to stop and pull myself together so i could finish my train yarding. talk about noise… better than any christmas display and this was at night.
e-me! Let me know when! And don’t expect to see the Sunken Garden - they are renovating it this year - completely down to it’s shoes and socks. Wait until next year!
Have you been to the Children’s Museum? Quite the place!
Mook
Sis, be sure and tell Nora about the children’s museum when she gets there. I will inform her that such an animal exists–should be out in Rochelle with her by this time tomorrow!
22 axle 750 gross ton Schnabel cars should never be humped as a matter of common sense, but that hasn’t precluded them from being mishandled in the past. At most of the major hump yards “Do Not Hump” doesn’t have much of an impact unless railroad officials at the respective yard are personally reminded of the nature of shipment , and even then the car could still be humped. All in all hump yards can be an adventure.
I live about a mile or so from the crest of Clearing’s bi-directional hump, and it appears that they run a pretty tight ship over there since we usually hear the squeal from the retarders regularly and only rarely do we hear the jolt from a carelessly hard coupling.
I remember once reading that one of the Chicago belt lines, I think it was the Indiana Harbor Belt, has a large flat classification yard in Indiana, and they are marketing it as a destination for loads that shouldn’t be humped.
IHB is apparently marketing itself as a hub for automotive traffic and Gibson Yard in Hammond, which used to be a hump, is routinely filled with auto racks.
Hi my name is Rodney after I got turned lose from the 15 week instant conductor training the only place I could work was the switchmans extra list. I was working the hump on 2nd trick when a load of light poles came to the crest we stopped humping. The forman asked the hump yardmaster what they wanted to do about this do not hump. The hump yardmaster said let it go over the crest that they had it under control WELL needless to say they did not have control the joint made and light poles went all over the place we had a good laugh at the mess that was made. The next thing the foreman and I was removed from the hump by the trainmaster for not following procedures boy am I glad that the local chairman was working the trimmer at the same time the recordings were played it was found that we were not at falut. Some strange things happen when working the hump. Rodney
I watched them hump a couple of ordinance cars at the new UP Davis yard in Roseville. I didn’t know what they had but when they were cut loose, I went the other way