Yes, that’s Carl. I had no idea that he had to ponder his next move–or was he waiting for something to move so he could direct it and retard it?
Lotto numbers?
And we all thought those ‘guys’ in those towers, just waved their ‘magic wands’, plunked their magic twangers, and those cars just went where ‘They’ wanted them too… Ain’t Thechnology wunderful? [4:-)]
Truth be told, I was posing for Brian, between trains. When I’m working, my head would probably be a blur from looking up (left) and looking down (right), with an occasional pause looking at the hump sheets.
This shot was taken in aout 2004, before they put the non-drafty, more soundproof windows in.
Noted the electric pencil sharpener and dry-erase markers. [:D]
Thanks for sharing…
Robert
The ‘high quality railroad construction’ of the shelf above the console.
Boy does that wooden shelf above the train sheets look like one I built. Used it for tools to restore home’s high ceilings. Had it hooked on a Baker’s rack.
The dry-erase markers were for the “turnover”, which is the white board to the right. In Tower A, the emptier the turnover, the better I liked it.
Nearly everybody else used a pencil (hence the sharpener) to check off the cars on the sheets (to the left of the turnover) as they went by. The pens down there are mine, used to make notes on freight equipment for my own use. I did not feel the need to check off the cars, as I was watching the train itself closely enough not to lose my place (it really ticked off the guy who was training me, because he couldn’t keep track of where we were!). It worked all right for me, even when we were breaking up large cuts of look-alike cars.
The woodwork above the board was done by one of the expert craftsmen employed as a Car Retarder Operator (no, it wasn’t I). The back of that entire assembly was leaning on the winow glass. It’s not level because the board itself had been raised in height after the sheet-holder was built. Tower A was the only tower that had anything like this–the lower towers used clipboards for their sheets and (much more elaborate) turnovers. It worked in Tower A because that was the only tower where looking straight ahead out of the windows would yield you nothing important–the switches and retarders were all to your right or to your left. In the lower towers, a view straight ahead yould give you your group retarders, and most–but not all–of your switches were on the downhill side of those. You always had to look at youe swithes as you were throwing them, as most of them (all of them, in the early days) were not protected by circuitry to prevent them from being thrown under a car.
Heh, gandy-dancers without hi-viz jackets or helmets and no crane or hi-rail vehicle in sight.