In 1969 I bid on the afternoon crew caller job at Northtown. What a terrible job, but I have a lot of experience as a result of it.
This question involves Northern Pacific passenger train and engine crews between St. Paul, Minnesota and Fargo, North Dakota.
The train crews operated from St. Paul to Fargo. Why were roughly half of those men Northtown men and the other half Staples men? Also, why did the train crews operate to Fargo instead of changing at Dilworth, Minnesota as the freight crews did?
How many engine crew changes were there between St. Paul and Fargo? What were the engine crew change points and how far did the last engine crew go?
Well–I hated the crew caller job and bid off after about six months on the job.
I remember only the Staples crew change. Depending on the local union agreement, the crews may have been balanced between Staples based crews and St Paul based passenger crews. I suspect the Staples-Fargo crew ran through the Dilworth Yard to the Fargo Depot as they had no Dilworth stop. Freight crews ran between Northtown Yard and Staples. Staples also provided crews for the Duluth/Superior line as well. Fargo based crew also ran back to Hawley and then north up the Winnipeg line.
The St. Paul engine crew operated to Staples, the Staples crew operated to Dilworth, and a Dilworth engine crew operated the train from Dilworth to Jamestown. The NCL did stop at Dilworth for a minute to change engine crews, even though the passenger (public) timetable did not show a stop. The lap engineer mileage you refer was on the Winnipeg train (and probably the Christmas mail sections of 1 and 2) A Dilworth engineer would mark in Staples to Dilworth passenger service for about one month in the summer to balance the mileage.
By contract, the St. Paul and Staples passenger train crews were divided up approximately equally in the passenger “pairings”. There were three sets of crews for each train. Trains 1 and 26 were paired as were trains 25 and 2. One crew went out Monday, the second crew went out Tuesday, and the third crew went out Wednesday–then the cycle was repeated. When I called crews, Staples could not furnish passenger brakeman, so Northtown had to provide a replacement for a Staples man. Thus Northtown would not be penalized in the mileage of crews. My impression was that the Staples UTU wanted to keep the prestige of having passenger crews, but did not was to provide the manpower. I know of at least one passenger conductor (Jesse Elzea) moved to St. Paul. the rest probably deadheaded back and forth on their own time.
Duluth was a crew base for freights (and passenger) trains operating between Duluth and St. Paul (or Minneapolis for passenger trains) and between Duluth and Staples. In addition, the M&I crews (at North Bemidji) were part of the Duluth seniority district. The Duluth passenger crew stayed in a hotel in Minneapolis, while the locomotive was taken to Northtown for service. The engine crew was allowed something like five or ten extra miles for this movement.
Bill Kuebler has an excellent book on the North Coast Limited. This book has many pictures and information (fueling, etc) on the NCL.
I can’t speak to the specifics of the NP crew change points; however, I will point out that the ‘basic day’ mileages for T&E crews in freight and passenger service at that time were different. 100 miles was the basic freight day and 150 miles was the basic passenger day as set the the National agreement. Needless to say companies based their crew runs on these elements of the contracts when overlaid onto their operating map. The differing basic day mileages created differing crew change points for the different classes of service.
Was not 100 miles the basic day for all engine crews? This worked out wonderfully well for the IC Louisiana Division crews between Canton and New Orleans, since it was right about 100 miles from McComb to both Canton and New Orleans, and the engine crews always changed at McComb, whereas the passenger train crews would be gone from home, in McComb, for twenty-four hours (and then at home for twenty-four hours), covering about 400 miles every other day. I never did ask any of them how their pay was broken down. Three of the four crew assignments changed southbound (in the sixties, these assignments were: Panama Limited, Louisiane-Creole, and Southern Express-Louisiane) , and the City of New Orleans assignment changed northbound.
The freight chaingang crews always preferred being called for a northbound rather than a soutbound, because they went to Gwin, which is over 150 miles from McComb.