Just because the agency was closed doesn’t mean the depot buildings were no longer used. Often they were still the headquarters for MOW section gangs and/or signal maintainers.
Jeff
Clay City Agents Office from Google Earth
I have minimal experience in the agency field, however, during the few years I worked for the Rio Grande the Colorado Divison agencies were protected by the agent/operator extra list whereby, headquartered in Denver, I worked agencies at Littleton, Craig and Minturn, CO in the seventies. These were vacation vacancies for the regular agent. It was long past the era of selling passenger tickets or handling Rwy. Express, but there was ample activity with which to keep busy.
The Littleton, CO job was on the joint line south of Denver and handled the Rio Grande’s freight business in the area as well as some train order work with either the Rio Grande or Santa Fe dispatchers. As with Craig, CO, the job consisted of dealing with shippers, making waybills, maintaining demurrage books, lining up the crews or dispatcher for what needed to be pulled and spotted on spurs in the territory and entering train report and shipping data.
In Craig and Minturn you walked your yard early in the morning to ascertain what had been set out during the night (there only being a turn freight at Craig). The job at Minturn was more involved as it was a through route with about a dozen trains/day. During the hours the agency was open, one also called crews and handled disbursing paychecks. Minturn was an away from home terminal and, so, crews rested at the beanery nearby. You opened up by contacting the dispatcher and copying any train orders issued during the night, received a lineup and posted it for crews. Minturn also handled business with New Jersey Zinc in Belden and several businesses around Eagle. So you would be in contact with them to determine how many empties they might need (if so) or what cars would be ready to pull and necessary information in order to prepare waybills. It was all very quaint and personal, at least in these territories.
These jobs were daylight only and went high in seniority. As one confronted all of the aspects involved with shipping data and demurrage, it seemed a byzantine pr
PennsyBoomer I am sure you had lunch once or twice at Bronco Burger.
I know Minturn was a helper base. Would the helper crews be called for each push, or would they work a shift and handle any trains that showed up during their shift?
A book (or maybe it was a magazine article) I once read included a bit about helper crews “hanging out” at the base of a grade in the Blue Ridge mountains east of Roanoke. N&W, I think. Those crews would be pushing whatever comes their way during their shift.
I’d have to believe that if there were only one or two “pushes” (or pulls) a day that the crews would be called for that specific job, unless there was other work they could be doing between helping.
Sand Patch grade was a part of my territory when I was working. Sand Patch is a grade that required manned helpers in both directions over its summit. There were two ‘regular’ helper assignments at Cumberland (East of the grade) and Connellsville (West of the grade) that were on duty twelve hours apart from each other. When traffic density requiring a helper was forseen, extra helper crews would be called on an ‘as necessary’ basis. Helper crews, by local agreement, were entitled to extra pay when it became necessary for them to operate beyond their designated territories.
When Train Dispatching was done from Baltimore the BB Desk handled the territory between Connellsville and Brunswick and also handled the manipulation of helpers on Sand Patch grade. At one point in time, helpers were required from some trains over the Williamsport grade on the former WM route to Hagerstown and from Martinsburg to Brunswick. By the time I retired, train sizes and motive power applied to them eliminated the requirement for these helpers.
While everyone acknowledges the need for extra motive power to move trains up grades, it is even more necessary in many instances to helpers assist trains DOWN the grades. Dynamic braking is a critical element in safely moving trains down grades. It is more common than one would like to admit that dynamic braking is out of service on one or more locomotives in a train’s consist - especially trains heading to Cumberland (one of CSX’s main locomotive shop locations).
Minturn was an away from home terminal so that helper crews would come from the Pueblo-Minturn pool, as I recall. Not 100% certain at this removed date, however, I believe they worked for a tour of duty, if necessary, rather than a single shove. On UP in Cheyenne, helpers were occasionally necessary if all trains were operating via Sherman acct. trackwork or some other reason. They were called specifically for helper service, thereby allowing the crew to make multiple shoves. I’m fairly certain this was the case at Minturn, although the details sometimes get foggy in the mists of time.
At some yard locations, the agent performed yardmaster duties where no YM position was maintained. An example was the SF freight agent position @ Dodge City.The agent there would mark the lists, instruct yard crews on work to be performed and when completed, enter the info in the inventory. This is what I was told by the late Lloyd Stagner, who worked that job @ Dodge in the 1970s (some of you may know “LES” from his work on the SF Historically Society and authoring about 30 rr books upon his retirement in 1979).
If you look at things from a business heirarchy - The Agent could be considered the ‘top position’ at a location as they deal with the customers and what the customers want. When the business and customers become too voluminous for one person to hadle, hands on, then the structure of yards and yardmasters grows up to handle the increased business level. Yardmasters are still responsible for following the Agents instructions for handling the customers at the location, and also responsible for handling outlying Agent’s instructions in building the local freights that do the work at the outlying Agent’s locations.
In the day Agents were the customer contact with the carrier at all locations - big and small. In the end, it is the Agent that presents the bills and the Customers that pay the bills that keep the railroads in business.
When the Chessie Terminal Services Centers were created, one of the functions that had to be developed was the ‘Industrial Work Order’ - Specific instructions to Yardmaster/Crews for what specific work Customers desired done at their facilities. Be mindfull there are specific Rules that apply to moves that customers can request for car under their control - the prime rule being that a customer gets ONE placemen
Most of what you describe is “the way it was” just like I described how one certain yd formatted its work decades ago. No longer so in the modern world. Most yard locations now, outside of major classification terminals, do not have YM positions (code 29). The footboard or Utility man position handles some of the duties formally managed by the traditional YM (that is fading into history). From a historical look back (the way it was), ATSF abolished their YM positions in 1988 and jobs changed to an exzempt Asst Trainmaster (ATM) of which the shift went from 8 to 12 hrs. About 2017, many such positions were removed and replaced by the “U man” position at certain yards. This 8 hr shift, w/30 min OT added on, basically is a “YM” position independent of the actual switch eng crew but w/outside duties of assisting trains in the yard such as watching shoves, attaching him/herself to a train crew to assisit w/work after 'attaching to the train crew". Restricted to the yard only. If for some reason the UM has to assist a train on a main track, that is a RO claim that pays an extra 100 miles. Ching, Ching $$$.
The former BN still has UTU YM positions but sadly are decreasing. On the Frisco seniority district, Enid abolished their jobs two yrs ago and replaced w/the FBYM (switch eng foreman). The only yards on the former SLSF w/YMs are Tulsa, Springfield, Memphis, Amory & Birimingham as per the YM seniority roster.
In 1978 when BTSC was formed, there were Yardmasters at Bayview, Penn Mary, Mt. Clare A Yard, Locust Point, Curtis Bay and Stone House Cove at the other end of Curtis Bay.
Baltimore Terminal had in excess of 1300 individual customers throughout the area of the terminal. The business aims
There are a number of benefits to ATDA membership such as overtime or perhaps a better control of workload on some territories vs. management (in)disgression. I do think UP dispatchers had a better relationship with upper management due to their status and it seemed a more motivated environment whereby there wasn’t an inherent adversarial relationship.
That said, I think this has deteriorated significantly over the past years although the status is indeed beneficial to management and, as ever, it is a matter of what kind of management that makes the difference. When UP went non-agreement in the 60s a lot of upper mgt. were ex-dispatchers, so there was a knowledge base and general good relationship.
Related to the issue is the functions of true yardmasters going bk 30 or so yrs ago. After the positions on the ATSF were voted in to become exzempt supervisor positions w/the new title of Asst Trainmaster (ATM) in 1988, changes came followng not long after. At many secondary yards, ATM positions were abolished & combined w/other locations,meaning one guy ran two yards. Here in Wichita the last time a person was on site performing the glorified “YM” job was 1990. That yr, the ATM was moved out of Wichita, combined w/the position from Hutchinson w/the work being done midway @ the Newton yd office. This was the format until 1995 when that job was abolished as the footboard yardmaster (FBYM) now did the work by marking the switch lists & doing the “clicking” of car inventory in the TSS computer system. I think the foreman position code 13 got like an extra $17.00 pay for being a FBYM. Way too low of an amount.
The number of former UP Dispatchers that came to CSX in the early 2000’s tells me that UP had some serious disention in the Dispatcher/Sr. Management relationship.
A few years ago, one of the senior managment over dispatching said that a train dispatcher’s position is just an entry level to managment.
Jeff
And in many cases ‘management’ positions are just indentured survitude.
An appropriate comment:
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