Dying art, how many folks are using lantern signals, these day, either....? Do rail fans still ever sit by the tracks waiting to high ball the Super Chief, anymore?

The bit on whistle communications signals in an earlier post shed light on that. I used whistle signals from my dinky helper when working in Taylor Roundhouse. He had a whistle he wore, and used it to signal me, from places like down in the pits. when spotting engines.....

The radio got a certain yardmaster, a replacement for Gibby, in lots of trouble with George Delellis (aka "GV Delirious"). This happened when against the crews pleading over the radio. This individual had us pull all the way into Union Station with a cut of pigs to "shove up from the bottom" of the Shops.....

We were backed up all the way down into Track 4, with a giant cut of empty pigs. He wanted us to shove up into the "middle", and we would shove from UPT across through Pasadena Junction, and into the bottom of the Shops. At the bottom of the middle tracks is very sharp a compound curve around three switches, and mostly on pavement. And, we advised him "this was not a good move. Well I had gone about five "pig" lengths around that curve, reached the PMT crossing and I felt the slack run in, at about 1 mph., as my field man told me, over the radio: "that will do, we are on the ground".

Now, of course we had the entire afternoon Amtrak fleet tied up, and George V. Delirious heard the whole thing..... And, Delirious he was indeed...as he raced down from Taylor to the Shops to personally chew on this yardmaster's a$$ for the next hour.

Ah that was a fun day.......