I was required to set retainers only a couple of times that I recall, over Beaumont, with the beet trains, due to a combined inadequate DB on the head end, swing, and rear helpers.

I only decided to do it once on my own. That was with one of the last "hospital" trains (half the cars were ready to go straight to Purdy...) out of Indio. Which was about 130+ cars, leaked like a sieve, and even included two or three dead units in the consist (which was nice for my rate of pay) but left me with either one or two working DB's. It handled terribly, and if the truth be known, had probably never actually passed its initial terminal air test in the first place...highball-yeah right? And, it's one of the only times when an engineer actually gets to tell the conductor what to do....... We died on the law at Loma Linda, but made it safely down the hill....

When I was a young innocent fireman, I asked my engineer if I could run the train.... He turned to me and said "Hell son, any fool can run one of these things, but they pay us the really big money for being able to stop them...". And, I always thought that might just be the wisest thing I ever heard on the RR. And, I tended to operate my trains with that very wise philosophy in mind.

Safety is of the first importance, obedience to the rules is required..............