BOB2 Wrote:
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> Experience does matter, and that being said. How
> many times have I seen someone giving me a signal
> to come ahead or back up, while someone was in
> between lacing up the air? More times than I care
> to remember.
>
> In the days of lanterns an experienced hoghead
> would or should know where is pin puller, field
> man, and conductor were. Of course I've known
> people with sleep apnea that could literally sleep
> with their eyes open, that switchmen wouldn't work
> with when they showed up unrested.
>
> Then there was the time they sent a drunk
> conductor, and two brakemen one with two days, and
> one with two weeks (who was a foamer to boot), and
> we needed to switch out 60 cars of tomatoes in
> about 4 hours, with air made. The "foamer" was
> field man (as the more "experienced" crewman, and
> the two day kind was pin puller. We had to pull a
> shed, and I told the field man where to make the
> cut on the list, right in front of him, I told the
> pin puller to make the air. The field man walked
> down to the cut, and promptly gave me a big back
> up, with the pin puller in between the cars......
> He got more and more agitated that I was not
> taking his signal, and began walking back toward
> me on the engine, when he got to the engine he
> started yelling at me about taking his signal. I
> simply pointed back at his pin puller. coming out
> from between the cars, that he had walked by,
> without even noticing. He got a lesson about
> counting lanterns. It's a good thing that I was
> by then an "experienced" hoghead, at the age of
> 25, who had fired for a couple of years before
> being "stimulated" at the "stimulator" and
> promoted, and had some time to learn a few things,
> like counting your lanterns and knowing where all
> of your crewmembers were before you moved......
>
>
> Inexperienced people in the cab or on the ground,
> or people with no learning curve, or who didn't
> give a #hit (in my career I've encountered all
> three kinds of stupid and dangerous)often don't
> keep track of folks are, and, as a result
> sometimes bad $hit happens. So they have these
> stupid rules, written in the blood of those maimed
> and killed, when @hit happens, to keep that from
> happening so often.
>
> So, maybe because I've seen people run over by a
> train, while at work, making air down between
> cars, it doesn't sound like such a bad practice to
> me.

One of the things they don't do these days is counting lanterns. Lot guys don't use them. Just for show.