I believe that was the big El Nino year. IIRC this happened just a few months before I hired out. SLO had a series of bad ones around that period. Another friend of mine, who had hired out on the RR, was also hurt and lost his foot on the UP in May of that year, so my mom wasn't really keen on my going to work on the RR at 18.

I only used the middle caboose once, when I was laid off to go see a chick in Marin. As an employee, things were pretty loose back then. And, unless someone was being a real d3%k about it, all you needed to hop an engine, was a watch card. I did that once coming back from SF to LA. Made it safely home, though.

For a while after they killed that clerk who was riding with the helper crew, when they had the incident with the 8600 being in run instead of dynamic, they had a crack down on non operating employees doing this kind of "ride along".