Yeah, El Monte was a massive "head on" with four stories of engines and cars....

This was every other week or two somewhere in the LA terminal.

One of the best one I ever saw was someone kicking a big cut oars up hill from the bottom of the C yard, waiting on the bottom of the old XX lead with units out of the Taylor RH. A yard crew, working the bottom end of the Taylor C yard, kicked a big cut 8-10 cars with a lot of momentum up a clear track, and proceeded to throw the switch, and shove past the track with the rest of the cut. When about half of the cut was by, the cars came rolling back down the track, and ran out and into the side of their own cut. The lazy field man had tried to use "chunks" to "chunk" the cut from rolling back out, and didn't get a heal on them.

I watched someone corner their own cut on the puzzle switches at the Links (see the scene of the old links puzzles switches in Sullivan's Travels, Joel McCrae)….

I watched JB accidentally (absent mindedly) throw a switch under a cut, resulting in the following famous JB quote "I plead insanity Mr. Delellis…."


Like hauling those broken knuckles, I was "just glad it was not me...."