One of my two assignments when I won my bid to the outlying assignment of Car Inspector, Watson Yard (BNSF) in 1997 was to inspect the inbound and outbound Slab Trains. The other was to work the Watson-Barstow drag freight. I was working 14:00-22:00 and usually caught just the outbound train. My leadman would work the inbound morning set. These were 60' AT&SF Shock Control flats, if I recall correctly. They were all stenciled 'SLAB STEEL LOADING ONLY' and were not interchanged cars. There were three chief tasks involved, aside from the Initial Terminal Inspection. First, I would pound wedges at intervals where slabs curled up, attempting to keep the slabs from rotating out and killing someone or slamming into passing trains, the latter which I was told that had happened at least twice before. I had a five gallon bucket full of 4"x6" (roughly) pine wedges, and I basically walked the train, usually on top and pounded wedges in from the side. I was later instructed to immediately stop walking on top and make a roundtrip from the ground, as it was safer. Not a lot of fun trying to carefully swing a 7 pound hammer above the head reaching over the side of the car to meet that tiny wedge. Whatever.

The next thing was to heat and straighten all the bent handbrake staffs that were damaged by the loaders both at Kaiser and Pasha, due to carelessness. The staffs were designed to drop down so as to prevent this, but the loaders were too lazy to do this. Finally, I changed a shitload of cast iron brake shoes. Some folks call them steel shoes, but I think they are iron, as it is softer and would cause less heat on the face of the wheel. Anyway, I once had the task of covering my leadman's morning shift when he went on vacation in 1998, and I wanted to leave a good impression, so I changed more shoes than usual. Usually, we let them slide a just little past the 1/2 inch condemning point, but that week I changed a bunch early. These trainsets were captive, so I knew he'd see that when he came back from vacation that I protected the work, and he would have a relaxing week coming off vacation. Not so. He bit my ass the second day back, claiming I didn't do @#$%&. Go figure.

At Watson, there was a daylight slab roadswitcher that spotted the empties in the morning, came back and played cards, then went back with more empties and re-spotted, bringing the first cut back to Watson. Later, they went back and pulled that second cut, and went home. That's when I did my work and then the Slab Hauler would come on and they took it to Kaiser and brought back the empties late at night. Once, when I had moved on and went to the operating crafts, they had a journal burn off the loaded slab train and they piled it up near the then-new Metrolink platform in Riverside. There was @#$%& everywhere! That was in April of 1998, and it made the Press Enterprise. There's an interesting story about how that happened, even though the detector at Prado Dam caught the warm journal. I think a couple of those guys are still working, so I can't really say a lot, except that the detector was working just fine, and they also did a proper inspection, but didn't find the journal that later burned off.

I took a lot of Kodachrome those days, and got some good shots of the operation out of Watson, but I have yet to digitize them, sorry!

Years later, BNSF has a fleet of so-called 'shove cars', which look very much like the ATSF slab flats that I worked. These cars replace cabooses for a controversial definition and use. The Shock Control flats have been replaced by the cradle cars they use now on the trains, and the Roadswitcher at Watson doesn't use four SD40-2's. I think it might even be a Remote Control yardswitcher, as BNSF extended the Hobart Switching Limits to include Watson and cut off all the good roadswitchers.

I miss how dirty and nasty the Ports were even as late as 1999. It was also pretty cool cruising through all those quite places on the Harbor Sub late at night, with the marine layer casting its fog through our headlights. The Alameda Corridor project really changed things. It seems really clean and well-lit, now.