Jacks House
The Day I Made Conductor
I was working the coaches on train #59, The City of New Orleans. It was right around Christmas time mid 1980's I believe. I was working with a new-hire by the name of Mike. He was working the other coaches. Phil was working the sleeping car. Now Phil had been around since the early 60's working for one of the private passenger lines that were here before Amtrak so he knew his way around rather well. I was a 3-4 year employee at the time.
The train was running late for reasons forgotten now but I do remember it was real late. 6 hours if I'm not mistaken. We were heading north for Chicago. Entering Champagne Illinois, about 3 hours from Chicago, the conductors went dead (meaning they worked the maximum hours allowed by law). We made it to the station so this shouldn't be too big of a deal however what we didn't know was operations were fresh out of crews. There was nobody to replace our conductors. So we sat in Champagne while the powers that be figured out what to do with us.
Now there were some big wheels already at the station so they anticipated problems for us here. They pow-wowed for about 30 minutes and then came out to the train looking for the three of us. When they got us together they handed us radios, ticket punches and the matrix (a listing of how many people are getting on or off at any given stop) and told us “Take her into Chicago boys”. Were like, your kidding us… but they were serious. This was the only way this train was going to get into Chicago. We wanted to get home so we agreed to do it although none of us had ever attended one class of conductor training.
This all seemed kinda' out of the ordinary to me at the time but I really didn't realize how out of the ordinary until later. Phil became very nervous and Mike thought it was so cool to be able to talk on the radio. Lol His dream was to be a conductor, which he is today.
Now doing the Conductors job is really no big deal, as far as the passengers are concerned. When it comes to the movement of the train, that's where it becomes a big deal. For an Engineer we had a qualified engineer but not of that particular zone. In other words he know how to drive it, he was just not familiar with the area.
So were toolin' down the track. I'm collecting tickets, Mike is telling the Engineer when to go and when to stop, Phil is going over the collected tickets and matrix. That's when it hits me. Not a one of us know how to read the signals. Signals are the colored lights you see along every train track. They look like stop and go lights and act similar but there's more to them. 3 horizontal yellow lights means something completely different that 3 vertical lights. Then there's the signals that are close to the ground. The three of us didn't know the first thing about them. Which doesn't matter if we keep going forward. However should we need to back the train up were screwed. There are two instances to as where we would have to back the train up. One is if we come upon a fright train and the dispatcher puts us in a dead siding. Once the fright train has passed we would need to back the train back out onto the main line to continue on. We stood a 50/50 chance of this happening. The other instance where we would have to back the train up is when we arrive Chicago. We stood a 100% chance of that happening. All trains at that time backed into the station in Chicago.
Well luck was with us because we didn't come across any fright trains but there was still the backing into the station in Chicago to deal with. We got on the radio and informed the Engineer of our dilemma, he inturn informed the dispatcher. We arrive into Chicago and reach the point where we need to back up. They still didn't know what to do with us. We sat there for 30 minutes before a yard man showed up and backed the train in for us. Home at last.
About a month later I hear that they wanted to bring us up on charges for operating a train without the proper qualifications. Some kind of thank you this was. Lol They contacted Phil but it went no farther once he told them the story. However we did violate numerous federal rail road laws doing what we did. One was the hours of service laws. Conductors and Engineers are only allowed to work 12 hours at a time. You see we were on duty since we left New Orleans. 26 hours total when we took the radios. Therefore we technically went dead the minute we took over. All of us, Phil, Mike, Myself and the Engineer were not qualified for that zone, violating both federal laws and union working agreement laws. The top brass who set this all up took most of the heat. I believe one was fired and another was reassigned. It was
kinda' swept under the rug after that. However today I'm told I can go back and claim Conductor rights and a seniority date because I worked
as one. Lol I'm still mulling that over….. lol