I got called bright and early at 4 am to be a brakeman. I thought I would be helping to put a train together, or do a Class I Air Brake Test, but when I got to the station I realized I had been called to be the brakeman on a set of helpers. (On helpers, there is no conductor, just a brakeman and the engineer). Usually we just go out to the roundhouse, grab two motors, and go help a train by pushing it or pulling it. But today the game plan was different. Another crew was supposed to take the DPS off of the Ambar in Barstow and start taking them back to Needles. We were supposed to get in a van, head west, intercept them someplace, and then go hel trains. But, as is often the case, things did not go according to plan. One of the 3 DPs on the AMSBAR died. They needed the other two motors to make it to Barstow. We wound up riding the van all of the way to Barstow. The AMSBAR was in R4. So we took the 3 DPs off of it. Since I can't go "in between" in Diesel Service " I disconnected the cable between motors 2 and 3 there on R4. (The dead motor was # 3). We brought it to the roundhouse, I tied the brake, we did a release test, and cut away. Once that was done we coundn't get out of Diesel Service! A crew was brinigng some other motors in. And the router said he had no place to put us. So we went into the "Diesel Spur. " I had to throw a handswitch and drop the derail. My engineer reported that there was some oil on the catwalk of the second motor. They blue flagged us and cleaned up the oil. It took a while. Finally we let Diesel Service know that we were ready to go but we had to wait. Finally they gave us permission to go. I had to line the switch again, we shoved over it, then I lined the switch back. But it took a while for the router to give us permission to get out of there. We had to go through the Receving Yard. I had to thow a couple of swithches. We went out the Auxillary Track to the East Barstow signal and waited aobut an hour. We finally departed Barstow after being on duty for over 7 hours! I doubted if we would be able to rescue any trains. We had to stop a couple of times because they were single tracking, and we got dog caught at Amboy after being on duty for over 10 hours. We didn't rescue one train. All we did was setout one motor and bring the helpers to Amboy. We wished the dog catch crew good luck. I don't know if they rescued any trains. I think they they took the helpers back to Needles. The van took us back to Needles and we tied up. I'm showing out tomorrow afternoon. Hopefully it will be a good trip and not a dog catch.