Saturday, November 29, 2025

On Thankgiving Day I got called for the worst train I could be called for- the KCKBAR, It had 9 motors on the head end, 2 in the middle, and one on the rear. Our paperwork said one of the DPs in the middle was to be off and the one on the rear was to be off. This made no sense. Our train came in with all of the DPs online, so we left it that way. We had a good trip to Barstow, and we had enough time to put it away, but they held us outside the yard for a couple of hours. Finally they told us to bring it into Receiving 3 and put the overflow in 1. (Our train was going to take up two tracks). We pulled into Receiving 3, I got off and had my engineer pull ahead, He stopped when we were clear of the east end. I had to walk back about 20 cars to the DPs,. I tied the 3 cars behind the DPs and cut the first half of the train away. I rode the DP over the switch, and then we shoved into Receiving one. I tied one brake and we did a release. It held. The van ran me up to the head end. I cut my 9 motors away. At first they told us to put them into Roundhouse 14. I knew that they wouldn't fit in there. So I told them ,"we have 9 motors." Then they said, "17." It's a much longer track. We shoved back over switch 25, and then into the roundhouse. I had to throw a couple of switches. By this time we had a half hour left to work. They told us we didn't have to go get the DPs. There was some food in the refigerator at the depot. I had some. Barstow Burger was closed. I went to bed and slept like a log. I got called at 1:37 am. I was callled for the BARGAL. I got down to the depot early. There were some fresh meals in the crew room. They had just been delivered by Denny's. I grabbed one. We had to take our power out of the roundhouse and put it on our train. We had 5 motors! Our train was small and light. We didn't need that much power. It was facing the wrong way. We would have to shove out of the roundhouse and I would have to protect it. We had to go around the balloon, and then used D6 as a runner. Our train was on D8. I shoved us back to a hook. I had to struggled iwth the hoses but I finally got them laced and cut the air in. There were no brakes on the east end. The van ran me to the west end. The ETD was already hung. I armed the ETD and we did the two way. I released the 3 brakes at the west end. We departed. About 20 miles outside of Barstow the detector said we had a hot bearing on the 11th car. All of the cars on the head end of our train were auto cars. I would have to check the bearing on the "hot side." (Just a couple of weeks ago one of our conductors was killed in Montana releasing the brakes on auto cars on the hot side). I walked back on the field, off of the track. I brought my temperature gun.One of the bearings was 89 degrees, another one was 99, another was 89, and one was 100. The brake on that car was tied! I released it. I got back to the head end and told the detector desk what I had found. They cleared us to procede. When we got to Needles we found out why we had 5 motors on the head end. They wanted us to set out motors 2 and 3 and put them in the roundhouse. The outbound helped us and it went pretty quickly. There were some sandwiches in the refrigerator when we got in. Due to the fact that I worked 6 days in a row I have 48 hours off, and I will RISA into my rest cycle. I need some time off. I hope you had a good Thanksgiving.

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