Thursday, March 19, 2026

I got called for the "B LPCSCO5." It had 3 motors on the head end and one motor in the middle. Behind the middle motor were baretables. The front half of the train was a regular stack train. Our work order said that we were to split it in Barstow. My engineer said that we would probably be told to take another motor out of the roundhouse because one motor wouldn't be enough for the rear half of the train. (The front half of our train was going to Stockton, the rear half was going to Long Beach. Our trip was slow. At least one train broke down and needed helpers They were single tracking. I noticed that my IPAD said that we were to set out one of our motors at Goffs. The AMSBAR was broken down in the siding at Goffs. Their leader was dead. Setting out our second motor would be a lot of work. Then as we neared Goffs we heard the crew of the AMSBAR say that they were in the van and heading to Barstow. I refreshed my IPAD and the set out was gone. We made slow progress to Barstow because they kept stopping us. We had maybe an hour left to work when we got to East Barstow and they told us to split the train. The rapid responder came out to help us. He ran me to the second motor in his truck. I tied the brake on the DP, and 6 handbrakes. I made the cut. The rapid responder had an ETD for us. I hung it and we did the Class III. We were finished just as we went DOL. The rapid responder ran me to the head end of our train. Our train was not tied down. We let the router and the terminal manager know that we were DOL and our train needed to be tied down We had to wait about an hour. A dog catch crew came out and tied our train down. They were nice enough to let us use thier van to take me to the hotel. My engineer went to the depot. I got to the hotel in time for breakfast. I slept about 5 hours, watched some TV, and slept for 3 more hours. I got called for the "S LHALPC3.' On duty time was 10:40 pm. I was ready to go when I got my call. I hadn't eaten all day. When I got to the depot I got some food from the deli. The terminal manager told us to go out to Hodge and get on our train. They were having problems and the crew was DOL. When we got there they said that ther was no air at the rear of the train. They suspected that someone had closed an anglecock and was robbng the train. The rapid responser was trying to find the problem. We had no sooner got on our train when the rapid responder said that he had found two open anglecocks. The air started to come up. It passed the train check. We were soon on the move They ran us good, but there were a lot of trains in the yard when we got to Needles. They told us to tie it down at the East Needles signal. It wasa big train-over 15,000 feet and over 14,000 tons. We had 4 motors on the head end, 2 in the middle, and 2 on the rear. My engineer tied the 4 motors and I tied one handbrake. It held. (It's pretty flat at East Needles). The van ran us back to the depot. On the way we counted 60 open containers. We filed a caim for 130 miles for getting on our train at Hodge. I am now on my rest cycle.

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