I was working the East-end mainline as the senior fireman when this picture was taken, and the 2971 was the only of the six hump SD-38s that had a working high-tech digital speedometer. This picture looks like 2974 is the lead unit, but when I ran 2971 it was on the west-lead-end rather than the way it is turned "wrong" here. The consists when I worked Job 752 were from lead unit on the west end: 2971-1000-2972, 2974-1001-2973, and 2976-1002-2975. The 2974 also had the same speedometer as the 2971 except it worked only about two-thirds of the time, then it blinked up and down from 0.0 to 5.5 erratically. The 2976 had the old dial speedometer but it did not work at all. There were only seven of us engineers allowed to operate 2971, if one of us was not available (usually at midnight) then 2971 was put in track 903 and left tied down idle until the SD35s replaced the slugs, and the SD35s were hardly useful on the hump but any engineer could operate the 2971 after that. With extended range dynamic brakes, I could actually stop a light hump consist using only dynamic brakes in the receiving yard, they were really great engines. Hump speed was "a brisk walk" at 3-point-5 miles per hour. With 2974 or 2976 I had to time rail cars alongside my window using 55-foot cars as the standard, and I cannot remember something like 12 or 14 seconds; when I came alongside an auto-rack I would mentally time on 2/3 the length of the car, or a short tank car I would extend the time into the next car so the time averaged per about a 55-foot car length.
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| Posted by on February 11, 2012 | |
By the way, I changed my legal name to Libris Fidelis in 2008, but on Southern Pacific my birth name was Ronald Willett Kinum. Here is what I posted on my facebook page just the other day:
Southern Pacific Company / later Southern Pacific Transportation Company 2971, facing the wrong way eastward at West Colton Yard at Cedar Avenue Bridge, Bloomington CA, which engine I ran for several years when I was not on the mainline until 1988, under my previous legal name of Ronald Kinum, audit 607 account Nr. 1802 of the Los Angeles Division. 2971 was the only unit of the six 2971 class that had a working hi-tech digital yard computer-connected speedometer, and here with slug 1000 and probably 2974 “on the point” from the looks of the number on the cab, which was the only other SD38-2 hump unit that had a high-tech speedometer, but 2974's speedometer did not work properly part of the time, which is why 2971 is facing the wrong way, probably because the engineer was not qualified to run 2971, and they would never let unqualified engineers run 2971 when it had the slug. I ran the 2971 regularly on afternoon yard job 750 until 1988, with sundays and mondays off (grinning). The 2976 and 2973 had the old dial speedometer, which was no good on the hump, because it would not show a speed below 5 miles per hour with a hump speed of three-and-a-half miles per hour, which is a "brisk walk" for the switchmen. The proper sets were beginning with the west unit: 2971-1000-2972, 2074-1001-2975, and 2976-1002-2973. The 2975 did not have any speedometer at all, but with 2976 not having a hump speedometer and with 2974’s speedometer sometimes erratic, I had to time it on my watch against cars in the adjacent track and by imagining phantom car lengths on the ground at this location, for an average of twelve or fourteen seconds per 55-foot car-length for a steady humping speed. I don't know of any of the other engineers who would time their speed by-the-car-length with their watches like I did, because it really is a lot of work controlling the locomotive and timing the pace, and my crew received a lot of free steak dinner passes at the Mile Post Inn for our success in humping at a steady speed all shift-long, because we never had to re-hump a train regardless of whichever of the engines I was assigned to run, and the yardmaster just kept us running around tracks to hump another train exclusive of the other two or three hump jobs who had to couple-up tracks down in "the bowl" for classification re-humps, and then without going to lunch our crew received a two-hour early quit with the free steak dinner meal tickets, because we humped more cars (at least 500 without mistakes) than in a full 8-hour day with lunch !!!
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