In 1961, my father, George Feldner, spent the better part of a day accompanying
the Warwick yard drill crew performing their daily duties. He had talked to officials of the L&HR,
and interviewed the crew he was spending the day with. The following is the result of that day's effort.
I was 14 at the time, and accompanied him for the day. It wasn't a very long trip to the yards
- we lived a half-block away from the Elm Street crossing, and, by local streets, just around the corner from the yards, shops,
and the 'Club 94'.
A couple of footnotes:
This account was written before the L&HR bought their Alco C-420's, and just after the
Erie and Delaware Lackawanna & Western merger, creating the Erie-Lackawanna.
An early result of the merger was a loss of the Port Morris traffic, shortly
after this was written. With the merger the DL&W, via the Erie connection to Maybrook,
didn't need the L&HR for access any longer. In a way, the loss of the Port Morris traffic was the 'beginning of the end'
for the Lehigh and Hudson River Ry.
If It had been a "normal" day, the Warwick drill crew
would
have been at their task of sorting westbound cars soon after they
reported on duty at 11 a.m. But like all normal days, this
one started with a problem; no engine. An engine failure had
side-lined the unit that should have gone to work, With two
other units of the thirteen Alco road switchers that move the
traffic for the Lehigh and Hudson River in for inspections,
the crew would have to wait for a unit that could be pulled
off a westbound run coming in from Maybrook.
While we waited for the engine to come in, we made
ourselves
comfortable in the yard office, designated on the end door as
'Club 94'. The name Itself led to a story; retired caboose
number 94 serves as the yard office, parked at the end of the
scale track. Before It served Its years as a caboose, it had
been a busy milk car on this road that was a pioneer in the
milkhauling business. I also had some time to learn a little
about the routine of the office from affable James Bellarosa,
the yard clerk, and to get acquainted with the crew whose work
I would be observing. There was Jack Rader, the yard
conductor, whose spryness and sharp wit gave no hint of his 49
years of service; the two brakemen, Johnny Houston and Lew
Brown, formerly New Haven men; Frank Conklin and Bailey
Paffenroth, engineer and fireman respectively.
The background of this switching operation had been
sketched
for me in an earlier conversation with Superintendent Paul W,
Early. Prior to January, 1959, classification of westbound
movements had been done at Maybrook by the New Haven, under
contract. Since the Lehigh Is principally a bridge route
serving as a funnel for freight into New England, receiving
its eastbound traffic from the Erie-Lackawanna at Port Morris,
N, J., the CNJ at Allentown and the Pennsylvania and Lehigh
Valley at Phillipsburg, N, J. and destined almost entirely
for the New Haven, there is only a negligible amount of
handling of these movements, However, the reverse movement
westbound necessitates blocking the majority of the cars received
from the New Haven. When the official decision was
made to handle this work at Warwick, it called for some
revision of the Warwick yard. The east throat was raised to
give a slight descending grade and seveval tracks were added
in the readily available space. From the remarks of both
President Harold J. Quinlan and Superintendent Early, the
results have more than justified the operating change*
While we were talking In the yard office, No. 32, from
Port
Morris, rolled in, stopping long enough to change crews and
was off to Maybrook with her cars from the Nickel Plate,
Erie-Lackawanna and Wabash for the New Haven. Following
close behind 32 was EO-2, another story that Is on the lips of
Lehigh men from President Quinlan down, This is the return
train for the new pride of the line, the JET-1, Initiated May
15, 1961. The JET-1 starts out on the New Haven from Boston,
Providence and New Haven as the "Yankee Jet'; the Lehigh
picks it up at Maybrook and wheels it down the line in two and
a half houvs, to turn it over to the Pennsy for a second
morning delivery In Chicago. She is all forwarder traffic
and piggybacks, a real "hot-shot", and treated as such by
everyone connected with her on this road.
While EO-2 changed crews and dropped off some local cars,
one
of the east end shuttles headed in on track 3 with 58 cars for
our crew to shuffle. As soon as the shuttle cleared the main
E0-2 took off for Maybrook.
At 12:45 No. 31 headed Into the yard from Maybrook,
holding
the main. She brought no work for the yard, since she had
been classified at Maybrook for direct delivery to the
Erie-Lackawanna at Port Morris. But before leaving, the lead
engine, No. 6, was replaced by No. 10 from the earlier shuttle,
and gave us the engine we needed.
With the departure of 31 and the missing essential
present,the
crew was ready to pitch into their day's work. Before the
shuttle had arrived from Maybrook, the yard clerk had received
a tentative listing of the consist from the main office. As
the train had rolled into the yeard, Bellarosa stood at the
throat copying the reporting marks of the cars rolling by, and
the rear brakeman had passed him the waybills as the hack
rolled by. Back In "Club 94" he quickly went to work
identifying the road to which each car would be consigned
alongside Its number on his list. This task finished, he
pulled out a drill slip and went into a huddle with Rader. The
first consideration was the condition of the yard; track 2
held a string of cars for the east end local which wouldn't be
due out until eleven, while track 7 held some locals and
empties for line deliveries. Since the 58 cars which had come
in were already blocked with 32 for the CNJ and 26 for the
E-L, the moves were simple. The 26 were cut off and shoved in
track 4, while the CNJ cars were left in 3, Since the next
shuttle wasn't expected until almost two, this gave the crew
enough time to cut four empty box-cars that had been ordered
for industries along the line and would go out on the
westbound ("Andover") local around 11:30. These were set in 7
with the other local cars.
At 1.50 the next shuttle from Maybrook headed in on track
1
with 85 cars; this was over the capacity of the track so the
crew doubled 15 cars back into track 5. Now the work was to
begin In earnest and the tempo would increase, This string was
not preblocked and contained cars headed for the Lehigh
Valley, B&O, Pennsylvania and the CNJ, and time became a
factor. The crew for OA-1, the Central States Despatch for
Allentown, was already called for 3:40 and it was up to Rader
and his crew to see that she was ready to roll on time. Not
only did this require blocking by road, but the blocks also
had to be in specified order; Valley loads for Buffalo and
beyond on the head end, followed by loads for the B&0 to
Cumberland and beyond, and filled out with loads and empties
for the CNJ.
While two carmen were bleeding the air from the train,
Bellarosa and Rader were setting up the first drill slip. The
conductor decided to put the B&O's on 2, on top of the east
end local cars, the Pennsy's on 7, and the Valley cars on 6,
while the CNJ's would go with those already in 3. By this time the drill slip was
ready for the fifteen cars in track 5. The slip listed the car
number, its destination by road, and the track in which it
would go. The last column was repeated twice more. Rader cut
the list apart; the left side listing the car numbers went to
the "pin man", Houston, who would make the cuts. He kept one
of the duplicated lists for himself as switchman, and gave the
other to Brown, who would be the "field man". Meanwhile the
engine crew had brought the 15 cars up to the lead from track
5.
As the men went at their task another phase of modern
railroading evidenced itself; Rader carried with him a portable
radio as he stationed himself alongside the lead. The Lehigh
has been completely radio-equipped since 1957 and the
installation showed one side of its versatility. The engine
was east of the Elm Street crossing, out of sight of the field
crew, but passing of hand signals was unnecessary. Rader
merely opened his transmittter and called the engineer with a
simple "Give her a shot." As soon as his practiced eye judged
the speed to be sufficient, and as Houston pulled the pin on
the cut, a simple "Hold it' stopped the rest of the string and
the first cut of seven cars rolled toward track 2, followed In
quick succession by a cut of two for 3, another two for 7, and
three for track 6. As the first cut rolled into each track
Brown caught them and set the handbrakes when they reached the
end of the roll; in effect it made a bumper for each successive cut that was to come in each track.
By the time the first string was out of the way,
Bellarosa had
the drill list ready for the 17 cars ahead of the caboose; the
only change in the pattern would be that one out of six cars
for the CNJ would go in track 1 since they would be held for
OA-3. So it went, until all 85 cars had been distributed
where Rader wanted them, and the only thing left with the
engine was the caboose. This went on the caboose track after
pulling out caboose No. 10, which was assigned to OA-1. No.
10 was dropped in track 3 behind the CNJ cut that was to go
out on the train. The B&O cut was moved from track 5 to
track 2, behind the Lehigh Valley string. The crew then went
down the main to the west end of the yard, pulled the cars
from 2 and put them in track 3. As soon as the coupling was
made on the last move the carmen moved out to couple the
airhoses, inspect the cars and start pumping up the train line
from the air hose connection in the yard. At 3:15, Rader
called the office to report OA-1 ready to roll on track 3 with
17 loads and 43 empties.
The remainder of the cars that had come in from Maybrook
were
classified by road destination to be put in OA-3, due out
about 9 p.m. About four o'clock Rader called the dispatcher to
get a line on AO-4, coming up from Allentown. She had been
delayed by mechanical trouble and was to meet OA-1 at Vernon,
N.J. With this information, he knew that he had time to do
his local work in Warwick. There was a B&0 box to be spotted
at the freight house, four empties to be pulled from the two
house tracks and a load to be transferred from the house track
to the lumber yard on the opposite side of the main. Back at
the yard at 4:30, the
crew rearranged the consist for the east end local, to
provide the required separation between a couple of cars
labeled "Dangerous" and "Explosive."
AO-4 pulled up at the west end of the yard at 4:50. The
engines were cut off there to allow them to come up the engine
house lead and drop off the troublesome unit. While this was
going on the yard crew was keeping busy picking up an empty
covered hopper from a feed-store track and getting another
empty from a transit-mix plant behind the shops. Both cars
were stored in track 3 for OA-3.
As AO-4 cleared the yards with her 74 cars for Maybrook,
the
return on No. 31 showed up with eleven cars. These were to
be turned over to the E-L at Greycourt, so they went in on
the east end local on track 2, That completed the work on
that train and she would be ready for her crew later In the
evening with 22 cars for Greycourt and 15 for Maybrook.
Now came a quiet spell, since the rest of the work for
the day
would have to await the return shuttle from AO-4; the crew
took advantage of the lull to dig into the welcome lunch
pails, while the clerk worked on his consist sheet for OA-1.
It was an intriguing cross-section of American railroading
and industry to note the contents and destinations of the
loads; waste paper to Niagara Falls, cat food to Buffalo,
felt to Erie, brass to Los Angeles, liquor to Portland,
Oregon, razor blades to Chicago, paper to Shelby, Ohio, and
Hungington, W, Va,, books to Millbrae, California.
The last shuttle showed at 6.55 with 60 cars, These
would go
to either OA-3 or the "Andover local," On this operation,
Rader used track 5 for the CNJ'S, 6 for the Lehigh Valley and
Erie-Lackawanna's in 4. The cars for OA-3 had their own
order again, with the Lehigh Valleys at the head end,
followed by Pennsylvania and CNJ's in that order. The local
would carry empties at the head end for spotting at lineside
industries, followed by E-L cars for Port Morris.
When the classification had been completed the caboose
was put
in track 5 and the crew moved again to the west end of the
yard. Since the Allentown train was too long for any one
track, the Valley and Pennsy cars were put in track 3. It
was dark now and the electric switch stand lights twinkled at
us as we finished assembing the local on track 4.
We headed back to the main office, where I said good
night to
the trainmen as they went in to report off duty as Conklin
and Leinweber took the engine back to the house. As I left
the yard, all was quiet except for the chuckle of OA-3's
engines as they awaited departure time; the caboose for the
Jet stood lonely on the east end of track 1. Another day was
completed for the Warwick drill crew, performing their vital
work for an important little link in our transportation
network.