"Bottling the Air"

[NW Mailing List]

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From: NW Mailing List <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org>
To: NW Mailing List <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org>
Sent: Mon, Oct 25, 2010 1:13 pm
Subject: Re: "Bottling the Air"



What was done at Bluefield was simply a variation of what they still do in "hump" yards (where retarders are used instead of riders). Which makes me wonder - how do they go about releasing the brakes on cars that are humped? I can see the men working the cut levers at the Radnor hump in Nashville, but I don't see them doing anything with the angle cocks. In Bluefield there were riders in proportion to the length of the cut to do the braking, and there was a big motor car which brought the riders back up to the scale house. Once in awhile, not enough riders would get on a cut, and there would be a big derailment when the cut got down to the cars already at the east end.
    
The cars going down the slope at East Yard had been bled, meaning the only way to stop
them was by hand brakes tied up by the car riders.  At the east end, they left 25 hand
brakes tied up on each track. The outbound crew would couple to one track, then the
engineer would pump up brakes and test air.  After that the brakeman would begin to knock
off the hand brakes.  Then the outbound crew would double to a 2nd track and go through
the same procedure.  Believe it took three tracks-worth to make a train for Roanoke.
The crew I was with went on duty at 12:01 PM and left East Yard at 4:30 PM and made
South Yard, Roanoke at 2:30 AM the following day -- 14 hours to do 98 miles.Harry Bundy   

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