Signal maintainer fails to remove jumper wire. Two killed.

[cabman701]

I guess I should clarify.

If I am at a red light that turns green... yes, I do check to see if traffic from the other direction has stopped and make sure that someone isn't running the red. We get a lot of that with left turn arrows. The left turn arrow will go yellow, then red (or off) and 5 cars still try to sneak through to make their turn.

Anyways, what I was referring to is if I am driving through an intersection where the light has been green for some time, I don't slow down to check for traffic on the cross street. Doing so would most likely cause me to be rear-ended. Tailgating is another huge issue in this town.

[Robert_Gift]

... if I am driving through an intersection where the light has been green for some time, I don't slow down to check for traffic on the cross street. Doing so would most likely cause me to be rear-ended. Tailgating is another huge issue in this town.

I don't slow, either.
I don't want to slow others and cause them to use wear brakes and use more fuel and make pollution speeding up.

Earlier I was driving an emergency vehicle on an Interstate highway on a long gentle up grade.
I was in lane 1 (left lane of two lanes), no siren because traffic had cleared out of lane 1 well ahead. (The flashing headlight high beams are the best emergency lights!)
Big heavy semi in right lane slows and pulls onto shoulder and STOPS.

It must have taken himore than a mile to get back up to speed.
With all the high speed evening rushour traffic, I was worried about vehicles rear-ending him or rear-ending other vehicleslowing behind him.

I asked the State Patrol if I could turn off the emergency lights so trucks in other lanes do not pull over.
They said only if I was not speeding could I turn off the lights.

[AlvinAZ]

Hi guys, my first post here. :)

I would be afraid to do anything without checking it afterwards,
especially because I am so absentminded.

Everybody is tho, believe it? :) Whether they know it or not. :/
...that's why you protect yourself (and others if you're a signalape)
by not making a habit out of jumpering-out signal equipment.

If you do have to do something like that, you use long red jumpers
that hang outside the case or in a relay house, take the lock in and
set it by the control panel (or something), was a trick I used and
never messed up even one time.

But yeah, I still have a habit of "double checking" by looking things
over to be sure I hadn't left any tools laying around etc. A double
check is where you looked and -didn't- find anything to pick up etc.
Until you look things over and -find nothing to do- you haven't double
checked, by definition. Finding some little something that needed to
be done is a distraction see? :)

Many times when jumpering signal relays is done, it ain't for the public
it's for their own lack of patience, you know it? ...didn't want to wait
on the trains for some reason. :/

"it takes me longer when I get in a hurry" -Alvin

"what's the big hurry? ...everybody here -that-actually-matters-for-
something-, is getting paid by the hour ;)" -Alvin

Alvin in AZ (retired SP signalape)

[Robert_Gift]

Welcome, SignalApe.

Great name!

Agreed. Something metallic could fall onto something and short or provide a conductive path to something.

I would energize the relay so thatraffic is not impeded.
But I would check the signals afterward to see that my adjustments did not defeat train detection, etc.

I can understand and forgive forgetting the jumper, but not checking thentire system so that such an error, or other problem or anomaly goes undetected.

I like the jumperack which indicates any jumpers unaccounted for.

[AlvinAZ]

Welcome, Signal Ape.
Great name!

Cool thanks. :)

The term signalape is just an old name for railway signalmen.
Hog head
Feather bedder
Car knocker
Signal ape
Gandy dancer
Grease monkey
All just railroad job titles or names and I'm sure there's more I never heard. :)
The more derogatory it was the better the name, "back when". ;)

I would energize the relay so thatraffic is not impeded.

I was pulled out of service in Feb 1990 sick and had only put in 19 years.
But there had been a full 15 year freeze on hiring signal apes on the Tucson
Divsion before I hired out so after only one year I was maintaining in Mesa.
I took it real serious right from the start.

The last job I had was the lead-man on a Megger gang and all it amounted to
was wiring signals and relieving maintainers. My job at Hayden Junction AZ got
cut off when the SP "sold" the Hayden Branch line to a non-union company and
then my coderman job got cut off when they moved the dispatchers offices to
Roseville and I was just waiting to get my maintainers job back in Bowie AZ.
My seniority was getting worse instead of better. ;)

Anyway, I was wiring at Mescal when the supervisor wanted me to help the
signal gang with the Rita Road crossing since they didn't have a "wireman".

Cool, it'd be fun to work with the gang for a few days. :)

Well, the supervisor showed up at Rita Road and after I told 'im...
"three wests and one east"
He started pointing at a spot on the "plans" and said...
"if we jumper this contact we won't have to wait"
I told 'im...
"don't do it :/"
"it's simple, it'll work"
"don't do it :/"...
"you can't be sure the case is wired like the plans show, to make changes or
do stuff like that you'll have to trace almost all the wires in the case, by the
time we get done with that the trains will be by, let's just get busy doing other
stuff and wait on the trains to swap the new case over :)" (it was a new
pre-wired case from the System Signal Shop in Sacramento that they wanted
me to help with)

He did it anyway. See, he wasn't a "wireman" he went straight from the Air
Force wiring air-pains ;) to digging ditches on the railroad, to supervisor. :)

The the first west bound came by and the XR relay didn't drop out until the
whole lead unit had gone -past- Rita Road and hit the track circuit on the other
side. And it was hauling butt too! So the gates didn't come down until the whole
consist had gone by. LOL :) But not so funny was watching the propane truck
driver (going back for another load I figure) be shocked as hell to see a train
coming his way -fast-. He managed to stop so the gate came down on his cab.
After the train was by a couple of the guys off the signal gang went to lift the
gate and let 'im go. He didn't want to break the gate. LOL :)

He looked over at us hoping his look-could-kill but there were so many of us he
didn't get out and come over and give us a good chewing out. Too bad, we all
would have pointed at the "smart guy" I'm sure! LOL :)

They all heard me trying to stop 'im from jumpering out the crossing so...
Each guy came over and chewed the supervisor out like they meant it and he
took it all best he could. I was last since I was in the case with him after it
was all over and just said real quiet "it takes me longer when I get in a hurry ;)"

You know, he quit bugging me about how slow I was at wiring signals after that.

Funny thing is he's a friend of mine and I've always got along with him, still see
'im ever once in a while but he just wasn't a good signalman, assumed too much.

Alvin in AZ

[cabman701]

Great story Alvin... and welcome to the Forum! Look forward to your expertise in answering some of our harder signal questions.

[Robert_Gift]

Seeing thathe signals did not start operating when they should, no one RAN over to stop traffic?

What a horrible mistake to make which easily could have been deadly.
Why did they let him do that if they knew better?

What did he do wrong that he did not realize?

RE my post above, years ago I was working on (tuning) my Tesla Coil.
I cut a piece of #12 AWG solid copper wire.
The 1/2 inch piece flew up and landed on the back of the push-button switch. It bridged the two screw lugs.
1.2 million volts emitted from the Tesla coil. Fortunately only a minor branch of the lightning reached me. I am lucky it didn't put my heart into fibrillation.

[AlvinAZ]

Great story Alvin... and welcome to the Forum!
Look forward to your expertise in answering some of our harder signal questions.

Cool thanks it'll be fun for me. I'll do my best and like it. ;)

I'd like to hear from other signalmen, so far have only talked to one on line.

One thing to keep in mind is how different everything can be from one division to
another let alone from one railroad to another and clean across the country too.
Like my version of the SP is long gone and the UP is way different from what a few
of my old buddies and stepbrother tell me. My stepfather got us a "summer job". ;)

But none of those guys ever wanted to talk about the specifics of the equipment.
They weren't tinkering-fools like me. ;)

Alvin in AZ

[AlvinAZ]

Seeing thathe signals did not start operating when they should,
no one RAN over to stop traffic?

Wow, good point. :) We were all positioned to roll the train by. But you know it
all happened so fast. Rita Road is out in the middle of nowhere (Rita Road crossing
still is). There was only the one vehicle the whole time and he came tearing up
and stopped short of the tracks (as he'd always done with the gates up) and got
ready to haul butt again and oops. :/ It was just a two lane paved country road
with gates back then (Griswold I think). The (mostly empty?) propane tank would
have cooked us all, you suppose?

Those guys were pissed! LOL :)
They walked right past me and got in his face. LOL :)
I didn't say a word until it'd all calmed down and everyone was back to work.

What a horrible mistake to make which easily could have been deadly.
Why did they let him do that if they knew better?

Well there wasn't much they could do, he's the boss. Actually I'd thought I'd won
the day but he went and did it anyway and I remember being surprised at his not
going along with me. I guess it was a case of "I'm gonna show you that I'm right
about this" and he went for it. Next thing you know the first west bound shows up.

What did he do wrong that he did not realize?

You know, I'm not real sure. :/ I've thought about that a bunch of times and I know
for a fact that I wasn't interested in his explanation at that time. Just plain ol' didn't
care. Looked into it a little and didn't immediately see a problem with it but studying
plans takes time, it's like reading a page in a technical manual you know? Especially
with him breathing down my neck like I was holding up the whole gang.

All I knew was "don't do it" and stuck with it.

El Monte California was the same thing only worse. The big-shots took over to "speed
things up" and ran a high speed train into one sitting on the siding. The big shots were
paraded though the courts as "experts" etc for years and years but after all the law
suits were done, they were fired.

RE my post above, years ago I was working on (tuning) my Tesla Coil.
1.2 million volts emitted from the Tesla coil. Fortunately only a minor branch of the
lightning reached me. I am lucky it didn't put my heart into fibrillation.

Cool. :)
How'd that feel? LOL :)

I was off work sick and at home waiting on our first rain of the summer when I got
struck by lightning, that was the chicken-coup-of-grass that sealed my retirement.

I-just-got-a-little-bit-of-it but woke up on the ground with my arms and legs in the
air like a dead cockroach. LOL :)

What I learned about it is our heart is vulnerable about 4% of the time and if we get
spooked etc during that particular "event's time frame" that's when we are vulnerable.
...or something like that? ;)

Alvin in AZ

[Robert_Gift]

... I was off work sick and at home waiting on our first rain of the summer when I got
struck by lightning, that was the chicken-coup-of-grass that sealed my retirement.

I-just-got-a-little-bit-of-it but woke up on the ground with my arms and legs in the
air like a dead cockroach. LOL :)

What I learned about it is our heart is vulnerable about 4% of the time and if we get
spooked etc during that particular "event's time frame" that's when we are vulnerable.
...or something like that? ;)

Alvin in AZ

Wow! Glad you did not suffer even more brain damage (than what you already have working for a railroad).
If you ever come to Denver, the Lightning Data Center at St. Anthony Hospital would love for you to tell about your experience.
Meets the 2nd Friday of every month. 11:30 round table. Noon to 1 p.m. featured speaker, FREE LUNCH! All interested in lightning are welcome.