Southern Pacific Vintage Film - This is My Railroad - Part 1

There is something about a

railroad

and something about the

railroad

that is different from any other call under the sun something inside a man in the way he thinks about his job and the pride he takes in his own performance he drives the automobile through a stretch of open road with a group of men on the way to work he stands next to them in the silent desert where the only sound is that of their tools and their voices he walks with the man who works alone he walks with thousands who work together for these are people of the railway a race of its own the men and women who run the Railway working with paper with forges, lathes and presses TR the wheels taking care of the signals throwing the switches distributing supplies helping with luggage serving food selling tickets building a fence a bridge a road using a shovel a crane a Transit a typewriter making the trains running the trains maintaining the trains

this

is my railway 100,000 men and women working together to fulfill a purpose keeping a railway running in the beginning there was nothing, there was no railway, There were no roads, no rolling stock, nothing but an untouched desert, but in the desert there was also a promise: the promise of a Western Empire that could make a nation as vast as a continent if it could be united with bands of steel where few men had dared to walk a path. cleared of the rock of the earth and through the links of the Virgin Forest were colored the rails were laid bolted and nailed when the last Spike was driven our first trains moved across the continent upwards and more than 7,000 feet of mountain barrier trapped In the grip of winter and in the heart of the Western Empire, a nation was now united, a nation that had barely been born but was approaching its death.

Fate, as the west and southwest grew, so did the railroad until today, those rails that once bravely traversed the mountain have become an intertwined network. Together, the Wild West, the Southwest and the South, linking them in turn to the Mid-Continent and through many connecting lines, carry traffic throughout the country, transporting Forest Lumber products from the CIS skus , Cascades, the Sierra from New Mexico, Texas and Louisiana, transporting the products. extracted from the earth, metals, chemicals, oil, carrying the products of the earth, fruits and vegetables from the nation's garden, transported to distant cities, as if distance were non-existent, carrying the products of the factory , modeled in the form of our things. people need to transport the people of a free nation, a people free to move and travel at will without answering to any man,

this

is my railway, a service performed by 100,000 men and women who share a common pride in knowing how to drive well a railway.

It's a great job and it seems to be growing all the time along our lines, we keep getting more people, don't ask me where they come from, but they keep coming and behind those people we keep getting more business and industry each. One day in the last 25 years has a new industry emerged large enough to need a rail connection along our lines since the end of World War II, that rate has doubled. Two new industries a day produce goods that must be delivered to someone somewhere. all over the country so it's no wonder we can never say the railways were actually built, we are always adding more and always rebuilding them, for example as traffic increases we keep laying bigger and heavier rails to transport the heaviest loads, replacing the railway. a complicated job until you remember you can't stop traffic our guys figure it out although the Down the Line folks spread the word when a train is coming we make a temporary junction, move our equipment out of the way and the train moves on through its work and the train has to slow down a little but the traffic continues to move.

The speed at which we can run our trains depends only in

part

on the power of the locomotive, it depends even more on the weight of the rail and the curves and slopes. Of the track we always try to have a straight and level line, but the contours are not always tailor-made, we have to adapt our railway to the contours, so when we have to build a curve we try to make it as smooth as possible. on one section of the track, the Tahachapi Loop, it was not so easy, we had to turn the curve completely so that one end of the train actually passes over the other, we have to transport passengers in Cargo even when there is a mountain where we want a canyon or a canyon where we want a mountain, so we move the Earth, that's it, we cut it from a place B and fill it in another cut and fill, that's the basic pattern where one cut would be too deep, we drive a tunnel.

In places where the fill would be too great, we build a trestle or viaduct to carry our trains on stilts to cross the Great Salt Lake. We had to build a 12 M long trestle. We placed a roadbed just across the water and designed. our bridges sometimes we build a small one sometimes we build a tall one like the posos river bridge in Texas there are more than 10,000 bridges, viaducts and tressels on our lines it is a lot of work to build a railroad and the work is never done as it is built it must be maintained The maintenance of a railway requires a lot of material, our supply trains are always moving, taking that material to each point in the system, a lot of equipment is needed and some of it is very technical, such as the rail detector car that can see just inside the steel rails. , looking for defects that no human eye could see, but mainly maintaining a railway requires many men and those men have to know their job when the weather is good and the sun is out, it is not too difficult, but when the weather changes the job becomes a little more complicated when the wind whips up a sandstorm in the desert.

We have a real fight on our hands: the blast of sand can wear down the hard steel rail faster than the trains running on it and can bury the rails. block the detours and even stop the trains so that our men have to fight against this. This is not an easy way to make a living, but railroad men can work as constantly as the wind itself as long as the wind keeps blowing, as I say, it's quite a lot of work to run a railroad who are these people who run the railroad who keep the working railroad we are a simple, friendly people living in the cities, towns and rural districts of eight states who live among our friends and neighbors whose patronage of the railroad gives us the work by which we earn our living we in turn contribute to the communities in which we live we pay our taxes we take an active

part

in community life and we buy from merchants on the streets of the Thousand Towns of which we are members clubs women's clubs and service clubs and members of sports clubs too, as much as Players and spectators, we all have fun, right?

Yes, we are simple and friendly people, we who run the railway, we who run the railway in sun and storm in summer and in winter to transport the people and goods of a nation so that a man can exchange his goods with other men and they in turn with him in the work pattern of a free economy, we transport many things all well, but getting to the right place at the right time is not just a matter of hitching up many wagons and moving them through the line, each train has to be prepared according to a carefully worked out plan, so naturally we think that our end of work in the railway yards is an important part of the railway because it is where the trains meet along the line.

Cars arrive at these yards to be routed and diverted to their destinations. At The Yards we sort them and mix the individual cars into the new trains, some will go north, others will go south or east or west. In the more modern yards, it works like this: the locomotive driver pushes the cars up the slope of a small man made hill we call hump when the man pulls the coupling pin the car rolls itself down an easy slope to see that it is not rolling too fast the operator at the first tower places a control and down on the track the wheels of the car They get an electronic squeeze to slow it down, it's still a little too fast, so another control is set and a second set of juicers slows it down to the right speed.

Now the operator at the next Tower takes control and sends it on the right path to join other cars programmed for the same destination as it has. to be handled correctly maybe there is furniture in that car or maybe a bunch of dishes if it rolls over the hump too fast it will hit like a head on collision it has to get very easy straight to the coupe like a cushion that's what you could call a railway button, but it still takes a good man to operate it and a good team on the ground to back it up where one man's job is done, another man's takes over as the newly created trains roll down the gorge track. . to the departure yard a yard employee calls the number of each car to the yard office SP 58228 PF 178 693 for every train we form in the yard we also form a train on paper keeping a record of its movements we know where any shipment arrives at anywhere along our lines at any time on automatic machines we cut a card for each car and each train the cards are routed through other machines that automatically cut ticker tapes and send a copy of each card to up to 60 different offices You may be interested in the later train at junction points across the continent.

The progress of each car will again be teletyped with the help of automatic equipment and electronics. Today, railroading has become a science, but all these mechanical wonders can really accomplish is help good. men do their job better the engineer in the cabin can pick up his phone and thanks to the short wave radio talk to the driver and the caboose a mile away as easily as if they were sitting next to each other the driver works with Wheel reports that were once made by hand are now made by machines, but no machine devised has yet been able to cut a car at its destination or shift it onto the proper track, no machine devised has yet taken the place of the eyes of the brakeman as he watches the rolling wheels of the rolling load and no machine ever devised has taken the place of the skill of the engineer as he pilots his train along the track machines help, but men are still needed to do the jobs which the engineer moving at a maximum permitted speed knows there are trains in front of him behind him and they are coming in the opposite direction, but he is completely sure that his trust is in the men who keep him informed.

Dispatchers on 100 miles of single track there may be up to 20 trains traveling in two directions and at different speeds. As the trains pass through a station, the operator passes the order to the dispatcher, who compares one report with the other and transmits his orders to Picked up along the line, the engineer or fireman in the engine cabin picks up the orders from the upper arm of the train order station and a mile behind, an engineer hooks up to a duplicate of the lower arm, the orders can be read to have the train continue forward or stop on a siding so that another train can pass.

It's teamwork until the end. The coordination and synchronization and automatic locking signaling system provide safe double checking on the busiest sections of the single track line. Dispatchers can speed up the flow of traffic with the help of an electronic system called centralized traffic control or CTC. CTC is almost everyone's dream. boy and man a railroad within reach 100 miles of track before your eyes on the line two freight trains moving toward each other on the same track until the dispatcher miles away there are lights on his board CTC lights moving toward a sighting and then press a remote control switch.

A load takes the siding. The other train continues to roll with the positive control of CTC. The dispatcher's judgment reduces delays in sightings and he can often time his meats so perfectly that neither train needs to stop.