Clean out tracks

NW Mailing List nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org
Sat Dec 8 10:44:46 EST 2018 

All,

After some digging I was able to locate a photo from another list
discussing this same topic and have attached it to this email; this photo
is from our own NWHS Archives; thoughts?

Jim Brewer
Glenwood MD

On Thu, Dec 6, 2018 at 10:53 PM NW Mailing List <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org>
wrote:

> Gordon -
>
> When I got to Wilcoe I though I’d died and gone to heaven.  That third
> trick AYM job, off Saturday night, might have been the best job I ever
> had.  I worked for a prince of an ATM, Sam Stanley, and with about a half
> dozen of the best shifter crews imaginable, and with two other YMs that
> were excellent (the second tricker was Chester A. Hensley, Jr. the son of
> the Car Foreman at Shaffers) and a couple of great clerks and carmen.
>
> EdKing
>
> *From:* NW Mailing List
> *Sent:* Wednesday, December 05, 2018 4:48 PM
> *To:* NW Mailing List
> *Subject:* Re: Clean out tracks
>
>
> Ed,
>
> I suspect most people in the know would question the intelligence of
> anyone who would *willingly *transfer from Roanoke, VA, to Wilcoe, WV.
>
> Gordon Hamilton
> On 12/4/2018 10:06 PM, NW Mailing List wrote:
>
> Gordon – that was the facility I worked on; it was very early ‘60s because
> I left Shaffers at the end of 1961 and went to Wilcoe.  We used a
> Trackmobile to move the working cars down between the two tracks of box
> cars.  I never knew who designed it, but I enjoyed working it.
>
> EdKing
>
> *From:* NW Mailing List
> *Sent:* Tuesday, December 04, 2018 6:52 PM
> *To:* NW Mailing List
> *Subject:* Re: Clean out tracks
>
>
> My recollection of the Roanoke box car clean out track dates from the
> early 1960s when I was designing diesel locomotive servicing facilities
> (such as those in the new yard at Bellevue, OH), in the same office in the
> N&W Motive Power Office Building as a fellow by the name of Bob LeNoir (a
> native Mississippian with a speech accent to match) who designed freight
> car repair facilities (Shaffers Crossing, Lamberts Points, etc.).  As my
> imperfect memory recalls, Bob designed an improved box car clean out
> facility just west of Shaffers Crossing in the location mentioned by other
> contributors on this subject.  It consisted of three parallel tracks with
> the clean-out box cars on the two outer tracks, and a specially designed
> train on the middle track.  This train on the middle track consisted of
> flat cars specially equipped with decks that extended beyond the normal
> sides of the flat car so that there was only a small gap between the
> extended deck and the box car floors on either side.  This arrangement
> allowed the clean out carmen to easily enter a box car (no need to use a
> ladder) and provided a place to accumulate the junk dunnage removed from
> the box cars instead of just tossing it onto the ground.  Inasmuch as I was
> not directly involved in the design and operation of the new box car clean
> out facility,  I can only guess that a yard engine would occasionally
> re-spot the cars on the middle track and then at the end of the shift take
> them somewhere to unload the junk.  Of course the flat cars with the
> extended decks would have been handled as wide loads.  I seem to recall
> that some wags (plenty of them on the railroad) soon started calling the
> flat car train the "Mule Train" after a popular cowboy song of that era.  I
> don't know how long the Mule Train operation lasted.
>
> I see that no one else who has posted on this subject has mentioned the
> Mule Train.  Can no one substantiate my memory on this clean out
> "improvement?"
>
> Gordon Hamilton
>
>
> On 12/4/2018 3:44 PM, NW Mailing List via NW-Mailing-List wrote:
>
> Jim, Jim and Ken,
>
> In my days on the yard, 1981 onward, the tracks Jim and Ken spoke of , I
> knew as the "dirty hole", or "clean-out tracks". Even though there was no
> cleaning of box cars at this date, there was an area toward the east end of
> these tracks where MofW disposed of old rotten ties, fill dirt, etc. There
> were only three tracks, I believe, that were used at all. MofW stored their
> cars on two of them. The third was last used to load fuel oil (for company
> use). We would spot as many as 25, or a few more. Trucks from Montvale
> would continuously ran back and forth filling these company tank cars.
> Almost every day, a 2nd shift yard crew would pull the loads and re-spot
> the empties.
>
> Concerning the customers job of cleaning out their own cars, some still
> didn't get the message! Crews were instructed not to pull cars with trash
> still in them.
>
> I forget which year, but the old "dirty hole" was turned into a nice
> looking EPA approved landfill.
>
> I personally believe the "super-elevation" was simply the lack of track
> maintenance, coupled with the fact of the ground settling around all the
> junk that had been dumped over the decades. It was obvious during my time
> there was no maintenance on those tracks, unless they were cleaning up a
> derailment!
>
> Jeff Sanders
>
>
> On Tuesday, December 4, 2018, 1:11:12 PM EST, NW Mailing List
> mailto:nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org wrote:
>
>
> Thanks Jim and Ken!
>
> On Tue, Dec 4, 2018 at 11:52 AM NW Mailing List <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org>
> wrote:
>
> Jim
>
> Just to add to Mr. Blackstock excellent write up. The are west of Shaffers
> was referred to, at least by my father a Radford Division conductor, as the
> “Clean-out hole”.
>
> Now, my father was a child of the depression, and always wanted to repair,
> fix or use something over rather than buy something new. Now, I am not
> faulting him on that. So, with that in mind, at least once,  I recall him
> taking me down there one time to pick up some good plywood he had spotted
> them tossing out, so he asked, they said help yourself, and we went back in
> the truck to load up. I honestly don’t remember what we used the stuff for,
> but I remember walking around and like Jim said there was trash and nails
> everywhere, did not remember seeing any rats. But it was cardboard, paper,
> wood, scattered all over, and maybe 3-5 tracks full of boxcars.
>
> I suspect there are not many if any photos of the area, not because it was
> unappealing to rail fans, but it was deep on company property. The area is
> now all filled in, nicely covered with grass, and fenced off, hard to tell
> what might be buried under there.
>
> Ken Miller
>
> On Dec 4, 2018, at 9:43 AM, NW Mailing List <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org>
> wrote:
>
>
> Jim
>
> The clean out tracks at Shaffers Crossing was just west of the engine
> terminal on the South side.  The old stock pen was in the same area.
>
> Re excessive super elevation.  Not sure on this.  Could be that the area
> between the tracks were worn down by removal of some dirt every time they
> ran machines to clean up the debris.  On the other hand it could have been
> by design to keep those rats from jumping in the open box cars.
>
> I was only at the clean out tracks three times.  One time to show me as a
> new employee where they were, one time to check on the location of a car
> and another to check out some interesting junk to see if it had potential
> use.  When you were at the location you had to watch every step.  There
> were plenty of nails and rats to avoid at all cost.  I never did see a rail
> fan with a camera taking any photos in this area.
>
> As for me, I would rather walk through the stock pens than the clean out
> tracks.
>
> Several years after my clean out experience when I was in the Traffic
> Dept. we put in charges for cleaning out cars.  This was a tariff charge
> that required all empty cars be cleaned by the customer before releasing
> the car to the carrier as an empty.  The only exception was dunnage used to
> block and brace the load being returned to the original shipping origin.
> This eliminated the need to operate the massive clean out tracks.
>
> Jim Blackstock
> On 11/28/2018 12:57 PM, NW Mailing List wrote:
>
> On another list there has been a discussion about clean out tracks and the
> cleaning of cars; some photos show the clean out tracks to have excessive
> super elevation that assisted in the removing of dunnage and the cleaning
> of the car, i.e. steam cleaning.
>
> Does anyone have insight in how N&W handled cleaning of box cars, etc?
> Were the clean out tracks super elevated?  Any photos?
>
> Thanks.
>
> Jim Brewer
> Glenwood, MD
>
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