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Please contact me with any questions. Enjoy! |
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I should warn you that this section will be short and pretty much uneventful but the experience was unique for me. That's because I worked the Waukegan, Illinois, job for just one second trick without any break in experience. I was sitting at home the morning of June 14, fully expecting my third day of break in at Griffith, and the phone rang. Somebody from the dispatcher's office called to say they needed someone to work second trick at Waukegan that afternoon (no reason was given and I never did learn why) and would I be willing to do it. Since I had almost no knowledge of the Western Sub, had never been to Waukegan in my life, needed the money for college, and wanted to try new things, I said, "Sure, I'll do it!" Maybe stupid, maybe not... time would tell. I don't remember the details of the route I took to drive there (remember, there were few expressways back then), but I did manage to arrive an hour early to pick the brains of the first trick operator in order to learn what I could about the job duties. Waukegan is the railroad western and physical northern end of the EJ&E. It had a yard, roundhouse, and crew building (and other buildings but I never got a tour of what was there), the kind of things one would expect at the end of a railroad. The building I went to appeared to be the yard office (or perhaps a crew office). It had a crew register book and standard clock. This was not an interlocking tower. There were no levers, no switches, and no signals to operate. I just sat at a desk in an office. When I arrived to talk to the first trick operator, the first thing he gave me was this message which made things official. One thing which stood out were the last three words of the message... "until further notice". Although the words looked like they were crossed out, that was not the case. That's just the fancy way the operator crossed the T's. The duration of the job was never discussed on the phone call earlier in the day but the message made it clear it might be more than one day. Since Waukegan is roughly 200 miles round trip from Hobart (with Chicago in between!), I began to wonder if I would have to find a place to stay in Waukegan or would I drive from home every day. I found out later in the shift that the job was for just one day. Whew! Besides, I would rather work in an interlocking tower, not just sit at a desk. I couldn't even see the trains that arrived and departed from Waukegan. I talked to the operator and took these notes about the job. As you can see, the job involved working with the dispatcher, crew caller, yardmaster, roundhouse foreman, and train crews. The only "tower operator" duties that I was familiar with were the train orders and clearance forms for outgoing trains. I made it through second trick okay, given that I had minimal break in. I recall there were two trains in and one out, but may have been more. Unfortunately, I did not record the train activity.
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