BC Rail
In May 1996, during the long Canadian weekend celebrating Victoria Day, a national holiday, there was a crew shortage in Lillooet, British Columbia, on BC Rail.
Normally, Lillooet had a fairly quiet joint conductors spare board — one could sit second-out for the better part of a week!
That weekend, most of the six-man Lillooet Unassigned Service Pool (freight “chain gang” to U.S. readers) had booked off. As a brakeman sitting on the Lillooet spare board, I could expect a guaranteed 60 hours at $23.47 per hour if I did not turn a wheel. The unassigned conductors got 80 hours at $26.36.
The engineer’s auxiliary board was under a different union agreement, and they got something similar to the brakemen.
At midnight my phone started to go off. I was called to go north on the VO (Vancouver-Omineca). The run to Williams Lake took about 5 hours, depending on meets. With everyone booked off, and few southbounds, the trip went quickly. We beat the contractual mandatory rest clock into the Lake in the early morning. I was promptly called deadhead “not coupled with service” upon arrival to go back to Lillooet with my hog. That put $421.76 and 16 hours into my pocket. Not bad! Needless to say, we slept in the cab all the way back.
When we arrived at the Lillooet booking-in room, Maurice, the terminal supervisor, asked us if we wanted to go north again on the VP (Vancouver-Peace). Of course!
The VP was a hotshot TOFC train making few stops. We did not even have to set out trailers at Exeter, where we met the Budds — Budd RDCs running between Prince George and Vancouver. Again, we beat the clock into the Lake and got turned to deadhead not coupled. Another $421.76! Things are looking up in the wallet.
Nobody at the crew office caught on — we had already worked nearly 10 hours and had been up since midnight.
Again, we walked into the Lillooet bullpen, and were greeted by Maurice. Want to go north again? Hell, yes! When you are junior in a very senior crew base, you make your hay when the sun shines.
We went north on the VC around 5 p.m. We both were now awake or working nearly 17 hours. I wanted that next $210.88 minimum day. The average 26-year-old thinks he is much tougher than he really is. Trouble was brewing!
We had a meet at Moran, had to set out at Koster, and it was now quite late in the next evening. I was dog-tired, and my eyelids were doing the slow blink. The hog was clicking the mic on his radio to reset the TMACS crew alerter before it even beeped. Everyone in the industry was good at that.
We had to meet the southbound PV (Peace-Vancouver) at Potter and take the siding per the current OCS clearance I copied from the Rail Traffic Controller.
My hog and I were both desperately trying to stay awake at this point. This was going to be a hard $1,000 to earn while dragging our underpowered train uphill towards Potter at 25 mph. Power through!
On BC Rail, the northbounds usually cleared the main track, and the courtesy was that whomever got to the meeting point first had to reverse the switch.
Thanks to technological change and the introduction of cabooseless trains, hot box and dragging equipment detectors from Southern Technologies had been installed every 60 miles.
These Safety Inspection Systems would beep on the radio when the locomotive occupied the track circuit. That way crews knew that the inspection was underway.
At mile 236.8 was just such a detector. My hog and I were both asleep with the cab windows open, for who knows how long.
There was a really loud beep on channel 5. We were both startled awake, hearts pounding. We could see a headlight directly in front of us on dim. The engineer put the train into emergency. At that point, we did not really know where we were.
The oncoming PV crew started to trash talk us on the radio, making comments about our ancestry and why we were so slow that THEY had to get the south siding switch Potter.
The air was recovered, and we slowly pulled north and entered the siding, saying nothing back to their catcalls.
We were both wide awake with fear and literally vibrating in our seats the rest of the way into Williams Lake.
I would never work a ticket-splitting marathon like that again in my railroad career.
We both booked 14 hours rest in the Lake bunkhouse and went to bed shaking in fear.
In retrospect, $1,265.28 in 30 hours was just not worth it.
Saved by the beep.
Adrian Telizyn worked in train services for 13 years on BC Rail and its successor Canadian National. He left railroading to become a power manager for a Canadian oil company, supervising pipeline operations and crude-by-rail.
