Story time! In 2005, I was just getting started with Colorado Railcar. My audition, if you will, was six months in the making - guiding two brand new Alaska Railroad dome cars to Seattle for the railroad’s new Gold Star service between Anchorage and Fairbanks. We lost a day in pick up, so I was already nervous, up against a pretty hard deadline to get the cars overland from Denver in time to make the once a week barge that moves cars between Seattle and Whittier. Miss my boat, and I’d be waiting a week in Seattle for the next one. (Not a horrible penalty, but it’d make the customer much happier to have them, and I was eager to please.)
Time was running out when I got to Vancouver, WA, about 150 miles short of my destination. My train to Stacey St. Yard in Seattle was cancelled by track work, and it looked like we were going to miss our boat. After sitting in Vancouver for most of the day, my phone rang. It was the local yard master, to whom I had pled my case earlier. He had gotten word from on high that they’d made the decision to let one train through, as a priority train, before closing the line for work overnight. And it happened to be going to Stacey Street. But I might want to think about whether I wanted to accept the new routing. That took a few seconds.
Meet my deadline? Deal.
Are you sure? Because it isn’t just any train. It’s, uh, the Seattle garbage train.
Really? Well, so be it. I need to make my boat. So if you can get these cars on that train, let’s do it.
It was almost dark when I watched the train of double and single stack containers back down onto my cars. I settled in to sleep knowing I’d wake up in Seattle with just enough time to arrange the move out to the barge holding yard on Harbor Island on the daily transfer. But by morning, things had gone somewhat awry again. My train had died on hours in Orillia, south of Seattle. And here’s where it gets good. The patch crew that was being sent to come get us was the switch crew that handled the loading and unloading of the garbage containers. And while they’d be taking me to Stacey St. eventually, I’d arrive after the daily transfer job left. But no problem. If I’d just be patient, BNSF would arrange for an overnight crew to take me over, and I’d surely make my barge. All was going to turn out well.
Except for that “be patient” part. The switch crew bypassed the cutoff to Stacey Street with the entire train and headed straight to the Seattle Dump. We attracted a lot of attention with the two cars, valued at nearly $8 million, sitting squarely in the middle of the garbage loading facility. They cut us off and put my brand new cars on a storage track in the center of the dump. Then I spent the next eight hours watching them unload and reload garbage containers on one side of my cars, then pull them out and build a train on the other side.
When they were done, true to their word, we ran back down to Stacey Street, and later that night, a switch crew with little work to do for the evening grabbed our cars and took us out to Harbor Island. By noon the next day, they were loaded on the barge and getting ready for the week-long trip to Alaska.
I miss doing this. Moving rail cars was always a challenge, and no matter how well planned out the move was, things typically found a way to go awry on the way. Getting things fixed was a blend of in the field diplomacy and kind persistence. And conquering the challenges was part of the fun. Without an expediter in the field, things tend to fall off the radar. Two guys in a yard office can be a lot more creative, and come up with solutions faster than you can waiting on corporate offices in three states to connect. But times have changed, and things don’t get done this way any more. Which is why you don’t end up with brand new rail cars surround by the garbage of my favorite city, being ogled by stunned workers. Failure, or success? You decide. I made my boat, and got a good story to boot.
TLDR: my first delivery ended with me agreeing to ship $8 million worth of brand new luxury passenger cars to the Seattle Dump.
© 2020 Jody Moore