Another Brakeman

Another brakeman, I never found out the whole story with him. Allegedly, he was a brakeman on the Central for awhile and supposedly got laid off. That's when he came to our place. He was a big mouth, "Oh, I'm the greatest. Women love me!" He clearly didn't know anything because of an incident we had at the junction switch, where the CNJ and Valley branches met. We were switching and knocking cars out from the Central that we had. There was a Neill & Spanjer car on the Lock Joint siding, down by the Fairfield Ave. crossing, and they had a truck across the branch unloading into the truck.

We were going to pull up, bottle air into a car, kick the car out down the branch, and then dump the air and the car would stop… normally. So we tell our brakeman that we’re going to bottle this up and send it to him. "Okay, I got it, I got it." We bottle it up, kick the car, and he goes and gets the bleeder valve.

"What're you doing?!"

"Putting the brake on!"

"No! That's not the brake!"

He had to run ahead and get the hand brake. Meanwhile, the guy unloading the car saw what was happening… the car was getting closer and closer. He had to hop in the truck and move the truck out of the way but the car never quite reached that far. He did get it stopped.

“How come you didn't open the angle cock? And hit the bleeder valve?”

“That's how you put the brake on…”

That is not how you put the brake on, and this guy claimed to have experience. If he was on the Central, he probably got fired. He only lasted a while and then he bailed.