was acting conductor for the 3rd time in my career in 1969 and was in a Bbay window caboose for the trip from grafton,WV to Cumberland, Maryland. anyway there was a rookie engineer (again ) and an experienced brakeman up front with me and the other brakeman in the back. anyway I checked the guages and reported ok< then all of a sudden WHAM WHAM WHAM the 130 car coal train took up slack and the caboose moved about 8 feet in about a blink of an Eye, I was thrown out the back door and hit porch railing. it hurt an I had a few brused ribs and a sore shoulder but I held it out to cumberland. TIP: never tell a rookie okay until you really mean it.
Slack and the old caboose.
- Thread starter T.K.Marletter
- Start date
How many couplers did he break or was he lucky? when I worked on the old Pennsy,We had a engineer we called "Coupler King" that man could break more couplers then any engineer on the the road.He finally got demoted to fireman.