My first job out of college was with Norfolk Southern Railroad. Unless things drastically change and I am able to play video games for a living, my job with the railroad was the coolest job I will ever have in my life.

Coolest
Job
EVER

It was like building a giant model railroad. I got to play with trains for a living. I built yards and passing tracks and industry side tracks from the initial field survey to the end of construction. There were many days that I would be 15 feet from the mainline as a fully loaded train would zoom by at 60 mph. It was a rush. I would lean over to the person working with me and yell, “Can you believe they’re paying us to do this?!”

Then there were “other days”

Other days were the days where it was either 100 degrees or 0 degrees outside and I had to survey. Other days were when there was so much train traffic that you dodged death all day long. Other days were when you had to spend a month in Buffalo, NY from Thanksgiving to Christmas…

Thus begins “My Life With The Railroad - Part 1 - CP Draw”

CP Draw

CP Draw is a railroad crossing/junction in Buffalo, NY. As you can see from the picture the actual CP is the draw bridges over the Buffalo River. The bridge on the right was abandoned in the “Open” position over 20 years ago. At that time, Norfolk Southern (NS) or what ever predecessor it was at that time, decided since this was at the end of their line and that they did not do much traffic, that they would abandon the bridge to save operation and maintenance cost. They got a joint use agreement with CSX to use their bridge instead.

This worked fine and dandy until CSX and NS bought Conrail. The Conrail lines that NS obtained changed traffic patterns and rail traffic in Western New York almost came to a stop because of the bottle neck that was CP Draw.

The bottle neck was so bad, that Congress got involved. Here is a letter from Senator Schumer expressing his displeasure with the railroads.

Earlier in 1999, before that letter was written, my boss was assigned the task of improving rail traffic through Buffalo, NY.

Then he got promoted.

Then they gave it to me…..

This became my project in the fall of 1999. A few weeks before Thanksgiving, I got the word that we had to survey CP Draw and the surrounding yards in order to come up with a plan for putting the bridge back into service and for separating CSX and NS train movements.

I packed up our gear, grabbed a co-op student and a survey technician and headed for Buffalo.

It was cold. Not below freezing cold, but cold and wet. We only got snow a few times, but mainly it rained. The first day on the job my boss drove us around getting us familiar with the area and introducing us to the Yard Master and Train Master in whose territory we would be working. On a side note, the railroad has the coolest titles for job positions. Anyway, it started to rain on us but we had to finish one last survey set up in order to be ready for the next day. It was cold. That night we ate at an Applebee’s and I ordered the broccoli and cheese soup…I have never had soup taste that good before.

We spent the next 4 weeks surveying CP Draw and the connecting yards. We would fly out of Atlanta first thing Monday morning and fly home late Friday. I did earn a bunch of frequent flier miles that year.

It took so long because of the train traffic. We would get a few shots in and a train would come by or one would stop for an hour or they would be switching in the yard or I could not get track time from the Yard Master. So mostly we stood around and froze. When we were doing work, we were constantly dodging trains. You learn to walk with your head on a swivel.

The worst parts were when we were in a yard. It was hard to tell what track the train was on and where there would be moving cars. You had to take a bunch of survey shots because the yards looked like this:

Yard at CP Draw

By the way, the contraption on the left is a snow blower. Basically it is a jet engine with a blower nozzle. It is used to blow the snow from the yard tracks. You can only imagine how many rocks this things sprays when it is going. (While looking at the satellite picture from Google Maps, I found that this snow blower is in the picture. See here.)

The shear size of the objects involved was staggering. The bridges, which we had to cross were huge. Here is the satellite view of the project:

Click here to see the Google map where you can zoom in and scroll around. The project began at the bridge and went north for about a mile.

To get a sense of how big the bridge is, I had my picture taken standing in front of it:

I was wearing my standard winter outfit:

Long sleeve thermal underwear and pants

Jeans

White cotton T-shirt

Long sleeve flannel shirt

Blue hooded sweat jacket

Scarf

Carhartt bib-coveralls

Two pairs of socks

Insulated boots

Wool gloves

Thermal mittens over gloves

Hard hat

Yeah, I don’t miss days like that.

Also, besides dodging trains, we had to look out for environmental hazards. Someone explain this sign to me:

The memory that stands out the most from this project is getting up to go home the day before Christmas Eve to find it had snowed all night and was still snowing as we headed to the airport. I remember having a conversation with the people I was with that if we got snowed in, I would pay to rent a car and we would DRIVE home but that under no circumstances would we miss Christmas.**

Luckily, it stopped snowing and we made it home.

The funny part is that nothing was ever done to improve CP Draw. Maybe one day all my hard work will actually be used.

Stay tuned for more exciting adventures in railroading…as I get the time.

**A second memory connected to this project was that in November 2000 I had to go back to Buffalo for some reason. I spent election night 2000 at a Holiday Inn in Buffalo. I was up all night like everyone else.