A Week on YSP54

Here is Hamms Brewery in the process of being demolished at East St. Paul. It supported 3 switch jobs a day 7 days a week into the 1980s.  There were tunnels under the tracks here to get the barley and hops over to the brewery on the south side of the tracks, see below. Each member of the switch crew was always given a case of beer, and they were usually drained before tie-up. They also had a free tap inside for employees and railroaders were given as much as they wanted also.  One story has it that an engineer and a conductor were on top of the silo and the engineer kept hanging the conductor over by his feet, head down first.  Amazing that no one ever got hurt working around here !

These photos were taken with J.P. as the engineer and Tom Meemken as the conductor, since retired.  Tom always had a camera with and frequently carried a video camera as well. We came up to drag MPRSS down the hill and over to S. St. Paul. 

On another day we took YSP67 from Western Av. over to S. St. Paul. Here we are eastbound at Hoffman Av. Interlocking.  The old tower was mounted on concrete stilts over what is now Q-1, and a derailing coal train couldn't even take it down ! Before this move we were supposed to take 100 or so cars from Plato Blvd. to Dunn on the CP, but they could not take us for hours, hence the shift to Western Av.

Here we are crossing the SPB&T swing bridge a few minutes later.

Our last move was to be over to the Minnesota Commercial.  We sat 5 hours and never got a working EOT, so we were relieved and got an hour of O.T.  The next crew did not move either, but the third crew finally left at 02:00 after having an EOT express messengered up from St. James ! This picture is about 14:00, 2 hours from relief.  At this point I ventured  into the other units to find out about adjusting seats, how the toilets worked, and took peeks under the hood.

Here is the engineer's seat of our trailing unit, SP176.

This is where the conductor sits. The computer monitor can be changed from a speedometer to a complex array of graphs displaying the individual traction motor r.p.m.s, speed of individual axles, and much more.

Here we are taking a CBTRQ train to the CP at Dunn, where it becomes their # 884 to Weston. Just about to depart S. St. Paul at Park Jct. We will go straight ahead on the State St. Connection; the line curving to the right is the old SPB&T line to the swing bridge. The cars ahead to the left are on the north switching lead, and the cars to the distant left are on tracks 101 and 102.

 This is the former CGW entrance to SPUD territory.

This is the electric lock to enter BNSF track 2 at Division Street.  UT81 has unlocked and lined our route; the train to the left is a CWEX coal train heading into Dayton's Bluff on q1; ahead of him on BNSF1 is a westbound CP intermodal train for Shoreham. The train to our right on CPRS track 1 is the daily TC&W transfer, and he is holding for a CP Northfield job backing out on CP track 1 to head through our Hoffman Av. Yard and south on the Spine Line to Northfield.