Andrew.Osborne
A New Location With A Terrible Story
This place is the setting of a terrible story that happened to me back in March of 2014. I was on the H-GALNTW1-22A, having left out of Galesburg at approx 1230 hours and was sitting right here in Lynxville next to the hot dog stand that's open in the summer. My crew and I were 10 times out of La Crosse and just wanting to get home. I was nearing the end of a breakup I was having and struggling with people during that time so I went to sleep. Dozed off and told my conductor and student conductor to wake me up if the dispatcher needed a roll-up or something or if they heard people starting to move up in front of us.
I woke up around 0100 and the dispatcher was contacting us. "Aurora dispatcher to the CREX 1325 West, over!" I answered, "CREX 1325 West, over." He wanted a roll-up that was a common, very common occurrence when this stretch of double main was TWC. He simply wanted a train to pull up behind us and die. It was my friend K Hutchenreuter and his engineer actually. So I told my conductor to give a roll-up. I went back to relaxing and checking out Facebook and such. I heard him start to give back part of the warrant, unaware that he was given up track right underneath of us and 10 miles ahead of us. He was rolling up MP 260 and our rear end was just clear of MP 250. There was a vehicle train in Ferryville soon to be recrewed and they were in the MP 260 area. We were 7,000 feet in length and was just over the MP 251 spot so MP 250 would have been perfect!
I went to listen to the repeat from the dispatcher, I heard him say, "CREX 1325 West is releasing track warrant ?-?-?-?-? from CTC 1462 1-4-6-2 to milepost M-P 250 2-5-0 at 0030 0-0-3-0, is that correct over?" I said, "Engineer Osborne verifies that is all correct, over." "Aurora Sub dispatcher, out." Not to my knowledge had we rolled up wrong until my conductor handed me back my copy of the warrant that he wrote down the milepost on. I saw "MP 260" wrote down on the bottom of the warrant where "MP 250" should have been!
I told him that I'd just call the dispatcher up on my phone and tell him we screwed up and didn't realize it until afterwards and then, we'd be all in the clear. My conductor thought otherwise and said no. That we were already in trouble and I will never know what possessed me to not go ahead with my plan to tell the dispatcher, but it will forever haunt me into the future. We sat there knowing that we were in the wrong, but I didn't want to say anything because of stories told to me about these situations and people getting really protective of the situation and holding people to their will.
Well, to not make this story too long, I'll get to the point now. We traveled, without authority and dead on FRA hours, as far as we could to get close to Inside of the warrant until we passed a red intermediate signal and saw the FRED of the rear of the vehicle train ahead of us and we heard our relief crew getting close so we pulled up to a cabin crossing and recrewed. Nothing about what happened was exchanged to the relief crew. We traveled back to La Crosse and tied up. A week or two went by and I went on vacation and came back, traveled down to Savanna and back on a trip and when I came in to tie up from it, our terminal manager spotted me and pulled me into the trainmaster office. We had been caught. Statements were written up from the both of us, once my conductor got in from his trip that day. Our investigation was May 22nd and we were dismissed from the BNSF Railway on June 6th, 2014. I was devastated. I had worked so hard to get on that railroad and now it was all over with. Two and half years down the drain.
After living on unemployment, working from the Illinois Railway from a little stint, working for the Iowa Interstate Railroad, and more unemployment, I am now a locomotive engineer for the Canadian Pacific Railway in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Proud to be on a Class 1 railroad, but missing the BNSF Railway dearly every day!
I decided to see the all the new CTC down the Mississippi one day in the summer and came upon this spot. Really wanted to cry, but took pictures and moved on. Sucks that now there is an absolute signal right where we were would have been sitting. If that would have been there then, we would have never moved and never been caught since you don't have warrants in CTC.
Lynxville, WI
August 11, 2015
A New Location With A Terrible Story
This place is the setting of a terrible story that happened to me back in March of 2014. I was on the H-GALNTW1-22A, having left out of Galesburg at approx 1230 hours and was sitting right here in Lynxville next to the hot dog stand that's open in the summer. My crew and I were 10 times out of La Crosse and just wanting to get home. I was nearing the end of a breakup I was having and struggling with people during that time so I went to sleep. Dozed off and told my conductor and student conductor to wake me up if the dispatcher needed a roll-up or something or if they heard people starting to move up in front of us.
I woke up around 0100 and the dispatcher was contacting us. "Aurora dispatcher to the CREX 1325 West, over!" I answered, "CREX 1325 West, over." He wanted a roll-up that was a common, very common occurrence when this stretch of double main was TWC. He simply wanted a train to pull up behind us and die. It was my friend K Hutchenreuter and his engineer actually. So I told my conductor to give a roll-up. I went back to relaxing and checking out Facebook and such. I heard him start to give back part of the warrant, unaware that he was given up track right underneath of us and 10 miles ahead of us. He was rolling up MP 260 and our rear end was just clear of MP 250. There was a vehicle train in Ferryville soon to be recrewed and they were in the MP 260 area. We were 7,000 feet in length and was just over the MP 251 spot so MP 250 would have been perfect!
I went to listen to the repeat from the dispatcher, I heard him say, "CREX 1325 West is releasing track warrant ?-?-?-?-? from CTC 1462 1-4-6-2 to milepost M-P 250 2-5-0 at 0030 0-0-3-0, is that correct over?" I said, "Engineer Osborne verifies that is all correct, over." "Aurora Sub dispatcher, out." Not to my knowledge had we rolled up wrong until my conductor handed me back my copy of the warrant that he wrote down the milepost on. I saw "MP 260" wrote down on the bottom of the warrant where "MP 250" should have been!
I told him that I'd just call the dispatcher up on my phone and tell him we screwed up and didn't realize it until afterwards and then, we'd be all in the clear. My conductor thought otherwise and said no. That we were already in trouble and I will never know what possessed me to not go ahead with my plan to tell the dispatcher, but it will forever haunt me into the future. We sat there knowing that we were in the wrong, but I didn't want to say anything because of stories told to me about these situations and people getting really protective of the situation and holding people to their will.
Well, to not make this story too long, I'll get to the point now. We traveled, without authority and dead on FRA hours, as far as we could to get close to Inside of the warrant until we passed a red intermediate signal and saw the FRED of the rear of the vehicle train ahead of us and we heard our relief crew getting close so we pulled up to a cabin crossing and recrewed. Nothing about what happened was exchanged to the relief crew. We traveled back to La Crosse and tied up. A week or two went by and I went on vacation and came back, traveled down to Savanna and back on a trip and when I came in to tie up from it, our terminal manager spotted me and pulled me into the trainmaster office. We had been caught. Statements were written up from the both of us, once my conductor got in from his trip that day. Our investigation was May 22nd and we were dismissed from the BNSF Railway on June 6th, 2014. I was devastated. I had worked so hard to get on that railroad and now it was all over with. Two and half years down the drain.
After living on unemployment, working from the Illinois Railway from a little stint, working for the Iowa Interstate Railroad, and more unemployment, I am now a locomotive engineer for the Canadian Pacific Railway in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Proud to be on a Class 1 railroad, but missing the BNSF Railway dearly every day!
I decided to see the all the new CTC down the Mississippi one day in the summer and came upon this spot. Really wanted to cry, but took pictures and moved on. Sucks that now there is an absolute signal right where we were would have been sitting. If that would have been there then, we would have never moved and never been caught since you don't have warrants in CTC.
Lynxville, WI
August 11, 2015