Railroad talk decoded: from highball to big hole

Park by a grade crossing with a scanner on and the radio sounds like a code built to keep you out. "DS, the 412 is in the hole at the east switch." "Copy, 412. The hotshot is by you in ten, then you're good to the end of your warrant." "Rear end's clear. Highball." None of it is secret. It is clipped, dense and very precise, because on a railroad a misheard word can put two trains on one track. Here is how to hear it, from the people to the paperwork to the moment somebody puts it in the big hole.

Who's who

The engineer is the hogger, hand on the throttle. The conductor runs the train, the paperwork and the crew, and the brakie throws switches and makes couplings. The DS is the dispatcher, the voice on the radio who decides which train goes where across a whole territory.

Off the train, the car knocker inspects cars and tests their brakes, and the hostler moves, fuels and sands locomotives around the engine house. Track belongs to MOW, maintenance of way, and a track laborer lining rail and driving spikes by hand is a gandy dancer. An old head has the seniority and the stories. A boomer drifts between railroads chasing the best work. A brass hat is a manager out from the office, usually with a clipboard. The bull is railroad police. And the person on the overpass with three cameras, waving at every train, is a foamer, said mostly with affection and partly with an eye roll.

On the clock

Freight crews rarely have a set start time. They get a call, a notice of when and where to report, often a couple of hours ahead. A new hire works the extra board, filling vacancies in rotation; with seniority you hold a regular job or a place in a pool of road crews turning between two terminals, first in, first out. Lose your job to someone senior and you have been bumped. Ride a train or a van to an assignment without working it and you deadhead.

The clock rules everything. Federal hours of service cap a shift at twelve hours on duty, and a crew that runs out is dead on the law: the train stops wherever it is and waits. A relief crew comes out to dog catch it. At the end of a trip you tie up, go off duty and record the time, and then, with luck, head to the beanery before it closes.

Who gets the main

The main line, or high iron, is where trains need authority to run. When two trains meet on single track, one takes the siding and goes in the hole, while the other gets to hold the main. If the train taking the siding is longer than the siding, the two trains do a saw-by, shuffling past each other in stages while everyone watches the clock.

Authority comes from the DS. On signaled territory under CTC, the dispatcher lines switches and signals remotely. On dark territory, the crew copies a track warrant over the radio and reads it back word for word. Signals have nicknames: a yellow board tells the crew to be ready to stop at the next one. Restricted speed means slow enough to stop within half the distance you can see. A slow order is a temporary limit for rough track or work in progress, posted by milepost. On main lines that carry passengers or the most toxic hazmat, PTC sits over all of it and will stop the train itself if the crew misses a limit, because the thing everybody fears most is a cornfield meet: two trains, one track, head on.

Highball comes from ball signals hoisted up a mast: ball high, track clear, go.

The air

Every car's brakes run off the brake pipe, one air line the length of the train. The hoses join with glad hands, and to lace up the air is to couple them and open the angle cocks. Before departure comes the brake test, a set and release while the car knockers walk the train checking every car.

The brakes apply when pipe pressure drops. Drop it a little and you get a service application. Vent it all at once and you are in the big hole, emergency, every car braking as hard as it can. Sometimes the train does that by itself: a kicker is a car whose valve throws the whole train into emergency on a gentle application. Engineers bail off the locomotive's own brakes so the cars do the work, and lean on dynamic braking down long grades, with the traction motors acting as generators and the cooling fans howling. At the rear, the EOT reports pressure back to the cab.

Then there is slack, the play in every coupler. A long freight carries a lot of it, and running the slack out too hard breaks a knuckle and earns somebody a long walk back carrying a very heavy replacement.

In the yard

Yard work runs off a switch list. To kick a car, the engine shoves, the brakie pulls the pin on the move, and the car rolls free down its track. Car counts come over the radio, "three cars, two, one, that'll do," and the engineer stops dead. A goat is a yard engine. At a hump yard, cars are pushed over a hill and roll by gravity into the bowl.

Two rules are never negotiable. A blue flag means people are working on or under the equipment, and nothing couples to it. Cars left standing get a tie down, enough hand brakes to hold them. A car with a defect is a bad order, and it goes to the rip track for repairs.

Trains by name

A manifest carries a little of everything. A unit train is one commodity in matching cars, coal or grain or oil. A stack train hauls double-stacked containers, a pig train carries highway trailers, and a drag is slow, heavy and last in line for everything. The local works the industries along a line, and varnish is a passenger train.

Five words to learn first

• Highball: go, and go now.
• In the hole: in the siding, waiting.
• Big hole: emergency brakes, the stop nobody plans.
• Bad order: defective, and out of service until it is repaired.
• That'll do: stop right there.

Learn those and the scanner starts to make sense: the 412 sat in the hole, the hotshot went by, and somebody, somewhere, got a highball.