(The following article by George Schwarz was posted on the Amarillo Globe News website on February 9. Brother R.J. Maloy is the local chairman of BLET Division 299 in Amarillo.)
AMARILLO, Tex. — Collin Fowler’s cell phone rings. The disembodied computerized voice tells the veteran train conductor and locomotive engineer it’s almost time for another job.
A few minutes later, engineer Joe Maloy, also a veteran railroader, gets a similar call.
The 1 1/2- to four-hour notice, normally to the conductor before the engineer, starts the routine in a decidedly nonroutine life on the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad. Calls come to 47 engineers who rotate through the schedule for their next ride.
Maloy, 43, “hired on” with Santa Fe 25 years ago. Fowler, 46, joined the railroad 27 years go.
The upside of the 24/7 job is the money and the autonomy, they agree.
The downside, said Fowler, “It’s hard on a family.”
On a blustery January day they work together on the Amarillo-Clovis, N.M. “intermodal,” a high-priority load of containers clamped to 52 cars behind two 210-ton diesel engines.
As engineer, Maloy is in charge of the engine while Fowler, as conductor, is responsible for the train overall.
Maloy, a representative for the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, doesn’t get to the train yard briefing area before he is button-holed on union business so Fowler pulls work orders from a computer printer.
The 4,800-foot-long train will weigh more than 3,300 tons but the BNSF orange and yellow 4,400-horsepower General Electric DASH-9s will pull this train with ease.
The train accelerates smoothly from the Amarillo terminal under Interstate 40, the muffled metallic “thunk” of Maloy moving the throttle handle through the eight notches that control the train’s speed.
With the play in the knuckle couplers, this train could have as much as 60 feet of slack – free movement – between the cars.
“Controlling the slack is a big deal,” Maloy said. “You can break the train in two by not controlling the train properly and you can tear up the lading (contents). It hurts you controlling the train speed.”
The goal is to keep the rear cars from bunching up downhill and not stretching out uphill, he said as he and Fowler read the tracks like Mark Twain’s river pilots read the Mississippi.
Keeping up the speed is about momentum and 90 percent is knowing where each third of the train is, Maloy said as the train approached Umbarger at 70 mph.
Parts of the ride aren’t smooth, the cab bouncing and rocking. Other parts of the ride at top speed don’t feel that fast. The cab floats above the onrushing tracks.
Maloy and Fowler work in tandem. Fowler watches the signals along the route that tell them if they can continue through the next block or stretch of track. In the quiet of the cab, Fowler announces the color, which Maloy repeats to confirm they’ve got it right. Green is go. Blinking yellow, they prepare to slow; yellow warns the next block could be red. And they can’t go past the red.
They are matter-of-fact but not casual, ever mindful that the hurtling leviathan needs two miles to stop.
Both complain the dispatcher who controls the signals from Fort Worth delays the train, at one point slowing it to 15 mph. They want a fast trip, a short time in Clovis and a quick return. They want more time with their families.
The train blasts through Hereford, Friona, Farwell and Texico to Clovis, arriving at 5:15 p.m. Other crews will take the train the next leg of the main line, the “Trans-Con,” ultimately to California.
Maloy and Fowler will take a break, grab some food and wait for the eastbound train that they will run back to Amarillo.
The layover in Clovis was mercifully short and a little past 8:30 p.m. they climb into the cab of a similar engine pulling a similar train.
The train plunges through the dark to Amarillo, dropping to 50 mph once to switch to the parallel track, and holding 70 most of the way for a quick and uneventful return home.
“You don’t get many like this,” he said.