(The Richmond Times-Dispatch posted the following story by Chip Jones on its website on March 31.)
(BLE Editor’s Note: Ralph E. Gwaltney is a member of BLE Division 532 in Richmond, Va.)
RICHMOND, Va. — It starts slowly, like a giant stretching its legs.
CSXT 650 rolls out of the freight terminal in Rocky Mount, N.C., at a lumbering pace befitting a train pulling an estimated 6,240 tons.
Soon enough the 52-car train will accelerate to 55 mph, barreling through the eastern Carolina countryside toward Richmond, 120 miles to the north.
But on this rainy day in early March, the train’s easy gait reflects the sure hands of engineer Ralph Gwaltney.
A retired Coast Guard mechanic, Gwaltney, 53, is tall, soft-spoken and in full command of the train carrying a load of Tropicana orange juice.
The Florida to New York trains are the stuff of rail legend, commemorated in the bluegrass song, “Orange Blossom Special” about “the fastest train on the line.”
CSX never ran the legendary “Orange Blossom” trains. Though the memory lives on, today’s railroaders call the shipments “the Juice Train” — an express shipment with refrigerator cars packed with 64-ounce containers of Tropicana juice.
Maintained at 34 degrees, the Juice Train runs five days a week on CSX’s main line — crossing the James River near the Powhite Parkway and stopping in the Acca Yard.
The job for Gwaltney and his conductor, Jeffery Curley, is simple in many ways: Move the Juice Train up the railroad’s “A” line as quickly as possible.
If things go well, they could reach Richmond in less than three hours, and their day’s work will be done.
But the job is a challenging juggling act, including running the engine, applying the air brakes, running onboard computers and following detailed safety instructions. It’s a big dance, with more than 50 signals, and lots of other players — including Amtrak passenger trains using the same set of tracks.
From the outside, a train crew might appear to have it easy, simply riding along the tracks and enjoying the scenery from their perches high up in the engine cab. While the views can be splendid, this ride on the Juice Train shows what it’s like to run a train in the Digital Age.
Rolling through Rocky Mount, Curley reads through some of the official orders of the day. In his conductor’s role, he serves as a kind of navigator and safety officer, letting the engineer know about potential problems such as track maintenance or other slowdowns.
He informs Gwaltney they’ll encounter a “slow order” — a place on the track where CSXT has ordered them to crawl along at 25 mph. (The “T” in CSXT stands for the “transportation” arm of CSX Corp., which recently moved its headquarters from Richmond to Jacksonville, Fla.)
“The ballast rock might be uneven,” Curley speculates. The ballast provides the rock foundation for the railroad track to stay in place.
Gwaltney nods as he eases the black throttle toward him.
He sits in a comfortable swivel chair. When he’s not looking out the wide window, Gwaltney scans a console filled with dials, numbers and other digital displays.
The digital equipment provides a steady stream of information about the train’s speed, power and brake pressure. Primarily, the engineer keeps his eyes on the track ahead, looking for trouble.
As crossarms start lowering, Gwaltney taps a gold button to sound the horn for motorists. A trumpet-like blast echoes across downtown Rocky Mount.
Blowing the horn is required by law, but Gwaltney would do it anyway.
Hitting a school bus, logging truck or minivan full of kids is every engineer’s worst nightmare — one that Gwaltney, in his nine years with CSX, has managed to avoid.
But he’s seen his share of stupid drivers. “Oh man, let me tell you. Yesterday, a cop ran a gate in Emporia.”
On the other side of the downtown, Gwaltney reads the signals ahead and accelerates.
“It’s just like driving a car,” he says of the railroad signals. “Green means go.”
J.W. Johnson Jr., a veteran engineer with 33 years on the railroad, rides on CSXT 650 this day, serving as a guide for a couple of visitors.
He wears a safety helmet, protective goggles and a blue golf shirt with a CSX logo that defines his life: “Public Safety.”
A stocky former Marine, Johnson is the railroad’s public safety coordinator in Virginia. Based in Richmond, he visits schools, businesses and civic groups to preach a message born of often-hairy experiences at the throttle.
“I don’t call it a job,” he declares. “I call it an opportunity.”
Working with the industry’s program — Operation Lifesaver — Johnson proudly points to the strides rail safety has made over the years. He cites a 78 percent decrease in grade crossing accidents since the program began more than 30 years ago. But it’s more than statistics for Johnson. He knows the gut-wrenching feeling of coming over the crest of a hill and wishing with all his being that he could stop the train.
“The biggest thing I’ve ever seen is a tree that fell across a track,” just east of Providence Forge, he said. “You heard it more than you felt it.”
The weight of 30,000 tons of coal obliterated the tree into instant toothpicks. The train managed to stay on the tracks.
What else has he hit? “Refrigerators, tires, couches, washing machines &.” His voice trails off. Unfortunately, he says, people treat the railroad like “a great big dump.”
Johnson sees no good reason for anyone to get out on the CSX property. It’s a Class IV misdemeanor, carrying a $250 fine, he said.
Mountain bikers present new dangers as they try to ride the rails. When a train stops, sport-bikers have tried to sneak underneath — unaware that rail cars can lurch forward without notice, creating a rolling guillotine.
“It’s called an accordion effect,” Johnson said.
Some of his worst memories involve pets that wander out on the tracks. With hundreds of tons of weight behind them, a train can take a mile or more to stop.
“We can’t swerve to avoid hitting you,” he noted wryly.
Johnson recalled hitting a Saint Bernard as a boy stood helplessly by.
“It breaks your heart,” he said.
His low point as an engineer came several years ago when a man was riding a dirt bike alongside the tracks. The noise from the small motorcycle drowned out the warning blasts Johnson was frantically sounding.
The dirt biker never knew what hit him.
“It takes all the romance out of running a train,” he said.
Johnson hopes he can help others avoid some of the pain he’s seen. But some of his safety training stories can hit close to home.
At one training session, a young woman raised her hand after hearing about the dirt biker.
“That was my fiance,” she said.
Rumbling through the pine forest of eastern Carolina, CSXT 650 passes lumberyards, junkyards, graveyards and back yards.
Gwaltney and Curley have a unique window on the world. White satellite dishes point skyward behind ramshackle homes. Deer statues stand motionless, seeming to stare up with ceramic eyes. And beside the track, a dead deer provides a snack for a bunch of black buzzards.
“I saw my first bear out there, other than the zoo,” Gwaltney says, nodding toward the forest.
He’s also seen his share of manmade debris on the tracks: cross ties, bikes, grocery carts, brake shoes.
“I believe people want to see a catastrophic situation,” he says. “They want to see a train derail. It’s mean-spirited.”
Yet he says the work suits him. After leaving the Coast Guard, he joined CSX as a diesel engineer helping repair engines in Richmond in 1994. It was easy making the switch from ship engines to train engines.
He became a locomotive engineer when he heard his repair work might move out of state.His mechanical prowess is evident as he handles the General Electric locomotive.
The engine has 4,400 horsepower and weighs 432,000 pounds. The Juice Train has two locomotives pulling it today.Gwaltney knows every decision he makes is under scrutiny: An onboard “event recorder” computer registers his speed, braking and other operating decisions. The railroad also has video cameras on poles that record each passing train.
The crew stays in steady radio communication with a CSXT dispatcher in Jacksonville. And they hear from various rail supervisors along the way.
The level of radio traffic appears to increase as the crew deals with a nagging problem: A battery-operated “end of train device” keeps sending a signal that says it’s not working at the rear of the train.
The communications signal provides readouts on brake pressure, lights, and other systems. The brakes seem fine, so the crew wonders whether the problem is as simple as a bad battery.
It was replaced back in Rocky Mount, so they had no reason to suspect trouble ahead. But there it is: A series of “XXX’s” crosses the computer screen.”C’mon,” Gwaltney says, pressing a computer key over and over.
“There you go.” The console beeps, and a green light flashes. The device seems to be back in action, for now. Gwaltney seems leery of a relapse, though.
As he watched this unfolding development, conductor Curley heard from the Florida dispatcher who let them know they would be switched over to a sidetrack. A southbound passenger train is heading their way.
“Amtrak is priority,” Gwaltney explains. “They get the right of way. There he goes right there.”
A silver streak whips by and is soon out of sight. Amtrak can go 79 mph on this stretch of CSX’s main line; 60 mph is the maximum for the Juice Train.
The pesky signal woes won’t go away, though, and Gwaltney is forced to lower his speed to 30 mph. He has little choice: If anything happened — a derailment, for example — he could face a stiff fine of up to $10,000 and possible dismissal.
But how would anyone ever know if he simply ignored the signal problem and kept up his speed?
Simple, he says: That onboard “event recorder” tallies Gwaltney’s every move.
So he instructs Curley to radio Jacksonville to let them know CSXT 650 is slowing down.
“You’re going to run 30 miles per hour?” the dispatcher says. “Yes sir,” Curley replies politely.
“Alrighty then,” the dispatch says.
Gwaltney nods toward the speaker above them.
“You could hear in his voice he wasn’t too happy.”They’ve only been gone an hour — and still haven’t hit the 60 mph top speed.Now, at 30 mph, says Curley, “It’s a slow ride to Richmond.
“Yet neither man seems perturbed by this rare malfunction of the communications gear. And Curley, an Emporia native, says he likes the routine along the tracks — even the paperwork.
“It’s relaxing, but responsible,” he says.
A soft-spoken, careful man, Curley brings his own binoculars to study track conditions, road crossings, and other trains.
As a conductor, he provides an extra pair of eyes to note defects on his train or others.
This training comes into play when another Amtrak train rushes by.
Curley watches it closely.
“Your train looks good,” he calls on the radio, “with the exception of a large cargo door open.”
So far, no packages or bags have fallen out of the passing train.
The signal problem keeps dogging Gwaltney. Sometimes he gets a communications signal saying the brake light is good; sometimes he gets a “failed” signal.
It’s seems as hard to predict as a loose wire in a car radio. The engineer’s calm is not shaken, though, even when he’s ordered over to the side to let other, faster freight trains pass.
The Juice Train, meant as an express, has been reduced to a frozen crawl.Gwaltney puts his diesel expertise to good use, slowing the train by using the motor itself to brake the train — a technique called “dynamic brakes.”
At 30 mph, the tracks seem to roll below like a conveyor belt. The scenery seems to slide along, too. Several wild turkeys dash through the woods above the Appomattox River.
The sky darkens and raindrops pelt the windshield. Gwaltney takes off his sunglasses, then turns on a pair of wipers on his half of the windshield.
Curley turns on the wipers on his side of the cab. Together, the four wipers slide back and forth in a herky-jerky way.
In the growing darkness, a man with a dog walks along the tracks — one of the few trespassers they pass this day.
Seeing the dog prompts Gwaltney to observe, “In all the years I’ve done this, I haven’t seen a cat yet.”
A debate ensues about cats, dogs and opossums.
Opossums, it’s agreed, are the stupidest, most suicidal creature in the wild.
At 6:02 p.m., nearly five hours after leaving Rocky Mount, CSXT 650 rumbles across the James Ridge Bridge.
It took nearly twice as long as planned, but the Juice Train rolls safely into CSX’s Acca Yard, the sprawling rail switching complex visible from the Downtown Expressway.
A repair crew has been called to inspect the pesky communications device.Rolling into Acca, the train runs parallel to the Powhite Parkway. From the locomotive cab, the cars look tiny and impatient jockeying for position at the toll gates.
Gwaltney is asked how he manages to stay patient — even when forced to go half-speed most of the way from Rocky Mount.
“I used to come in all keyed up,” he explains. “But you function better relaxed.”