(The following article by Mike Stark was posted on the Billings Gazette website on January 6. Richard Murillo is a member of BLET Division 232 Laurel, Mont.)
LAUREL, Mont. — Cold and miserable?
Don’t tell Mike Strecker and Bart Barkac about cold and miserable.
They’re able to laugh a little about the miserable part, but the cold is serious business.
Strecker and Barkac work at the Montana Rail Link yard. Every day in the recent cold snap, they and other members of their crew have spent most of their time clearing snow and ice that gets lodged into the 120 switches in the yard.
If the switches don’t switch, then the trains don’t switch tracks and if the trains don’t switch, the rail yard at Laurel – the largest flat switching yard in the Northwest – doesn’t do much good.
“It has to get done,” Strecker said.
But getting it done these days means bundling up and stepping into the wind-whipped rail yard where the cold somehow finds a way to penetrate even the most thickly layered outfits.
“Sometimes you get so many layers on that it’s hard to move,” Strecker said. “You feel like the abominable snowman.”
Clearing out the switches can be tedious. On Tuesday, Barkac and Strecker spent most of their shift using an air compressor to blast snow and ice from one switch, then moving to another, and then another and another.
By the time they’d gotten through all of them, the wind had wedged more snow and ice into the mechanisms, so it was time to start all over again.
“It just doesn’t seem to end on a day like this,” Strecker said.
All the while, they’re struggling to keep the wind out from their jackets and overalls. They’re resigned to the chill that first stings and then numbs their faces.
“It makes for really long days,” Barkac said.
Before they started using air compressors, the switches were cleared with shovels and brooms.
“That wasn’t fun,” said Strecker, a 13-year veteran of the railroads.
But the weather doesn’t matter to the trains or those looking to have grain, merchandise, coal or other products moved along the rails. In Laurel, where 25 to 30 trains pass through daily, that means round-the-clock workers have to adapt to the conditions.
Richard Murillo, a locomotive engineer who’s been on the railroad 26 years, said the latest cold snap reminded him of the winter of 1979, when he got frostbite on his face while riding on the side of a car in Wyoming.
“Last night, with the wind chill, it was minus 27,” Murillo said. “It was pretty frigid.”
Years of battling winter have taught Murillo about how to dress. When the temperature drops, he wears four layers of clothing, thick boots and a stocking cap that wraps around his head and face. Because he wears glasses, it’s hard to wear any kind of face cover that won’t keep his breath from fogging up his lenses.
“So my face is exposed,” he said. “After a while you get numb so it doesn’t hurt so much.”
The trick is to put on enough clothes to stay relatively warm but not so many that you can’t move or that you get too hot once you start to work, he said.
“If you start to get warm and sweat, that’s when you can really get a chill,” he said. “It’s difficult to regulate yourself.”
Equipment also has a hard time in the deep cold, either acting sluggish or simply snapping.
“You have the same kinds of problems that you’d normally have, but just more of them,” said Trent Sampson, a car inspector.
Working in extreme weather at the rail yard is not just about winter, though. In the summer, temperatures take on an extra 10 or 15 degrees in the yard as the heat reflects off rail cars and other equipment, like an oven.
So there’s heart-seizing cold and wind. Ice and snow everywhere. Is working in the blistering summer heat better?
“I’d take the cold anytime,” Sampson said.
Barkac, who’d just spent eight hours dislodging stubborn snow out of railroad switches, shook his head.
“I think I’d take the heat,” he said.