Railroaders place to shoot the shit.

A fellow I went to high school with, came from a railroad family, his father was a C&O BOT. He worked for the Red Team out of high school, then took a transfer to Mecca but left when the state of Virginia wanted to put his adopted son into a reformatory. I don't know what the kid did. Anyway, he ended up in Montana on MRL and retired from there. I believe he's living in the Golden State now.

Snippy, his brother-in-law was Ed Sims who went to Mecca about the same time and worked that outlying helper job for years, so I am told.

The guy who writes the monthly blog, High Times on the High Iron, Joe Santucci, who is called Tuch, who was kind of a modern day boomer, spent his last years on MRL.

 

-- Edited by Cy Valley on Tuesday 11th of January 2022 09:47:55 AM

What PhMB said. AFASRemembers MRL was a Krebs, "Scab it all out" experiment to retaliate against the UTerUS because they wouldn't negotiate crew consist. That experiment cost BNSF dearly. Then, they got unionized in a BLE, "Phukk the UTerUs" NMB election.

Guys from Greater Pipesville and Pencindiana who couldn't make it onto the Currently Fired Employees Railroad (CFE RR) roster went out to MRL. One guy from that place in OH10 went out there and either got scared (they cowboy'ed like in the olden days) or got fired. The guy who rear-ended the train near Radford while on a burner phone he left on the wrecked engine, who signed an FRA, "If you don't fine me $23,000, I'll never attempt to work for a railroad again" thought he could sneak out to MRL and not get discovered. I told him he would go to jail. I don't think he ever tried it.

Rubber rooms actually made it into Jet magazine because they violated terms of settlements the railroads and made with EEOC. Rubber rooms and similar tactics such as the fake jobs as "Painter's Helper", which Snippy was involved in were some of the worst schitt dreamed up by any RR. They also had thing called something like traveling station gangs that were supposed to live on the road and mow the grass and do upkeep on closed depots. In a lot of these tactics, the bullschitt fell upon the newest hires, even on Order Selection Lists (OSL), which were the Supreme Court approved way of merging hiring date rosters as remediation for 150 years of discrimination. Basically, the job offered had to be really and truly comparable to the position you had when furloughed.

The word on the street at MRL's red headed step cousin the SRY (where I started my RR career) is that the BNSF was looking at buying them out too so they could run coal empties and cans from Roberts Bank back down into the US instead of using the same route they use for loads. The flooding in the Fraser Valley and Sumas / Robertson area (near Krink, I believe) has really put a damper on this thought as the damage has driven the cost up but also flood mitigation is certainly not feasible.
The prez of MRL, Mr. Derek .... I went from being a greenskeeper to a brakeman..... to assistant superintendent..to senior management... Ollman would fit right in at places like the CSX, NS, UP, BNSF as he is a total endearing individual.
So I can understand the idea of breaking the lease, how do you sell off the entire workforce who have a collective agreement in place?

I remember the big extravaganza MRL put on when they got their 1st very own brand new real locomotive (Dash 9) in MRL blue.. They dedicated a track by the RH and gave tours of it.. had balloons tied to the guard rails and everything. this spectacle went on for a week or more. I found the whole thing entertaining..