Freight Train Delay Reports

Guest post by Allen Miller.

Here are some Freight Train Delay Reports, these are all out of Malden to Othello in the 1950's.

This first one is an extra west out of Malden to Othello in 1957 with three GP9's, only real delay was in setting out a hot box car at Rock Lake.

Here's another Extra West out of Malden in 1955 with quite a bit of work along the way. He picked up cars at Ewan, Revere, Ralston, Lind and Warden. He had set out and pick up at Marengo and a set out at Pizarro, which must have all been wheat traffic. He had L.C.L. (Less than Car Load) freight at Lind, which was probably unloaded into the depot freight room, which qualifies this run as Way Freight, which was a higher rate of pay than through freight or Time Freight. I like the conductor's notation at the bottom that says He Picked Up Everything at Warden Except the Depot.

Here is another Extra West with three GP9 units in 1957. This was a big train, he left Malden with 156 cars, 52 loads, 104 empties, and arrived Othello with 191 cars, 86 loads, 105 empties, He set out a hot journal car at Lavista and had work at Marengo and Warden enroute.

And Dave Sprau explained the oddness of this one:
"On Nov 2-79 Milw was shut down but I suppose this train found itself stranded around Othello. Looks to me like regardless of "shutdown" it needed getting rid of, so was delivered to the UP at Marengo and probably went to Hinkle- rather than the usual "Spokane" - using UP from there. The conductor probably never had a situation like this before, and his time of departure at Marengo is their "Taxi" time and he merely is advising that their actual hours of service ran out when the highway vehicle was around Ritzville headed for Othello. If so, 1'45" for the taxi trip. looks to me like perfect timing if the Taxi took them to a place to eat (Ritzville?) enroute..."