Re: Alamosa January 8 1945

Bob and others - Common practice even today is to distribute the material for planned track work with one or more work trains well prior to the actual work. I was involved in a rail gang project on the Santa Fe line between Cadiz, CA and Parker, AZ that when the gang got there to do the job, they could not find the material. Since the foreman of the distribution gang was not a favorite of the Division Engineer, there were charges drawn up until cooler minds were able to convince the man that the sand had covered the material(spikes, tie plates, rail anchors, joint bars, tie plugs and such. It didn't help that the material was on the ground an extra long period of time while that steel gang assisted the SP gang in re-laying the rail on Techappi[sic] because they had gotten defective rail from either China or another foreign country. With that side trip, yes the work train operations around MOW work are very interesting to follow. There can be several out there at the same time. SoCalCond