The following appears under a picture of Alva Lyons on my website:
"During the last years of DRGW freight service to Durango, Alva Lyons was the senior conductor at Durango.....The rear brakeman was Myron Henry, second senior trainman, and the head man in the dog house was Punk Blackstone, third senior trainman. During the winter, when the Silverton trains were not running, there was usually only one train a day with a Durango crew, so it got the senior men."
The part about seniority was written from memory, with the intention of checking a seniority roster, but the seniority roster that I thought I had has disappearred. So it may or may not be correct.
But it raises the interesting (at least to me) question of who bid on what jobs for what reason back in those days, and what were the rules and other factors like rates of pay.
I'd be curious as to how much information about that sort of thing has been saved, or how many folks remember anything about it. There are a few posters here like Woody Woodward, Ed Trump, Earl Knoob, and John Coker who probably have some of this info, and there might be others.
Both Alamosa and Durango had "boards" from which crews worked. I believe the seniority districts for the various crafts probably covered both boards, but I'm not sure. Somewhere I read that the Durango extra boards were seniority boards (as opposed to "first in first out"), although that might have varied by craft. And I seem to remember that Durango was a switchman's yard, but with only a single six day switcher, to what extent were did trainmen and switchman work each others jobs by some kind of local agreement. I know very little about the Alamosa boards.
From my personal experience in engine service on the SP, there was a lot of gamesmanship in getting the jobs you wanted, aka "sharpshooting". But that was at a much larger operation with more options. It would be interesting to see what "games" got played by the crews on the ng.
Maybe I'm the only one interested in this sort of thing. But to me it represents an integral part of the railroaders' life on the ng. which ought to be documented along with the hard assets.
Anyone out there with any information?
John West
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/02/2007 12:03PM by John West.
