Wyhog posted:When I was a 19 year old new fireman after working for the Penn Central for about a year I was forced to working the Cincinnati transfer runs. These trains went from the former NYC's Sharonville Yard north of Cincy to the C&O and L&N yards across the Ohio River in Kentucky as well as to the B&O, N&W, Southern Rwy, and other NYC and PRR yards. We usually died on the foreign railroad on the 16 hour law. One dark night my engineer was drunk and could not stay awake. So the conductor asked me if I could run the train to L&N's Decoursey Kentucky yard so he wouldn't have to turn in the engineer. I said yes. The worst part was going through the maze of tracks at C.U.T. I had not been on a route through the C.U.T trackage. We usually got on the B&O then on the C&O's line up to the Ohio River bridge. But as luck would have it THIS trip they were routing us through C.U.T. to the C&O bridge. I had no idea where I was going so I just crept along about 10 mph following a zig-zagging snake-like line of green and yellow lights in a sea of red dwarfs. We made it through the mess and all the way to DeCoursey yard. That was my working inauguration to the Cincinnati Union Terminal.
Boy did this bring back some memories. Like you I was an 18 y.o. new fireman, mid 60's, on the B&O and as a "newbie" you end up working the extra board. Several times I worked the C.U.T. shuffling REA cars as well as some passenger trains. But some of the most memorable were as you described working the L&N transfers to the Decoursey Yard, seldom did the originating crew make it all the way, the vast majority of the time you would end up being timed out long before you even got near the bridge. Anything and everything had priority over the transfers. The best part of working the CUT was taking your lunch break at Camp Washington Chili.
