I guess I’ll throw a story in, since I (probably) can’t get in trouble for it now lol. I was working the NS Conway yard not long after the Conrail split, probably spring of 2000. I was a student on a hump job on 4 Hump (eastbound), “pulling pins”. The hump operator in his booth had a list of the cars being sent over the hump, and would line the switches according to where the cars went. He would then announce the “cuts” on a loudspeaker. Instead of reading off numbers, he’d say for example “cut three, then two, then four” and so on.
On this particular cut, he announced “cut four, then one”. Coming over the hump were a boxcar, then four MOW camp cars (which shouldn’t have been humped in the first place, but they were). Following his instructions, I watched the boxcar and three camp cars go by, then lifted the cut lever on the fourth camp car. I immediately realized I’d made a big mistake- the power cables between the cars were still connected. I won’t repeat what I said. I began frantically shaking the cut lever up and down, trying to drop the pin which wouldn’t have stayed up if I’d wanted it to, and radioed the engineer to stop the move. The pin didn’t drop but my stomach did. I watched helplessly as the cars separated, and in what seemed like slow motion, the power cables pulled out of the boxes at the ends of the cars as the cut rolled slowly down the hump. A telephone wire dragged along behind as they disappeared from my view.
Needless to say I was sick. My conductor was laughing his *** off, and assured me it would be fine. We got on the last camp car, rode the shove over the hump, and coupled the cars back together. He threw the cables back up on the deck and said “it’ll be fine! These cars will probably get sent over to the westbound hump and classified again before they even go anywhere!” Still, I didn’t sleep much that night... I was sure I was getting fired. Thankfully I never heard another thing about it but I can see those cables pulling apart in my mind to this day!
