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Description
From left to right: The old ex C&NW yard office, yard goats, MCLPR, and another yard job parked beneath the Beaver Channel bridge. MCLPR (and it's counterpart, MPRCL) AKA "The Clipper" was a Chicago side sort of wayfreight. It was one of the few train we had that did real switching work along the way to it's terminal. MCLPR (Manifest, Clinton-Proviso) originated in Clinton yard, where a Chicago crew would board the usually crappy older power, set out at least one bad order if the weather was crappy, then after waiting for at least an hour for a hotter train to switch crews and a Westbound to clear up between the crew change point and the 5th St crossovers, it would then proceed East on Track 2 (the south track) because the yard is placed south of the main and alongside MT 2. Remember, trains run on the left in ex C&NW territory, so it was running against the usual flow of traffic. It would then usually wait at 5th street for more traffic to clear on the UP and/or the IC&E before crossing over to 1. It would then plod along at maybe 50mph on a good day if no kickback cars (cars patched up just enough to hopefully get them to the next terminal, usually with severe speed restrictions) or if nothing went wrong.
The Clipper would then eventually amble back to track 2 so it could switch the interchange tracks next to Sterling Steel in Sterling IL. It would then stop short of the East switch, cut off with it's set-out which was always wrongly numbered on the car list. After swapping out decrepit old gons full of scrap metal for empties scrap gons and newer ones loaded with coils of wire, as well as the occasional box car or reefer from one of the local industries. On rare occasions it would have a current brake test slip in the knuckle of the last car, performed by the sterling switch crew (my first assignment). But most times it was expired or nonexistent, in which case the crew would have to do their own air brake test. Not fun! Then if all the cars passed, it would tie back onto the train, do a set & release airbrake test to ensure no hooligans messed with the train or anything, and it would head East again, crossing back to 1 at Nelson.
After that, if the day had gone really well and the train was making great time, the dispatcher would have the crew hold up somewhere while he ran every damn train he could around the Clipper until just before overtime kicked in, at which point the train wouldn't stop until it got to Proviso and Yard 9.
If the day had been particularly horrible, the weather was bad, and the crew was hungry, Dispatcher 12 would run the POS straight in, and his cohort, Dispatcher 11, would ram that train straight to a parking spot in the middle of nowhere until the crew was in danger of running out it's hours of service. Then it would be a mad dash to get to the yard, where every effing switch would be lined against them and the remote operated ones would be broken (remote control switches are a HUGE pain in the ass to line when they aren't working, which is most of the time). Then the clipper would pull into a yard track, up to the north end where, again, every switch was wrong, a utility man would call them when the rear end was safely in the clear on the south end, the poor conductor would separate the cars on the north end where they would be in the clear, and the train would double over, usually halfway across the yard where the switches were all, yet again, wrong. Shove in the clear, cut off the power, head up to 19 or 20 main, back down to the ramp, put the power away, and wait three hours for a ride. Every day. With no air conditioning in the summer, and leaky/drafty cabs with barely working heaters in the winter.
So, the clipper was the most hated train in the service unit. Nothing ever went right, it always bit you in the ass, and if you got it on the way out, you were almost guaranteed to get it on the way back. And guess which train i was probably about to board here...

Union Pacific's Clinton, IA yard, late summer 2004

Description
From left to right: The old ex C&NW yard office, yard goats, MCLPR, and another yard job parked beneath the Beaver Channel bridge. MCLPR (and it's counterpart, MPRCL) AKA "The Clipper" was a Chicago side sort of wayfreight. It was one of the few train we had that did real switching work along the way to it's terminal. MCLPR (Manifest, Clinton-Proviso) originated in Clinton yard, where a Chicago crew would board the usually crappy older power, set out at least one bad order if the weather was crappy, then after waiting for at least an hour for a hotter train to switch crews and a Westbound to clear up between the crew change point and the 5th St crossovers, it would then proceed East on Track 2 (the south track) because the yard is placed south of the main and alongside MT 2. Remember, trains run on the left in ex C&NW territory, so it was running against the usual flow of traffic. It would then usually wait at 5th street for more traffic to clear on the UP and/or the IC&E before crossing over to 1. It would then plod along at maybe 50mph on a good day if no kickback cars (cars patched up just enough to hopefully get them to the next terminal, usually with severe speed restrictions) or if nothing went wrong.
The Clipper would then eventually amble back to track 2 so it could switch the interchange tracks next to Sterling Steel in Sterling IL. It would then stop short of the East switch, cut off with it's set-out which was always wrongly numbered on the car list. After swapping out decrepit old gons full of scrap metal for empties scrap gons and newer ones loaded with coils of wire, as well as the occasional box car or reefer from one of the local industries. On rare occasions it would have a current brake test slip in the knuckle of the last car, performed by the sterling switch crew (my first assignment). But most times it was expired or nonexistent, in which case the crew would have to do their own air brake test. Not fun! Then if all the cars passed, it would tie back onto the train, do a set & release airbrake test to ensure no hooligans messed with the train or anything, and it would head East again, crossing back to 1 at Nelson.
After that, if the day had gone really well and the train was making great time, the dispatcher would have the crew hold up somewhere while he ran every damn train he could around the Clipper until just before overtime kicked in, at which point the train wouldn't stop until it got to Proviso and Yard 9.
If the day had been particularly horrible, the weather was bad, and the crew was hungry, Dispatcher 12 would run the POS straight in, and his cohort, Dispatcher 11, would ram that train straight to a parking spot in the middle of nowhere until the crew was in danger of running out it's hours of service. Then it would be a mad dash to get to the yard, where every effing switch would be lined against them and the remote operated ones would be broken (remote control switches are a HUGE pain in the ass to line when they aren't working, which is most of the time). Then the clipper would pull into a yard track, up to the north end where, again, every switch was wrong, a utility man would call them when the rear end was safely in the clear on the south end, the poor conductor would separate the cars on the north end where they would be in the clear, and the train would double over, usually halfway across the yard where the switches were all, yet again, wrong. Shove in the clear, cut off the power, head up to 19 or 20 main, back down to the ramp, put the power away, and wait three hours for a ride. Every day. With no air conditioning in the summer, and leaky/drafty cabs with barely working heaters in the winter.
So, the clipper was the most hated train in the service unit. Nothing ever went right, it always bit you in the ass, and if you got it on the way out, you were almost guaranteed to get it on the way back. And guess which train i was probably about to board here...

Union Pacific's Clinton, IA yard, late summer 2004