The Limo driver is responsible for carrying railroad crew members to and from their trains and the crew room, motel, or any other destination required. An effective driver is alert to the status and locations of trains in his area and to the radio traffic which may affect his routing. Trains do get delayed because of drivers getting lost or not paying attention to what is going on around them. The limo driver is an integral part of what makes the railroads move and his actions can facilitate or delay train movements. In Longview, we have three categories of drivers - short haul, long haul, and yard. Long haul drivers are the equivalent of a long haul trucker. They may be on the road for several days travelling between destinations several hundred miles apart. Long haul drivers frequently have a take-home van assigned to them and they are required to maintain contact by telephone or pager. Long haul drivers are paid based on mileage and hours of service, like a trucker. Short haul drivers work regular shifts - 8 hours during the week and 12 hour shifts on the weekends. Short haul drivers carry crews within the immediate East Texas area such as between Longview and Kilgore, Marshall, Big Sandy, Overton and points in between. Short haul drivers work for minimum wage, and as such, some are rather unmotivated and not the best workers. The yard driver is a short haul driver who has been assigned to the yard for that particular shift. On the radio, you will hear him referred to as the "Local Limo". He is dispatched by the yardmaster for duties in and around the railyard. Unmotivated individuals make dreadful yard drivers.

Many railfans dream of working on a railroad. Unfortunately, railroad jobs are tough to get and sometimes even tougher to hold on to. The next best thing has got to be limo driving. You are out where the trains are and you get to be an important part of rail operations. The work has plenty of idle time where you can take photographs but when you are busy, concentrate on your job. The best way to find this work is to observe vans coming and going from railyards and getting company names and phone numbers off the logos on the doors.

Generally, as a short haul driver, the dispatcher tells you where to take a train crew, you take them there, pick the incoming crew and return to the yard or the motel. The fun part of the job begins when things do not go as planned and you have to put together a plan and carry it out almost simultaneously. Here are experiences from two very memorable trips.

Overton. Some months ago, when the Houston rail jam was still gumming up the works, crews would frequently run out of time before reaching Longview. They can only be on duty 12 hours and when that time is up, the train stops - no leeway. On this trip, I was sent to carry a crew to a train in Overton that was had run out of time. On the way out of Longview, I observed a relief crew waiting at Cotton Street for the train that was running ahead of the train my crew was relieving. At Overton, I discovered that the train headed for Cotton Street had also run out of time at Overton and was unable to communicate with anyone by radio. I called the limo dispatcher on my cellphone and got their relief started on the 25 mile trip from Cotton Street to Overton.
Now I had to find the train for the crew I was carrying. Its engines were immediately behind the first train and when we located them, it was discovered that the siding at Overton could not hold both trains and the back end of train #2 was hanging out on the main line. Now, along comes train #3 in the opposite direction. He goes as far as he can and stops until train #2 can get all the way into the siding. The line is now in total gridlock until the crew for train #1 gets down from Cotton Street. The cellphone call apparently kept the delays from being too significant.

Big Sandy, big mess. On a routine trip, I was to deliver and pick two crews for two trains that were both nearing Big Sandy. But somewhere between Pritchett and Big Sandy, another train had broken a coupler near the middle of their consist. They came on into Big Sandy with what was left of their train. Now we had to go up the line towards Gilmer and try to find to two trains for the crews in my van. To complicate matters, the rail line is not visible from the road except for one overpass between Big Sandy and Pritchett and at Pritchett itself.
We got to Pritchett and only had to wait for about 5 minutes for the first train to arrive. We exchanged crews and they began formulating a plan to help out the two-piece train ahead of them. I now had to continue north from Pritchett to try to find train #2. Using the odometer, I was able to guess the location of the tail end of the train stopped at Pritchett quite accurately as it turned out. We made radio contact with train #2 several miles up the road but he had already passed the last point where we could get to or even see the tracks. I went back to the point where I had estimated the tail end of train #1 was located and stopped alongside the highway. One of the incoming crew was frantically urging me to keep on driving but I told him the train we were looking for could not go any farther than where we sat.
I asked the man on the passenger side to open his window and see if we could hear the engines of the train and another crewmember picked up the radio and asked the engineer to blow his horn. The first blast of the horn was no more than a couple of hundred yards away. The engineer told us that he was coming up on the back end of the Pritchett train and he could go no farther. The outbound crew grabbed their bags and took off across some private property to a distant tree line and several minutes later the inbound crew came back with their baggage and we went to the motel.
To complete the story, here is how the broken apart train got put back together again. The crew at Big Sandy removed a knuckle from the front coupler of the lead engine. Then they pulled the train ahead until the end was at the shanty. The Pritchett crew uncoupled their engines and went ahead to the back end of the uncoupled cars and pushed them to Big Sandy and the broken knuckle was replaced with the one off the engine. Then they coupled back up and the Big Sandy limo driver carried the conductor up to the head end of his train and they were on their way. The Pritchett engines backed from Big Sandy to Pritchett to rejoin with their train and eventually everyone got moving again.

No Smoking. There is a policy of no smoking in the vans. Frequently this policy is ignored and one particular night, I was assigned to a van that reeked of cigarette smoke and had a full ashtray. I figured I would just tough it out, even though I started getting a headache five minutes after getting in the van. By morning, I was totally wasted with a pounding headache and feeling like crap all over. I figured I would go home, sleep it off, and be fine when it came time to go back on duty in 12 hours. Wrong! It didn't sleep off and not only did I miss the next shift at the railyard, I also missed the next three days at my full-time Gregg County job. I had gotten a full-blown respiratory infection which the doctor called pharyngitis and at one point, my temperature measured 103.7. Now, when I get a smelly van, I air it out as much as possible and as always, write up its condition on my work sheet (which I did all along anyway).

If you are a limo driver and have a story to tell, let me have it. If you are a railroad man and have a story relating to limo drivers you want to share, let me have it. Good ones will end up on this page.

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