January, 1977.
I was a brakeman on the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad, working at West Chicago on the night shift,11:30 pm to 7:30 am. It was nineteen below zero. Reports factored the wind chill to be minus seventy. Normally we would be switching cars for thru freights to pick up, but on this night we were ordered to cease activities and remain in the yard office, due to the extreme cold. There wouldn’t be any outbound trains anyway, it was much too cold to keep the air brakes operating in that weather.
A report came in that there was a derailment between Geneva and Elburn. The crew was able to save the engine and thirteen trailing cars. The conductor and rear brakeman were safe in the way car (caboose), and were relieved of their duties when the West Chicago car knockers arrived. They were dead anyway (no, not dead physically, this was a term we used when your twelve hours had run up and you could no longer work according to the FRA regulations.)
We took our old switch engine west of Geneva, where we found the thirteen head cars. I hooked them up and rode the point (holding on to the iron grab bars on the end of a box car) for what seemed like an hour, using only a lantern to signal back to the engineer. The wind was brutal, blowing freezing snow. It was damn hard to see with only a lantern. Fortunately, I had popped in a heavy duty bulb, one that would drain a six volt battery in eight hours. Those were the brightest bulbs you could find, so much better than standard issue.
I was wearing a pair of Carhartt insulated coveralls, Sorel boots, Navy issue earmuffs, a leather face mask, wool hat, wool socks, blue jeans, thermal underwear, t shirt, heavy sweater, and a pair of leather railroad mittens. The humidity from my breath caused my beard to freeze to the leather mask. Despite all of that, it was darn cold.
Finally we came upon the rest of the train. The car knockers had already pulled the lead car back on the tracks and had changed the knuckle. I signaled to the engineer to connect the cars, hooked up the air brakes, and hopped back into that ever loving warm switch engine.
You don’t easily forget nights like that.
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