¡Colores!; 1503; Albuquerque's Historic Railroad Shops; Interview with Leo Hernandez; Part 2

We'll just go to the same question when you've got your dad lunch. Okay, this, when I took my dad lunch, he worked at the roundhouse and in a roundhouse is just where they do temporary repairs on locomotives and bring the locomotive in and out and back on the road and whatever. And so I would set my dad's lunch right by a steam heater that was just inside the door of the roundhouse door. And I'd wait for dad to come by and see if he needed anything in this tent. He always had something nice to say. And he'd pick up his lunch and I noticed he always had a type of hand cleaner that they used to of course clean up their hands for the eight.

And I always asked my dad, I said, Dad, your face is dirtier than your hands. And I got in your not washing your face. He says, well, he says this cleaner don't work too good on your face. It works good on your hands. And at that time they had these lunch boxes that were square, rectangular on the bottom and then we kind of round at the top where you had a bottle of warm milk or coffee or whatever. And his buddy was eating with us there one day. And I noticed his lunch box, why I didn't have any sandwiches in it. And the bottom of the, his lunch box was just a big chunk of cornbread cut up in slices. And then of course the top part of the lunch box that closed down, why it was also full

of cornbread and bacon in it, no. And he had a big bottle of butter milk like that. That's all he ate for lunch is butter milk and that bread, I thought to myself, I asked his name was Archi because he was from Arkansas. And he says, well, he says this cornbread and bacon and butter milk is the best food you can get. And I wondered about Archi. His name, his last name was Day, D-A-Y and that gentleman was still working for the railroad. He transferred here to Albuquerque and he was working right up here at the end and a place called the heir room and I worked with him during my apprenticeship.

And he was the nicest man I've ever met. And he was Archi Day, that's what they called him. If you could tell us again about how you didn't think you were going to, you wanted to work in the railroad because of the way it was so dirty that experience with your father and then when you came in with the diesels, how that was different. Okay, the difference of coming in to work after the steam and diesel transition, the reason it was so different, it was to me, anyway, there was more technology in diesel locomotives than you had in your, that's not putting down the steam, of course they had to have some very, very smart people to work on steam locomotives on account of all of the apparatuses that they had to control the speed on steam locomotives because steam has no limit.

If you let steam run away with itself, why it'll blow itself to pieces because as you had to have good people to repair all of the systems to keep a locomotive, steam locomotive from blowing itself up, so to speak. On a diesel locomotive, the reason I liked it so much, it was, there was a lot of technology there, a lot of electrical control systems and your mechanical diesel engine was, okay. What made it so different that a younger person would accept working for a company, a Santa Fe Railroad, and to me working for a Santa Fe Railroad in its, in its present

form with diesels was, there was more technology to work with and it wasn't that dirty. I mean you didn't have heavy, heavy, heavy grease balls and you didn't have heavy stuff to work with on a day-to-day basis. When you worked in a big shop like this, as compared to what my dad had done, when you worked in a big shop like this, you worked with people that were more knowledgeable than you were because here you are in a print list and you're learning a trade and if a person is diligent in what he's doing, why you have, what you call, electricians working right next to you and I always caught myself looking at electrical work as being just as complicated

as keeping a diesel locomotive engine tuned and ready to go whenever the power is needed. So the vast difference in comparing to diesel or diesel to steam is that you had two technologies there that one was broader than the other locomotives in the new field of diesel. They didn't pound a track like your steam engines did. You didn't have all that grease just, I mean you touched something and that's it. You had enough grease on you and you might as well not even try to wipe any of it off

because you're going to get dirty again anyway. When you're finished with that job, why you knew for sure that there's no way you're going to wear that pair of coveralls next day because they were so filthy that it was just, I mean you're carrying five, six pounds of grease all over you and not just in the front of your butt on your back because you have to get into these small places where your steam locomotives, they just had grease all over them because that's what made them run good is something slippery because your parts were so huge, those huge drivers on the side of steam locomotives were lubricated and anytime you touch something, why it was just all over the locomotive and steam, you didn't have that, I mean with diesel, big part, with

diesel you worked in an area that was more technically advanced and let's face it, you had more time to keep the thing running smooth and you have to take time and clean all the time. Being in a clean area is a lot safer than working in a greasy area and that was the total difference of their area compared to ours is the cleaner and more effective use of power than spending your time wiping your hands off all day. Very good, that's a good question, taking something apart and reassembling it and remembering

how all this stuff goes and is an art that a lot of people will take into consideration. More than anything else is when you take something apart, you have certain places that you want to take and cleaning all your equipment to where these areas right back here, where we took those large 20 cylinder locomotive diesels apart and the General Motors diesel engine was the one that had more pieces, it was built like a watch, I mean you laid all your parts out, washed anything and measured them to make sure that they were still with intolerance for use.

If they weren't why you knew what parts you had to usually had your spare parts right underneath your workbench and the best thing that would have happened back then was to standardize every locomotive that came in like your diesels were. Team locomotives were not that way, they were not standard, everyone was different because the wear and tear was so hard on steam and that's why they had these big shops to make all these enormous amount of parts to keep your steam locomotives online. Whereas your diesels, when you took a cylinder head apart, the way they went back together was so easy that if you interchange anything they all fit and that's a tolerance that

these both general electric and General Motors, of course General Motors built shovel aaves and stuff like that, they built one of the smoothest running locomotives, too whereas American locomotive company, Alcos, those locomotives had huge chunks of parts that come off, everything was heavy as compared to a General Motors locomotive and a lot of guys didn't like to work on the General Motors locomotive because it was like putting a watch back together. You had springs inside that locomotive head that were as small as a spring on a pin, like a pin that you would pump back and forth on, you had small springs and they all had

to be in place perfectly and your other locomotives didn't have small springs like that, they had huge lock washers, huge everything and there's no way you could lose a part on that, but like I said, your other locomotives, you had to have a white cloth out there so we could see all the parts to make sure you didn't lose anything. That was the basic difference in that system. How accomplished would you feel after you had put the machine back together? Did you test it at work? Yes, on putting equipment back together, you had a sense of having done something right and then, of course, you always had what you call a bench test and you would say like a cylinder head, you always wanted all of your moving parts to move freely and not

anything to bind itself up or burn something up because it wouldn't wiggle like it was supposed to wiggle. And that's the way I always told my apprentices, after I graduated and I had an apprentice working with me, I just said, you want to make sure that things work better than when you tore them apart and especially that general motor locomotive and then, of course, your steam generators. You always want those to work like they're supposed to and you mentioned testing. But this door right here, at the end of the building, why one track over, we had a test track and you would fire up either, you're both your locomotive and your steam generators and give them an outbound test.

That's where you found out whether you do anything right or not. If you found a problem, why you better get it going because at the end of the day, that locomotive is gone. And if it's not right, when quitting time comes, you stay there until it's right and then release that locomotive because you've got a form in there that's with you, you know. And you always wanted your assignment to go out on time. You wouldn't want to spend two or three days on the test track out there because you've got some more locomotives when you use that test track right behind you. So you better get the hell out of the way to speak, so to speak. And I remember a gentleman, this is a good story. I remember this gentleman and I won't mention his name because it's not fair, he's not here to defend himself. But I'll just say his, his Joe and he was testing a steam generator and it would not stay online, that is to say it wouldn't keep putting out a proper amount of steam.

And so he's sitting there looking at this book. And of course, my assignment on that locomotive was the automatic systems that keep the engine going. And I looked at Joe, Joe says, what are you looking for in your book? He says, well, there's got to be a steam generator in here that looks like this one and that's what I'm looking for. And so having worked a steam generator job before, I told Joe, Joe, you have two basic valves on there and the 14 and the 15 valve, I says, one works at an automatic, the other one works in manual, I says, and it looks like to me you've got both of them working, I says, one

of them has got to be off, you either have to be an automatic or you have to be in manual, they will not work together. And he says, how do you know? I says, well, turn number 15 off, that'll put you in manual, I says, and you've got manual set for a hundred pounds of steam, I says, and you watch the automatic governor take it on up to a hundred pounds of steam and settle down and maintain a hundred pounds of steam. And Joe didn't believe me. So I just reached over and I turned number 15 valve off and immediately a steam generator come online, went up to a hundred pounds and stayed there, maintained a hundred pounds. And then I says, Joe, I says, do you want to go to automatic and check it? And we'll put three hundred pounds on the automatic side and he says, well, it won't hold

that. I says, why not, that's what it's built to do and this time Joe went ahead and turned off in number 14 valve, turned on 15 and set it for three hundred pounds. It worked perfect. Joe never said thank you or anything, he just left, he went home. And that was a good story because Joe was one of my best friends after that. And you don't mistreat people when they don't know what's going on, you help them. And that was my good deed for the day. Did you have a lot of book smarts or was it kind of a feeling? The question was, is working in the shop more like an intuition, like maybe the the people that worked the jobs were leading the people that were learning the trade.

And I found it was a combination of both. You had old machinists and some of your older machinists were up to speed on diesel. And the ones that weren't up to speed in diesel didn't want to ever work speed. Those are the guys that worked on the wheel rigging, the brakes and all the bottom stuff underneath the locomotive. But don't understand me, all that had to be done correctly. But there wasn't, it did take a rocket scientist to put on a brakes shoe. Whereas when you worked on the top end of a locomotive, why it did take a certain amount of understanding the system, understanding diesel to troubleshoot a problem if it so came up.

And anytime you learn something new, you'd always share it with your friends. And up in this area here, you always have at least 15 or 20 locomotives being worked at the same time by a set of two machinists on each locomotive and a prinist. And there were times when some of these guys would just go over to their neighbors, how do we do this last time? And those two guys would work with each other and they'd go back and forth to each other's locomotive and help each other out in case they could not remember, say, how the last one went out. Because you didn't have the same locomotives coming in and out all the time, they were all different. And I remember working with a guy and we'll call him George. And it was toward the end of the day.

And when you're taking these complete units, they're called the complete cylinder and water jacket together and you're setting them inside the diesel locomotive crankcase, you might call it the engine part, why George was wanting to get these last two in and I was going by and George was cussing up a storm and he says, it's dog gone guys over at the machine shop, didn't get this one right and it won't slide in like it's supposed to. Because you had to slide around huge cylinder assembly into a hole that was supposed to seal up after you set it in place with big O-rings in there. And then George busted his chain trying to lift it out because it got hung up in there. And so George says, that was the only chain I've got.

And so I told George, I said, George, I'll hook it from the bottom here and let's put that hook up on top. And this chain link here fits right into this pin and I said, you go ahead and keep on working. So George looked at me, kid, got a head on your shoulder, you know. He's dead now. That was a good story. Sorry to choke up like that. Quite a few. The fact that I was the Union secretary, well I got to know a lot of guys that in fact got hurt, got killed.

But it was something that happened on the railroads back then. A lot of people got killed. And it wasn't because of the company didn't care. It was because people just would get caught up in what they were doing and they'd get in a hurry. And would hurt themselves, be off, they'd be off working in the tool room and stuff on light duty and till they could come back to work. And they paid him a dollar for their injury back then. Sign this paper and we'll give you a dollar with no union back then. But companies could do what they wanted to do back then. Yes.

Matter of fact, it was midnight one night that I was working the midnight shift on inspection. And we heard that what they called a closed shop, in other words if you didn't belong to the Union you could not hold a job after that. They midnight was the deadline. And the company went ahead and secured the fact from the railroad presidents and stuff that they would go ahead. Instead of having a big strike they would go ahead and allow the unions to exist in their present form at that time. And so having been one of the people who was involved in unions, why I became the Union Secretary at that time.

And I ran against one of the old guys, an old Italian guy. And Bull was he mad at me when we won the election. Because all the younger guys voted for me and a lot of the older guys didn't go to the Union meetings anyway. And so that's the reason why I see young guys kind of took over. And it was a good time back in because everything got safer, didn't get as many people killed. And then you had what they call a Sheldon system of working safe. And the safest railroad got this huge trophy for being the safest railroad in the nation, which was a Sheldon trophy. And I still have a big plaque like that of where all the names were, of all the skies that were more or less the leaders in the movement as far as the union went.

They started tearing down the roundhouse. And guess who saved that? The gentleman that you talked to over at JB's house and whether the one that, the one round called Ralph Garner. Okay, the question was that unions, in fact, did in fact instill in the companies a system to work safer and not to kill as many people as had been killed in prior years as to when I went to work for the railroad. One event that took place, and you and I talked about it on the way in, was we had a gentleman who was a laborer.

He was sweeping the floor up about, say, a hundred yards from here. And he was standing in front of a tank car. And this tank car, they were trying to push the heavy oil out of it so they could do some welding on it. And somebody forgot to turn the air off. And so that air stayed on through the morning. And right after lunch, people went back to work. And this old gentleman was down about, I would say, maybe ten yards from where the tank was being pressurized. And the end of that tank, which is about three eighths of an inch thick, while it busted at the welds around the tank and this lid, the end of the tank rather, went flying and it squashed him down against the floor.

And he died instantly. Now that, in today's technology, that wouldn't have happened because to start with, you have check valves in an air system now to where something like that would not over pressurize and hurt somebody. And secondly, if you don't hurt, excuse me, in today's technology, stuff like that has its own checks and balances. And companies don't have to pay out as much for accidents because of the money they save is the money that they don't have to pay out to widows and children that get killed. And I have a book at home, I don't know if I still have it or not, but the average amounts

of people killed on any specific railroad in the United States was upwards of a hundred and fifty to two hundred people. That's almost a person for every day of the year, more or less. And the tragic thing about it was that people could work shorter hours with the union in there, taking over now. We had what they call a 40-hour week and safer conditions. And it was a better place to work for, for everybody, for their owners, as well as the rail road itself.

And so with that in mind, people started making more money. And companies started making more money because they had more production out of dead people can't work. And that was back then, the bottom line. And the rail road came out with the character. And it was called a funny-looking little man with coveralls on. And he was called Mr. X Edent. And if you keep him away from your workplace, well, you wouldn't have any accidents. So to speak. So it was a careful, colorful little character. We had what you call towels to wipe with. And it had Mr. accident on there to remember to stay safe. And so that's probably one of the incidents of this gentleman getting killed down in the

yard here.