Mr. Richard E. Scholz

Interviewed By Russell Crump

July 10, 2000

Section 3

To San Bernardino to learn Locomotives

Richard: then I was told October 2, 1961 to transfer to San Bernardino, California to get my experience on locomotives. I was going to go through the apprenticeship programs out there that they had lined up for me in Locomotive work. Some of the duties out their that I had to do was to first work with the electricians. I had to work with them in the traction motor shop. First job was cleaning generators and motors in vats and this sort of thing., scrap them out. The next job was to actually rewire traction motor armatures.

Russell: oh my!

Richard: Yea I did that

Russell: Lots of wires!

Richard: All those coils! That a tedious job tapping each coil in my hand with a little rubber mallet. Then they put varnish on it and wrap it up and this sort of thing.

Another electrical job I was involved in out in San Bernardino was as far as locomotives were concerned. I had to go out on the floor and help do a little bit of electrical wiring things on this sort on class repairs. Not to much of it their in fact I was some what short changed in that because they thought I should get more mechanical experience.

Russell: This was all diesel.

Richard: Yes All diesels

The work then was out on the floor and we were doing classified repairs. At that time the San Bernardino shop was divided into two parts. The east bay or the East building was used for EMD locomotives and the west building was used for ALCO locomotives. Wouldn't you know it I was assigned to the ALCO end. I think probably over the course of time I think probably rebuilt about all the 800's and all the PA's. Over that section of time we were over their I became intimately aquatinted with the Alco PA's and Alligators and all the 539 model switch engines which were there. Also worked in the engine governors room I believe in the summer of 1962 for several month which many years latter came back as a memory. In those years the governors on engines consisted of Woodward SI type which had a single solenoid and you found on the ALCO 539 engines were as the Alco 244 and 251 used GE electrical governor, all electric. Those were not repaired they were just sent back to GE.

On the EMD side they had Woodward governors of several configurations what we now call the PG governors which is a standard type with different modifications for different classes of power a turbo charger gets A fuel limiter and a non turbo charged one does not for example. They have different side plates and this sort of thing so there are about 14 different varieties of Woodward governors running around on the Santa Fe right now. I might add each one consists of about 244 parts so they are a kind of complicated thing. It was an extremely interesting job!

The only thing I did not get to do in San Bernardino was air Brake work, Which I wish I would have done. But at that point they did not have time for me to do that. I worked on fuel pumps for awhile Bausch fuel pumps for Alco engines. I worked on the unit injectors repairing them for EMD and also injectors for Alco engines. Then I did work on housing type roller bearings for EMD engines I worked on air compressors for EMD engines. The Gardner Denver type Air compressor for various locomotives. At that point in time I might add most of the Gardner Denver Air compressors were air-cooled where as now they are mostly water-cooled. We also had Westinghouse Air compressors, which we found on some locomotives like ALCO so I did get a chance to work on those. Lap the valves and test them on the test machine to see if they were getting enough suction on the suction side and enough pressure out of the pressure side. That way we knew the valves were seated correctly.

Then I was sent down to the Mechanical Refrigerator Car department.

We worked on MTC cars down there

Russell: Mechanical Temperature Control

Richard: Yes. We had various classes of MTC cars come down there. Most of those were either Detroit Diesel or Fairbank Morse. The refrigeration such as frigidare or Trane. The Best combination That I recall was Detroit Diesel with Trane refrigeration. I think we even had some Walkasha Engines. In fact we did Walkasha engine work for the business cars. Of course some of the MTC cars had Walkasha Engines The very early ones , experimental things.

Well Any way at that point in time I could see I was getting a lot of good mechanical experience, but that I started getting a nawing fear that my experience on the electrical side was starting to fail a little bit here. My three years was rapidly passing by. I thought hay I need some electrical experience to. So I wrote to ask about it. Well the people in the shops, superintendent of shops San Bernardino, were some what upset that I would go around them. Well I thought I better look out for my self little bit. Bill Majors head of the apprenticeships program agree that I probably should get some. So on January 1, 1963 I was moved from the San Bernardion shop to the Barstow shop.

Barstow shop section 4

Transcribed by Russell Crump