ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW

Eldon Whitworth, CF7 Program Coordinator

Interview was conducted August 7, 1996 at the home of Eldon Whitworth, CF7 program Coordinator by Cary F. Poole. Mr. Whitworth was asked to introduce himself and the following transcriptions are verbatim the dialogue which follows.

Eldon Whitworth: I was a boilermaker, built the first CF7, was promoted to program coordinator and then to assistant general foreman, Cleburne Shop, Santa Fe.

CFP: Who determined where and what to cut from the F car unit body?

EW: Mr. Lee Townsley, assistant mechanical engineer out of Topeka came in and said he wanted to cut right from the top of the windshield and right behind the electrical cabinet and take everything else off - strip it. That was really the last time we heard from him as far as the building part process. He left everything else to us but he wanted to save that part of the cab.

CFP: So from that point on Cleburne really took over and started determining what was really going to be involved in the rebuild?

EW: Right.

CFP: Do you remember what it cost to go to the conversion from the F-unit to the CF7 and approximately how much was Santa Fe trying to save, say, versus buying a new locomotive?

EW: Well, at that unit, that first unit, was finagling around like we did with some of the material, steel, it cost $60,000.00 to build and at that time, the new locomotive of that class, or GP class, was running about $150,000.00 to $400,00.00 according to type.

CFP: Did you find many of the materials around the Cleburne Shop?

EW: We, on the materials of steel and everything, yes, we got some of it and charged it out to the car department. And all of the other electrical equipment was bought new. We upgraded the electrical system to the most modern that would fit in that locomotive - that could be used with type power.

CFP: How many men were employed on the project and what was the peak year of production?

EW: I would say around '78 or '79 we were about peak. And of course this would include the GP7s and GP9s. We had about 120 men on the conversions.

CFP: What was different about the first two CF7s from all the others?

EW: Really, the first CF7 had, basically, it had the dynamic braking which no other unit had after that . The 2648 had a straight hood that we built the jig and built ourselves in the Cleburne shops. And it had a modification of the steps. It gave you more room on the bottom step for the switchman to stand. And put the steps, designed the steps, back further into the step-well. And that was basically the difference in the units. Basically kept, except on the modification of the cab, kept the same design on the steps from the 2648 on. Of course, specifically at the electrical system, it was just upgraded to the most modern system that we had, including your controls in the cab.

CFP: As far as you know, all the CF7s were MU capable

EW: All of them MU capable.

CFP: What was done, specifically, to the brake system?

EW: Well, the old F7s and F3s had 24RL air and we brought them up to 26RL air. And the air plate itself was designed and patterned by two mechanics - a Coppersmith by the name of Wiley and a coppersmith by the name of Sinclair did all of the work and the design work to make it easier to work on the locomotive, to get to the air equipment.

CFP: So, all that was done there in Cleburne, too, meaning...

EW: Everything. The entire rebuild program was done in Cleburne. The only thing that wasn't done in Cleburne was the side seals which was fabricated in Topeka.

CFP: How many of the units had the round cab?

EW: I believe that went from a 2649 down to the 2638.

CFP: So that was, what, eleven (11) units?

EW: About eleven (11) units.

CFP: What was involved in going away from the round cab to the more angled cab?

EW: Number one was air conditioning. We went to Prime and Vapor air conditioning on top. Number two, we were having to buy a special door for going front and rear door to the cab. We were having them have it special made because it was shorter than most and we could buy the standard door cheaper butwe had to have more room for it to go in the opening. Also, we had lowered the floor on the engineer's side, about the 2642, I think, right in that era, and after you do that kind of work and going to the sliding windows, of cutting out that I-beam that was on the original cab, that type work, it was cheaper to build a cab from the ground up. So we started taking the car body off of it and everything and that was when Topeka found out about it on.. We were building the 2628, we were building it when the people out of the engineering department, Mr. Lee Townsley had already been promoted, but the new man come in and we didn't check with him to make the modifications. I had asked Mr. Chastain, who was the assistant chief mechanical officer - system about modifying the cab and he never did get back with me so I took it on my own and modified it. And when we were in the process of building the 2628 they showed up and Mr. Cramer, shop superintendent, came in the office that evening about 3:30 and told me we better step out there and help him defend my job because they were trying to fire me over that modification without notifying Topeka or getting their okay on it. So we did satisfy them on that occasion. We did have to go in and put more reinforcement on the sides, which really wasn't necessary, but that's what they wanted so to appease them we put it on. It also caused us to have troubles with cracking over the electrical cabinet because it made the cab too rigid.

CFP: When you were working in the Cleburne Shops did you ever hear them refer to these angled cabs as "Topeka cabs"?

EW: No, they were not Topeka cabs. They were stricktly Cleburne designed, like to cost me my job. And Jack MacFarland, which is one of the mechanical engineers out of Topeka, was who I worked with. After that when we got ready for a modification and I would call him and tell him what I was going to do and which unit I was going to do it on and he would get a memo out that this modification was to be done starting with a certain locomotive number, which I had already given him, therefore, by the time the memo got to us, we already had anywhere from three to six units on the road, by the time the memo got down. But that's the way we worked that so I would stay out of trouble with the head of the engineering department. And, also that air conditioner you had to have that much height on that angled cab to give you the headroom inside and that also cut out that round bar up there that the engineers, train crew, were always knocking their head off on. And most of the crew members that I've talked to, they liked to run the CF7, they liked it and switched to it because they could see the interior switchman without having to stick their head out of the window.

CFP: Do you remember how many units retained the crank operated windows?

EW: From the 2649 to, I believe it was the 2642 or the 2641 is where we started putting a slide window in. And then those units were brought back in and modified also. So at the end of the program, there wasn't any of the F units with any of the roll type, crank type, windows left. They were all slide in windows and all of them had bullet proof glass at the last; sides and front. I don't know which unit number we had to put those on but that was a Federal regulation.

CFP: Can you explain the decision to go from the two (2) to the four (4) exhausts?

EW: That was mainly due to the fires in the dry country and sparks coming out of the original type. We had spark arresters on top of those originals but that still didn't stop the carbon from getting hot and coming off red-hot and if you've ever seen one at night, you have a stream looking like a red-hot wire coming out, but Farr Manufacturing built the first set that we put on and we found out that we could build them for about one-third, to buy the parts from them and build them ourselves for about one-third by modifying the present stacks. All of the GP7s and the CF7s had the four stack configuration coming out of Cleburne when they were repaired in Cleburne.

CFP: Was a final inspection done on each unit, and if so, what did it entail? Were the Cleburne employees or, say, superintendent...

EW: We had regular inspectors for each craft. Had their own inspectors.

CFP: But there wouldn't be, say, somebody, say, coming out...

EW: We had Federal, no, nobody, they were done right there in Cleburne. And, of course it would go through anywhere from eight to sixteen hours on the load test machine at which time any electrical problems going through the load box...problems are going through the load box ...you're putting them under the same conditions you have on the road except they're standing still. And then we had a boilermaker inspector that inspected all the welds, inspected the entire car body to make sure that everything was welded, make sure everything was tight. We had the air test men that run regular Federal air tests on it to make sure it was holding air like it was supposed to and then, of course, the electricians and machinists both loaded the mechanical and electrical part of it. And then, generally, it's first run would be from Cleburne to Dallas with an ASDE man riding it. Then it would come back to the shop with a full list of what he found and that would be repaired and put on the road for regular service.

CFP: And the gentleman you call by the initials, the guy who would come back with the punch list, who was this?

EW: ASDE

CFP: ASDE - what is that?

EW: I don't really remember what the numbers stood for. Santa Fe had a lot of them that rode locomotives. Some of them even rode the big trains out of Topeka going towards California. They were just troubleshooters. But, I don't know what the ASDE stood for. I can find out - with a phone call I can find out what they stood for. (Mr. Whitworth later supplied the title of Assistant Superintendent for diesel Engines).

CFP: Well, like Norfolk-Southern had a gentleman they called the Road Foreman for Engines..-

EW: We had a Road Foreman for Engines but he was strictly over the trainmen. This man was mechanical, a mechanical department employee.

CFP: And so he would come back with kind of a punch list saying this is the final modificaitons...

EW: Yes, this needs to be repaired - we got an oil leak here that showed up at this site. And an oil leak on a locomotive, Federally, is a no-no. You just don't - they'll shut an engine down if its got oil leaks. Or they would then. I'm not sure they're just as sticklers about it now as they were then

CFP: If not more.

EW: Yeah.

CFP: Did Santa Fe place the project in Cleburne, in your opinion, to save jobs or simply to save money?

EW: Well, it saved money. Anyone who knows railroads knows they don't save jobs to save money. That's where they make their budget. They'll cut jobs to make budget; always have and I guess they always will. The reason for it being in Cleburne: the F7 unit was offered to EMD and also to GE to rebuild and convert. The engineers in both companies said it couldn't be done and our officials in Chicago and Topeka thought it could be done. And when they called Mr. C.W. Cramer, which was the shop superintendent, and asked him if Cleburne could do it, and I've been told these were his words, he said, "Hell, yes, send it down, we can do it," without conferring with any of his supervisors. And when the first F7 rolled in the shops on track nine (9) in the boilershop, I was told that was going to be cut down and we were going to convert it. The only job I ever asked for in my life on the railroad, volunteered for, I asked to cut it down and rebuild it. My supervisor obliged me and gave me a helper and as soon as the interior and everything mechanical was stripped out of it and electrical parts were taken out, what they thought they might want to save, then we started cutting where Mr. Townsley had told us to cut it. The first one was taken off after the cab carpenters had taken off all the panels where we could get to the superstructure. We started cutting, myself and Phil MacVickers, we cut the car body off the back behind the electrical cabinet first. We took it off all in one unit, all at one time. Of course the hatches were off but we picked it up and loaded it in a scrap car - all in one unit. Then we cut the nose off. Then we sent it to sandblast and it was sandblasted and brought back and I went to work on it. They wanted collison posts in the nose of it to protect the engineers because of the short nose so if it did hit anything, a truck or anything, it would have something there to stop it. So we used eight-inch (8") I-beams with reinforced bar of one-half inch (1/2") wall of tubing three and one-half inches (3 1/2") diameter on the outside, one-half inch (1/2") wall and then we built the nose around that and every CF7 built the nose was put on in that fashion.

CFP: So, the nose was built around the collision post.

EW: Yes, around the collision post. At the 2638, the first one we built the cab new, put the slope on, it was built in what was then called a coach shop and we found that all of the electrical cabinets coming out of the F7s were not the same width. They would range anywhere from one-half inch to one and one-half inch difference in widths. So then we started building completely new electrical cabinets to fit on it because it was cheaper to do that than it was to try to prefit and keep up with the electrical cabinet that came out of that particular unit.

CFP: And these varied from one-half inch to one inch?

EW: One-half inch to one inch and sometimes to one and one-quarter inch on the old F7s.. But after the 2638 we built all the electrical cabinets. They had a sound problem at the back and that's when we moved the horn forward and also put insulation, sound bearing insulation, in the sides of the cab and on all electrical doors and up behind the electrical cabinets. Above the electrical cabinets we put a lead and sponge-type rubber sound barrier and all of the doors behind the electrical cabinets, it was about one inch thick, and had a sheet of lead type material on it to quieten the cab down. Of course the cut lever design where you could stand in the stepwells and cut it we first built on the CF7 on the first unit.

EMD and GE were not allowed in the shop with cameras nor could they stand long enough to sketch one or measure one. They didn't get that design until the unit went on the road and they could get pictures of it and then they started using it on their locomotives. We were very protective of that locomotive when we were building it because EMD and GE came down quite often with that purpose - to try to look at it and see what we were doing.

The update on the electrical equipment that two mechanics involved was Jack Raza and Marshall Basham. They conferred with a fellow by the name of John Culberson who was with the instruction car, well, he travelled with the instruction car on upgrade of all electrical equipment on new locomotives. He would bring that car around to different shops and these two people kept in direct contact with him to see what was new, if they could use it with this power and if it would fit in the area that they needed to put it in. That was on the first one. After that it was pretty well set what we were going to use. They tried to put everything in the locomotive where is was accessible and easy to work on because a lot of the GEs and EMDs were not easy to work on.

CFP: Do you know if there was ever a time when say, the engineers, actual road engineers, were brought in and asked their opinion regarding...



EW: We generally got good feedback from the engineers from the roundhouse or the running repair shop, or running maintenance shop down there. We called it a roundhouse but it wasn't a roundhouse, it was a ramp. They call it the ramp now, but engineers generally had a gripe sheet when they came in to a shop and we had good feedback from the engineers. The short hood and long hood, both of them were...the short nose, the short hood, we called it the short nose, was prefabricated right there on the unit after we set the cab.

CFP: And this was where you wrapped it around the collision post?

EW: This is where we wrapped it around the collision post. And the long hood was built on three (3) jigs - two (2) jigs for the sides, one jig for each side, and it was set up and bolted on a jig and fabricated in the boilershop there. Once it was finished it was picked up and set on the moving cars, little cars to move it out to the shop where it could be picked up and set on the unit and then it was ready. When it left the prefab shop it had the radiators and everything was in it. Radiators, fans, cooling fans - were all in it.

CFP: So, literally, it just had to be lowered on top of the car body.

EW: Yes.

CFP: But, I mean that concluded it- once they lowered it and the electrical hookup,

EW: They had to hook it up and everything but that was basically the last step. Of course, after that it was wheeled out after all the electrical work was finished and everything. Most times the hood was set on long before the electrical work was finished on it.

CFP: How extensive was the rebuild on the prime movers and the traction motors?

EW: All the traction motors were taken out of the F7s and sent to San Bernadino, California. The motors were rewound, rebuilt and shipped back to Cleburne along with generators, the alternators, or auxiliary generator. They had auxiliary generators and not alternators. They were rebuilt in the Cleburne shops and rewound completely. The engines were torn completely down, live added and completely rebuilt from the ground up. All the liners and heads, the heads all had new valves put in them, valve springs, had rebuilt injectors that were rebuilt there in the Cleburne shops. All the work was done in the Cleburne shop other than the traction motor rewind and major generator rewind which were done in San Bernadino.

CFP: With the CF7 it has what some people say is an unusually large looking cab. Was that by design? Were you looking to house a certain number of crew members?

EW: It was made - at that time it was a three (3) man crew in the front. You had your head brakeman, the fireman, and the engineer and that was what it was designed to hold and it's one hundred ten inches (110") wide so it's the same as any other locomotive. If you look on the ...Most locomotives on the out to out it's one hundred ten inches (110").

CFP: I think you already answered this, but all units did leave the shop having MU capability.

EW: Right, yes.

CFP: Do you remember the gear ratio?

EW: No, I don't. I tried to get hold of Jack and he couldn't remember what the gear ratio was and he was going to call me back but he never has done that and as soon as I find out, well, I'll... If he can remember, because it wasn't one of my main interests. I had a truck man down there, a truck foreman, that took care of that so I didn't worry about it.

CFP: Well, Santa Fe is pretty good about stenciling the gear ratio on the side of the locomotive and I think it's still one of the few railroads that still continue to do that so if you can get the information I would be glad to include it.

EW: I've forgotten...

CFP: 18:62 or so...

EW: That sounds right but I'll have to wait and see...

CFP: Could you give me some detailed information on the 2649, the first unit. Why was it different? What were you looking at? Were there any things that you may have added to that unit that you found were too costly to add to the other units?

EW: Well, the main thing we did to that unit was to cut all of that nose plate off on the top of the main frame from the front center casting out to the end of the unit and we took out a one-half inch (1/2") plate and added a one and one-quarter inch (1 1/4") plate. That was the most extensive part and we found that we didn't really need to do that. That was our first thought. My supervisor at the time, Mr. Vernon Bowwear, thought that would be better than trying to depend on what was already underneath and of course after we cut all that plating off we found that it was still in good shape and it saved trying to weld that center casting because you had to weld your coupler housing back up underneath there which took a lot of time. In fact, it took one man about sixteen (16) hours of hard welding, overhead welding, to weld a coupler housing, directory housing, back in place. So we cut out that and we cut out all the cut down time of taking that one-half inch plate out because there were a lot ribs underneath ther that you had to trim out. We figured if it lasted that long like it was, then we were putting back as much strength superstructure-wise, on the front end that was already there. So there wasn't any need to put that one and one-quarter inch plate on it.

CFP: Okay, and can you tell me the story behind why this unit ended up with the only set of dynamic brakes on?

EW: We had a scrap hood that was a wrecked unit and we had saved the hood and it had dynamic braking and so we decided we would use that hood because it would fit our locomotive. But we had shorten it seven or eight inches. We had to cut the bottom off of it and that's the reason it ended up with dynamic braking - because we had the hood available and we were running a little bit short of time of when they wanted it.

That unit had several hundred miles on it just from the boiler shop over to the display track in the machine shop. When the dignitaries would come in from Topeka and Chicago - it had a full paint job on it before it was ever finished, before it ever had an electrical cabinet in it or a floor or anything. It would be taken over there and set up so they could walk through. Now that went on every couple of months so that would stop us about two days from working on it to get it ready to put the hoods on and everything back on it and then take it over there and then when we brought it back to the boilershop to work on it, we had to take everything off of it again. So, it was a slow process of trying to show off what we were doing and we always joked that we hoped that they wouldn't reach up there 'cause it had the electrical panel, a mock electrical panel put on it and we always joked and kidded each other and we hoped they wouldn't reach up there and hit the "Start" button because there wasn't anything to start in it - 'cause there wasn't any engine in it.

CFP: Do you remember the approximate amount of time - from the time you were told to begin working on this first unit to when you finally got it out on the road?

EW: I believe it was, I want to say, actually, I was thinking, we started in October of '69, I believe-- I'm not real sure on that, but I believe that was it and it was March or April, you might have the date, when it first hit, but it took us that long. Like I say, myself with one helper put all the sheet metal work on it. All the car body work we put it on in the daytime. We would tack it up and then the first month or so all the boilermakers wanted to weld on it and they wanted the overtime. After that, they got tired of the overtime and from that point on, myself with a helper or another boilermaker would tack all the material on that we wanted, that we figured we could weld up in one night, and I would come on and start welding on it about 3:30 in the afternoon and weld until 11:30 and then D.C. Mechanis, who was later set up as a supervisor, he would come on his shift, second shift, he would come on at 11:30 and and weld until 7:30 the next morning. And then we would start putting more steel back on it and do the same thing again.

CFP: And this other gentleman's name again?

EW: McCandless. He was later set up as boilermaker supervisor. Later on I'll give you a list of supervisors that were over the different departments when we started and the ones when we finished because a lot of them retired during the program.

CFP: When you began to cut the car bodies off, did you find any surprises? You mentioned that the electrical cabinets were different.

EW: Well, that was after we had changed the cabs, but, no, we didn't find that much because Cleburne being the major repair shop, we repaired a lot of wrecks and prior to that we had been in... There wasn't too much of the F7 car body that we hadn't cut into at one time or another so we knew how it was built and we knew where it had to be cut.

CFP: So EMD was pretty consistent in the construction of these original units?

EW: As far as everything that on went on them, yeah. As far as dimension, no, they could vary. I don't know, I think a lot of their equipment was prefab somewhere else and shipped in so you did find the variations in places in width and also in the length. The biggest variation we found was in the electrical cabinet. We found that with our cabs, when we built to fit the size of one electrical cabinet it wouldn't fit the rest of them so we started building our own electrical cabinets.

CFP: Were you surprised that the project lasted eight years or did you think it would go on further?

EW: Well, we were surprised they even went ahead in to the second year. Of course, I was set up in that first year as program coordinator and later they changed the title. Well, first I was set up as supervisor and then went to a program coordinator when Moe Emmy, which designed all of our pick up devices and helped set up the first schedule on the three or four (3 or 4) locomotives, the sequence of the work and the daily schedule. He helped set that up and I worked with him on that and then when he left and went to Topeka and that's when I went up and took his job as program coordinator. He designed almost all of our lifting devices to pick up the long hood. To pick up the cab, now we designed our own cab pick up because we weren't taking the cab off while he was there. But on handling the electrical cabinet, he designed the pick up for it. Moe was a great help to us.

CFP: Are you surprised to see this many of the CF7s still running?

EW: Yes, I am. I'm surprised to see there are that many railroads in the United States. But, that's understandable with the major railroads cutting out their short lines and their feeder lines, it's understandable that somebody's going to do the work.

CFP: Right. Yeah someone, the last count I saw, approximately one hundred ninety (190) of the two hundred thirty-three are still running after, what twenty-something years?

EW: Well, 1970 was the first one.

CFP: Do you remember any official from Santa Fe ever presenting, say, a citation or award or offering praise?

EW: No, the only one we ever got praise from was the shop superintendent. And he was the kind of guy that if he said, "Build that locomotive on top of that building," we'd have been caught trying. We might not have been able to build it up there, but we would have been caught trying.

CFP: And he was?-

EW: C.W. Cramer. General foreman at the time was Frank Bowles and the assistant supeintendent of the shop was Curtis Mozier.

CFP: Were there ever, say, an official set of working schematics or drawings that you, that the crews, operated by?

EW: Not that I know of. There were some schematics - electrical - on it and some piping. But see on the Santa Fe, the train crew didn't work on the locomotives, they weren't allowed to. But, as far as I know, there were some electrical schematics and there might have been some air schematics. I do remember seeing some electrical schematics drawn up.

CFP: But you would never have seen, say, any scale drawings that told you where to cut?

EW: No.

CFP: It was all just conveyed verbally?

EW: It was ours; we built it. I kept a spiral notebook, stenographer's notebook, and as I made parts, I put the dimensions down and I sketched it out and then when a new man came along, he would take that book and make it his own to work from and each area, such as the electrical cabinet, the long hood, they all had sketch books that they had sketched out what the major dimensions were and that's the way it was left on that job. If a new man was bumped in, well, he went to that book and after he made a couple of 'em, he knew what parts to pick out of the rack because they were all precut inour shop there and preformed right there in the shop. All of our shapes, we bought. The angle iron and tubing and the I-beams and the H-beams, we bought those, but any shape sheets that had to be made were made right there in the shop.

CFP: Any idea what might have happened to the spiral notebook?

EW: I imagine it went the way everything else went when that unit left. Everybody said, "Well, we don't need it anymore," and chunked it.

CFP: So, a notebook was pretty much kept for each of the locomotives?

EW: No, just one set was made from the first two. After we built the second one, well, everything was pretty well the same. And when we did change the cab, we just told the man there building the cabs what changes we needed and he put it on his notebook and we went from there.

CFP: Anything else you can add that we may not have covered in the questions?

EW: Well, just the window modifications. We put that in there at the request of the engineer. The little short one, we put that in there at the request of the engineer so he could see the switchman better without having to lean up far to look out the window and then the bullet proof glass came along and we went to the long window in front of the engineer. We did start reinforcing all of the four corners where the mainframe and the center plates were welded together. That was a weak point in the F7s and to get away from that, it was the suggestion of the DOT man, I can't remember his name - nice guy, very helpful on things that the government would check you on and fine you for - and we decided to put those gussets or reinforcements in that area on all locomotives. The fuel tanks, after they were steamed - I'll go throught the rebuild procedure in just a minute- the fuel tanks at first they dropped a couple of 'em - the nuts came off the anchor bolts and we dropped 'em. So we went back in underneath and put safety hangers underneath to hold that fuel tank up even if the bolts got loose you could still get back without any problem. The battery boxes had to be rebuilt, had to be modified to get underneath that frame, underneath the side seats. Topeka, at one point, and I don't know which locomotive it happened, we got to having quite a few noses bent down and rear ends bent down from the center plates back and front. Come to find out that they were getting, the store department in Topeka had bought some regular mild steel I-beams instead of using Tri-10 steel which was the original and so instead of having to cut several, I don't know how many we built that way, but several of them had that mild-steel I-beam and we went to a modification what we called a "Fish plate" which boxed in the I-beam from the fuel tank forward and from the fuel tank back. That took a one-half inch steel plate all that distance cut and welded in on both sides. After the unit was straightened, we'd put those in there and if it had been bent, we also put what they call a "Dutch plate" against the I-beam, web of the I-beam, and then put that reinforcement right at the edge of the flange. You'll be able to see that in a lot of thee pictures. The two originals, the '49 and the '48, I don't remember whether we put those on there or not. I think we did but it had Tri-10 steel I-beams. And because they could get the mild steel so much cheaper, Topeka shops and store departments decided they'd make 'em out of mild-steel and it just won't work. Because on heavy impact the nose of 'em would bend down - the mild-steel side. The side seals were put on there to take the place of the superstructure.

The locomotives would be in the shop from the time it hit to be pumped and steamed till the time it got back in house, or was released for duty, was approximately 45 days. We brought it in and pumped all the fuel and drained the water, pumped all the oil, steamed the fuel tank and brought it in the house and stripped everything out of it. Took the engine - everything out. From there it went to the strip track on the outside, north of the boilershop and was cut down to nothing but the mainframe and from there it went to sandblast, or later when they outlawed sandblast, it went to gritblast and the frame was gritblasted and cleaned up and then brought back in to the shop and it went into line and when it was put on station, everything was brought ..END OF SIDE ONE

Up until 1976, when the coach shop burnt, what we called the coach shop, the machine shop and the boiler shop were identical buildings with a transfer table between them. Our major heavy repairs on regular locomotives were done in the machine shop. The rebuild program was all in the boiler shop. The blacksmith shop was in the boilershop building. From track eight through 24 in the boiler shop. Of course, we stripped them outside.

CFP: The track numbers again.

EW: Eight through twenty-four; I believe that's right.

CFP: Can you tell me about the process on how you did the rebuild. I believe you said they were on parallel tracks.

EW: On parallel tracks. Course both shops had a big overhead crane - huge - you could pick a locomotive up with it. At a later date, we put a second crane in, a smaller crane, 'cause we were waiting so much on the big crane. It was just too much work for one singel crane - overhead crane. When it was in position, the locomotive was tied down, anchored down, to what we called a tie down and that was to keep it steady and keep the frame level and a three-quarter inch (3/4") camber was put in the center of the mainframe; that was to help take part of the weight of the engine when it went back in there. That three-quater inch camber was from center plate to center plate. And then after that, the cab, the electrical cabinet, the stacks, the exhaust stacks, the air plate, battery box and fuel tank were all built in the coach shop building.

The long hood was built in the boiler shop area. After 1976 and the fire in the coach shop, when it burnt, we had to squeeze things together in the boiler shop and we built the fuel tanks, battery boxes, stacks, and air plate and framework for the electrical cabinets were all made in the boiler shop. The electrical components were put in the electrical cabinet in what was then the battery shop area. The control stand, we did build a new conrol stand and patterned it after the GP7 control stand - made a few changes - the new control stands were built in the boiler shop. All the parts for the control stand, metal parts, were built right there in the Cleburne shop. Like I said, there was no parts farmed out - we did all the construction work right there in the Cleburne shop.

CFP: When you were doing these rebuild programs, did you work in conjunction with the San Bernadino shops that were also doing the switcher rebuilding programs?

EW: No; we had a lot of trouble with San Bernadino. Had trouble getting our generators back, had trouble getting our traction motors back when we needed them. It's real interesting, if a locomotive hadn't been released, we couldn't put it on what we called the 1201 - a report that went to Chicago every night-waiting material because it hadn't been released, it wasn't a locomotive. So we found out that some of the locomotives that were coming in over there that had the same electrical equipment - which is generally what we were held up on - would have the same equipment on it, we'd take one that was coming in the shop, pull that part off, put it on our CF7 and then tie that unit up waiting on material and that way we could release our CF7 on time.

Mr. Cramer did not handle the calls on why our locomotives were not out on time or released when it was supposed to be, those calls were referred to me. It's kind of hard sometime to explain to people in Chicago that have never been in a shop that you're waiting on material. They think that the supplier just gets it there whenever you need it. But that isn't true. After a locomotive gets on the road, if you get it waiting on material, you were costing the company money so they in turn - Chicago- would get hold of the supplier and we would get our parts real quick. That's one way we got to where could handle keeping their locomotives because if we were a day late putting one out on the road when it was scheduled, and we sent them a schedule every year at the beginning of the program for each year what locomotives with the lead-off number and the release date and what day we would need a locomotive in the shop to get it out on time. We ran under three schedules and that was part of my job to schedule to work per day and the sequence of work. In other words, the sequence of work was when the electricians could get in there, when the boilermaker could get in there on the job and so on - when each craft could get in and do his work without working on top of each other 'cause you didn't get anything done when you got them all in there trying to work at once. We set up on a three day release, one every three days and we also a schedule to release one every four days and a schedule to release one every five days. So if we started getting way ahead, and we would release them, if we got way ahead then we would cut back. We wouldn't cut manpower but we would cut back on what we had to do each day to maintain a release time. But most of our time was releasing a unit every four days and of course that also included, at a later date, the GP7 locomotive. You'd release a CF7 one day and the next day you'd probably release a GP7. They didn't stay in the shop as long. You had to coordinate both programs at the same time in the same building.

CFP: Did you witness, what I've been told they are called, CF7 pullouts? Where several units would be hooked together and would leave Cleburne. I mean, was that done more for fanfare or was that an often occurrence?

EW: The most I've ever seen was five (5) hooked together and that was for power. I never did notice Santa Fe do anything for fanfare. If they did something like that they had a reason behind it and mostly they needed the power or was moving the power. Say going South out of here they might need power at Temple to take trains West out of Temple. So they would hook CF7s and GP7s combined and send them down there, but they would be working on their way down. When they got to Temple they would cut out what they need and then go East and West out of Temple. You still see that today on the mainline route. I know, I just witnessed that. I mean you'd have a very short train with five (5) big locomotives on it and you didn't need five (5) locomotives to pull that short a train. And all they were doing was moving locomotives from one point to the other for use at the other point.

CFP: With the CF7 program, I think 1500 Horse Power is what the F units came in with. Do you remember any discussions about trying to boost the Horse Power rating or were you simply trying to...

EW: I can vaguely remember it but I think it finally came around that they... They did modify the engines. They upgraded the engine. I forgot what, what was it -645-what the engine was in there so...but they did upgrade it by changing, I believe, the piston they changed the design of the piston a minor bit and upgraded that part of it.. But as far as increasing the Horse Power, I don't... The RPM shut off remained the same speed - 72 MPH remained the same on the speed recorder, the engine shut down at 72 MPH on the speed recorder, 925 RPM if that engine got over 925 RPM it shut down. 600 V on the generator - that was the same. The first air conditioning system was a Mark V built by a company in Dallas. It was a truck type air conditioner, the inside unit. The outside unit had a flywheel placed onto the front section of the air compressor and drove the Delco air conditioning compressor and that was piped to the top of the cab. We had a lot of trouble with it before we went to.. Singer and Vapor came out with a cab model. Santa Fe was the first, we were the first to put air conditioning on the locomotive.

CFP: Seeing where you operated that would almost be a necessity.

EW: I think Vapor corp., I believe, was bought out by Singer. Then of course the two air conditioning units that we ended up with were Vapor and Prime , or Vapor-Singer and Prime were the air conditioning systems. That's all. I'd like to mention these other people that had, the supervisors especially, that had something to do with it.

CFP: Okay

EW: When we started the units, Vernon Boware was the boilermaker supervisor; W. T. Whitworth, no kin to myself, was the blacksmith supervisor; J.D. Loring was the machinist supervisor over the locomotives themselves; B. D. Webb was over the sheet metal workers or pipe fitters; electrician was Austin Lee; and A. D. Beckner was the electrical shop supervisor which was in charge of rewinding our own generators and repairing any of the contacts to see if they were in proper order; Strickland, I don't remember his initials, we always called him "Strick", he was over rebuilding and cleaning and doing the heads and injectors, air compressors and air equipment - rebuilding the air equipment, he was a machinist formeman; and Don Clements was over engine rebuild; Harold Slater was load test - final inspection. At the close of the shop, at the close of the program, the supervisors were D.C. McCandlis and R. A. Lockhart, boilermakers and R. A. Lockhart also had blacksmiths.

CFP: McCandlis had what now?

EW: Boilermakers. B.D. Webb was still on pipe fitters; Austin Lee had died of a heart attack on the job and W. E. Martin came in and took all of the electrical work. Not only on the electrical cabinets but also all of the floor side elcetricians; E. P. Willig after A. D. Beckner retired, E. P. Willig took over the supervision of the electrical shop upstairs; Don Clements was still the engine rebuild; Strickland was still over the air compressors and air equipment and engine parts. I started out as a boilermaker and ended up assistant general foreman in charge of rebuild programs until we got through with GP7s and then I was cut back. The man on machines, machinist part of the rebuild program, in the rebuild itself, at the last was Dub Step. The man who handled all the truck work, seeing that the trucks were rebuilt and had the proper gear ratio and everything on them was Bullard, I can't remember his first name either. Our painter foreman and cab carpenter foreman through the entire program was Blacky Elmore. That pretty well covers the CF7 program. I can't think of anything else right now that would be of interest.

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