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Fall/Winter 2006
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Golden: The Hub of Our Coal Business
Crafty Carmen: From left, Roland Corteau, Harry Dimaulo, and
Bruce Dudgeon are highly-skilled shop floor workers in Golden B.C.
Through good times and bad, there's no denying the impact
the coal business has had, and continues to have on the railway's fortunes.
The 2,240-kilometre circuit, from mines to tidewater and return, passes through some of the most
demanding, albeit beautiful, topography on the continent, with intermittent horrendous weather to match.
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Heavy Haul: A coal unit train moves up the
Windermere subdivison to Golden.
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But the relentless operational challenges presented by CPR's heaviest haul have inspired innovative solutions aplenty.
Coal trains pioneered unit train technology - with in-train "slave" units run by
"Locotrol" from the front-end locomotive, and unique rotary couplers that allow each car to be
revolved upside down to unload quickly at the port terminal, and minimize turnaround times, without ever uncoupling
from the train.
The hub of the coal route, at the junction of the Windermere and Mountain subdivisions, is our yard and car shop in
Golden, B.C., where an additional locomotive - as often as not, one of the new GE Evolution series units - is added to
each coal unit train to power it up for the assault on the majestic Selkirk mountains. There may have been a softening
in the coal business during 2006, but in Golden the extra capacity has quickly filled with necessary warranty work and
car modifications, and the heavy scheduled maintenance that never ends.
In a corner of the car shop, there's a meeting area unofficially known as "The Whistle Stop", where we
caught up with process manager Ken McKinnon discussing a job with Harry Dimaulo, Roland Corteau, and Bruce Dudgeon,
who said with a chuckle that the locker against the wall had all the tools they need, from safety gloves to dentures.
Harry, Roland, and Bruce are just three of the carmen working shifts, 24/7, to quickly and efficiently fix a defect
in each of the 1,200 aluminum coal cars that operate alongside about 1,000 of our older steel-body cars.
The work looks easy these days, all things considered: a car is rolled into the shop, a work platform that
incorporates a full range of tools and safety devices is lifted from the shop floor and lowered into the car,
modifications are safely made, and the platform is raised from the finished car to be lowered into the next one in the
line. What once threatened to be an expensive and potentially dangerous refit has now been reduced to a smooth and
methodical process.
But devising that process, and in particular the platform that brings it all together, was, in Bruce's words,
"not a walk in the park". the problem arose when cracks appeared where the K-shaped internal
bracing meets the car walls that prevent them from spreading under the pressure of the enormous loads they carry
routinely. In the worst cases, pieces were in danger of falling from the cars while unloading.
"The bolt holes in the side wall braces were punched rather than drilled out by the car manufacturer", Harry
said, "resulting in an internal structural weakness that caused the braces to crack and break over prolonged
periods of stress".
The challenge was to remove the awkwardness and danger of doing the refit within the confined space of a coal car
body. Using no small amount of ingenuity, employees on the shop floor designed and engineered the moveable platform -
dubbed Sky Lab #1 - that allows about one and a half cars per shift to be modified, day and night, safely and
effectively.
That's a good thing because, by the time this warranty work is complete, all 1,200 cars will have cycled through the
shop for the refit.
"Harry and Steve Swaffield, who's now on another shift, were the engineers, fabricators and welders", said
Bruce with pride. "I'm more of the process guy because I've been around the longest, so they come to me for stuff
like that". He gives Roland the nod for being the guy on their team who's most concerned about safety.
Not suprisingly, the work Harry, Steve, and Bruce did on Sky Lab earned them Ingenuity Awards, as well as the respect
of their managers and peers.
"It was an excellent piece of execution excellence by our employees", said Trevor Roman, mechanical service
manager at Golden. "Many considerations had to be taken into account to ensure all the necessary safety features
and tools required to do the task could be attached to the platform. And upon completion, it had to be monitored and
certified to handle airborne particulates, emissions, and potential oxygen deficiencies during the
plasma-cutting portion of the work.
"It represents a success story that we are very proud of - in terms of the engagement and ingenuity of our
employees, and in delivering to our business needs".
Clean Consist: A coal train set of new aluminum cars
enters the yard at Golden, B.C., gleaming in the early morning sun.
It seems innovation is alive and well in Golden, as is a social consciousness. As we were preparing this issue of
Momentum to go to press, our folks in Golden were not only continuing to keep coal traffic fluid, as business nudges
back and more unit trains return to service, but were also carrying out a campaign to benefit their community through
the United Way.
"We had a tremendous response from the workers - more than we ever expected", Don Osachoff, CPR locomotive
engineer and United Way coordinator, was quoted in the "Golden Star", after a three-day
barbecue for all three shifts that pushed contributions past the $15,000 mark.
"These numbers show people are feeling good about their jobs", said Linda Yule, executive director for the
United Way of North Okanagan Columbia Shuswap, "feeling comfortable and wanting to make a difference in their
community".
This Canadian Pacific Spanner article
is copyright 2006 by the Canadian Pacific Railway and is reprinted here with their
permission. All photographs, logos, and trademarks are the property of the Canadian Pacific Railway
Company.
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