The Milwaukee Road called it a "walk and change" you would bring your train into the crew change point and while it kept rolling along very slowly the outbound crew would get on and you would get off. The company Officials used to be proud that the XL Special could go from Chicago to Tacoma and never stop.As you can well imagine this practice went on day in day out even when injuries occurred or other incidents took place such as the inbound Engineer getting off and the outbound missing the front end having to grab onto another unit and work his way back up with NO ONE at the controls. In the photo above outbound West End Engineer Ronny Bogert is aboard while inbound Dick(Pepsi)Pierce is about to get off with his ever apparent Pepsi(16oz,glass) bottle in his overall jacket pocket. It appears deadheads were riding as more guys were getting off the rear units. This practice was condoned buy the company and the unions till somebody got seriously injured and litigation occurred. I watched in horror as a caboose crew was changing on the fly on an eastbound one day and when the rear Brakeman grabbed for the headend of the caboose he fell and got rolled underneath only by grabbing the rail did he pull himself out from under in time. The train was stopped by the Conductor pulling the air from the rear platform and a drawbar was gotten in the middle of the train but the Brakeman was OK.
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