I've Been Working On the Railroad Part 4

The Keypunch operator

During the late 1970’s, the BN used a  yard management software called C.O.M.P.A.S.S. which involved the high technology of the time, the IBM punch card. Every work station that had responsibility for reporting anything to C.O.M.P.A.S.S. was outfitted with a IBM 029 Keypunch machine. The machine itself had room for a stack of about 500 cards to process, as well as an output tray, catchbasin for the square dots that resulted in the punching of the holes, as well as a full QUERTY Keyboard with a numeric pad on the side. .  It also had a dupe key which would duplicate the previous card’s input data.  To make the operator’s task easier, the machine could be programmed by using a Cylindered drum with a prepunched card on it. This would automatically stop the cards at the location where the operator would need to input data. Depending on the task being performed, we had a choice of several drums.

The theory of reporting everything to C.O.M.P.A.S.S.  was to have an accurate paper record of what was out in the rail yard at any given time. Some tasks would generate a response for the next station. It was the Keypunch operator’s job to report all train arrivals and departures to C.O.M.P.A.S.S.  If you were reporting a departure, you typed the departure time and date into the header card, and fed it and the train consist cards to the printer/computer. This would read the time, and the card consist, process it so those rail cars were no longer at your station’s responsibility. A list was printed out and filed as an outbound train. The next station down the line would then receive their deck of cards from their printer/computer so they could perform the arrival procedure. If the train was merely passing through, the arrival and departure would be reported  within seconds of each other. The times were gotten from the train crew as they reported their physical location to the dispatcher. Reporting an arrival was similar and would transfer the cars’ location to your station’s responsibility.  To make things work easier, each station was designated a station code which also generated a numeric tag, an industry was designated a numeric tag. Punch cards are limited in the data you can input into them.

At 17^th St. yard office, the keypunch operator also needed to input the data from the markup of the manifest clerk for each train. This would entail putting the destination tags into the punch cards so that when a list was printed out, the yardmaster would be able to plan his work with his switch crews to get the cars in the correct destination whether they would be going to a local industry for loading or unloading or on the next train out of town.  Finally, the keypunch operator also received the carmen’s report on each train reflecting the cars that would need to go to the shop tracks for repair. Again, these needed to be reported to C.O.M.P.A.S.S. so they would print out on the track list given to the yardmaster.

IBM Keypunch Machine

17^th St  keypunch operator also did the arrivals and departures for the unit trains out of Allouez, empties going to the mines and loads returning. Since they were primarily unit trains, the BN just had 3 decks of cards (one for each plant destination, Hibbtac, National Tac, and Butler Tac) to save a little on the number of cards being used. Most nights, the keypunch operator job was quite busy and occasionally the chief clerk would send you out to assist the yard clerk with his duties of crew transport of verifying trains.

When the keypunch operator was finished reporting to C.O.M.P.A.S.S. they would run a switch list of the track for the yardmaster and give the deck of cards to the rack clerk so they could be placed on the proper track in the rack.