In the Fall of 1975 the Mopac cutover one of the largest programming changes in the railroad industry. It was said at the time, the code was more complex than that written to put a man on the moon. I was a young implementor of this system, hired to train the agents and clerks to make train and work order reportings in the new TCS program. Initially I went to Durand, Kansas and trained the three operators there, then to Ft. Smith/Van Buren for cutover. After things settled down I was told to report back to my district office thinking that I’d get a few days off (we were working 12-16 hour days during the cutover). Actually I was reassigned to Neff Yard as the cutover hadn’t gone as smoothly as planned. There were too few computers to complete the train reportings and some of the locals tieing up where taking 4-5 hours to report. So several of us were assigned to Neff until the ‘bugs’ were worked out.

Since I was the new guy on the team (and single) I was assigned third shift (11:00 pm to 7:00 am). This wasn’t too bad as the bosses were gone and the railroad settled down to a normal schedule of humping cars, reporting on the through freights and yarding the interchange cuts from the connecting lines.

As Christmas got closer, the yard office was decorated by the female clerks with a small silver tree sitting on a table and various decorations around the doors. The railroad employees like to celebrate by eating and everyone on each shift brought in their favorite dish (mostly appetizers and deserts by the women with the men contributing tubs of fried chicken). The various desks were turned into a dining tables. Someone brought in a radio and Christmas music was played, drowned out with the screeching sound of the retarders as a car was humped.

I do remember it snowed that Christmas night and although as industrial as a hump yard looks it was still a pretty scene. I rode with one of the messengers to collect waybills from one of the other railroads and was amazed how quiet Kansas City was…no radio chatter, not a lot of traffic and just an occasional switch engine working a lead or hostlers moving road power to the diesel shop.