Sunday, June 15, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Training Days

More than 40 long-distance freights pass through LV daily

After switching track at the Union Pacific rail yard in Arden, conductor Larry Oliver climbs aboard a freight engine. Photo by Clint Karlsen.

They've been workin' on the railroad -- for thousands of livelong days.

And even though many Las Vegans may not notice them anymore, they're working still.

"I think a lot of people don't even know the trains run through Las Vegas," muses engineer Louie Tyler, who last month began his 42nd year with the Union Pacific Railroad. "They might come up to a railroad crossing and think, `What's that for?' "

For most of Las Vegas' history, it would have been impossible to overlook the railroad. But Amtrak's Desert Wind stopped running in 1997, severing Las Vegas' only regularly scheduled passenger rail link. And at the start of the 1990s, Union Pacific closed its downtown yard -- now the site of the Clark County Government Center and other development -- and split its freight operations between Arden, south of town, and North Las Vegas.

The North Las Vegas yard handles automobiles: new models bound for Southern Nevada dealers and old rental fleets bound for used-car lots around the nation.

In the Arden yard, however, the business is freight cars: tankers and boxcars, dozens of them, awaiting transfer to local firms or long-distance trains.

Reaching the Arden yard, tucked into an industrial area off Blue Diamond Road, requires a drive down a succession of rutted, dead-end roads slicing through the desert. (Unlike the Union Pacific's main line, which stretches 11 miles, straight and true, into downtown Las Vegas.)

The railroad crews gather in a faded-yellow building that's reminiscent of, if bigger than, the cozy cottages Las Vegas' first railroad built in 1909 and 1910.

One of the workers sits outside, perusing a newspaper, while others gather in the large main room, trading jokes and stashing items in their lockers.

The crew for the daily Henderson run prepares to get under way, while Tyler and conductor Larry Oliver are about to call it a day.

Oliver, whose father also worked as a Union Pacific conductor, has been with the railroad 37 years.

He explains his job in simple, succinct fashion: "You classify 'em, line 'em up, get 'em in the right order and give 'em their loads."

These days, Oliver uses computers and radios on the job.

But some tasks he does the old-fashioned way, as when he jumps off a locomotive moving slowly down a side track, the speed limit in the yard is 10 mph, to pull a switch for Tyler, who observes the conductor from his side-view mirror before backing Engine 3422 along the rails.

Some days, the Arden yard handles hundreds of rail cars, Tyler notes, pointing out eight boxcars loaded with giant reels of newsprint bound for the Review-Journal.

And some days, crews switch only a few cars. One recent morning, a tie gang tied up the track, replacing rail ties -- and blocking rail traffic in the process.

Overall, Union Pacific hauls "more tonnage than we've ever had" in Las Vegas, according to John Bromley, the railroad's director of public affairs.

Thanks to Southern Nevada's explosive expansion, "our local business in Las Vegas has been growing," Bromley says, citing "construction materials in particular. Lumber is a huge item for us."

In fact, the demand for local service is more than the railroad can handle these days, Oliver says.

"Five new customers a day try to get rail service, but they can't get it," he says. "We don't have the facilities."

More than 40 long-distance freight trains pass through Las Vegas daily, changing two-member crews at Union Pacific's small maintenance office off Charleston Boulevard, the last vestige of the railroad's vast presence downtown.

Union Pacific currently employs 222 people in Southern Nevada, most based in Las Vegas, with a monthly payroll of $1.2 million, Bromley notes.

A few work in track maintenance. But most work as engineers or conductors.

Of course, being a railroad conductor these days lacks the legendary glamour of running a passenger train.

And that's where Oliver would be, if only Union Pacific still ran such streamliners as Challenger and the City of Los Angeles. (Like America's other railroads, Union Pacific abandoned passenger service in 1971, when the quasi-public National Railroad Passenger Corp., alias Amtrak, took over intercity service.)

"The seniority jobs are gone," Oliver says of the cushy passenger runs. "But I'd love to put on that suit," he admits, pondering the chance "to be the guy in gold braids and in that uniform, calling `All aboard!' "

But cash-strapped Amtrak, under perennial budgetary constraints, has no plans to add a Las Vegas-Los Angeles route anytime soon, according to Amtrak spokeswoman Vernae Graham.

And a high-speed rail route to Southern California, an idea whose time has been coming for more than three decades, remains in the talking stages. (The most recent prospect rolling down the track: a 300-mph magnetic levitation train, backed by the California-Nevada Super Speed Train Commission, which in April received a $1.5 million federal grant for environmental studies on a proposed route.)

"People would ride it if it was high-speed," Oliver says of a Southern California-Las Vegas rail route. "People are in a hurry now. But even if you lost a couple of hours, it would be nice to go back in the club car and have a drink or two."