A very observant friend called recently to ask one of the most challenging and obscure questions posed in the railroad industry:

"How did the bird get on that Woodward governor?"

This question is so obscure that it normally comes up only once in a generation of railroaders. I recall encountering it only three times in more than fifty years in the industry.

Hundreds of railroad employees look thousands of times at Plate B166-11 of EMD Engine Parts Catalog #300 over the course of years and years, never noticing that there is a bird standing on the flange above item #13 of the numerical callouts.

The EMD Service Department Technical Section and the Publications Group were located next to each other at the West end of the third floor in the main administration building. This placement put several rascals with elevated senses of humor in close proximity to each other. At around 4:30 on an otherwise boring Friday afternoon strange things could and did happen in this area. The customers on the East coast had packed up and left for the weekend, the ones in the Midwest were headed for the door as well, leaving just a few people at North Platte and Barstow to call in and ask questions. It was in this twilight zone between the work week and Friday night closing that small animals and other paraphernalia would mysteriously appear in artwork going into the service publications and parts books. As the years passed the unauthorized additions grew to include the initials or nicknames of some of the authors, neatly integrated into the small details of complex artwork. The clandestine humor passed unnoticed through the management review process and into the pages of history.

For many years I have made it a policy to not reveal the full names of EMD employees who engaged in these types of activities, in order to protect the guilty. But I will say that we all enjoyed the humor of Tom and Stu and several others who developed these unauthorized enhancements to EMD publications. It was a memorable group of industry professionals who were always a pleasure to work with.

PC

So there are other examples of this lurking out there, in EMD parts catalogs?

Sort of like theatrical artist/caricaturist Al Herschfeld's placement of "NINA" in his drawings. His daughter's name, and it could appear multiple times in a single drawing.

Howard P.

Would this be the "Governor Duck" that I've heard about in the past? My Dad worked for the BN / BNSF as a diesel locomotive mechanic for 30 years and this is something I remember him mentioning which he found particularly humorous. He always regretted never getting a photocopy when he had the opportunity to look back on and have a chuckle. If his recollection was correct the little bird even had a callout in the list of parts?

I searched some in the past but was never able to find the particular diagram or parts catalog that had this in it... Would it be possible to post a link if this particular catalog can be found online somewhere? Or a scan of the diagram and entry in the parts list if the bird is indeed listed as a "part"? I've always wanted to see this after hearing him tell about it!

Thanks!

British artist - he was a railway buff too - Terence Cuneo used to put a mouse somewhere in most of his paintings, and sometimes you have to do some searching to find it. In sort of an homage to Cuneo, Peter Barnfield - another Brit artist and railfan - would stick a mouse hole and an orange cat in nearly all of the zany little illustrations of his imaginary "Whimshire" roads like the Portersfoote Bunting Light Railway; Barnfield said it was a special breed of ginger moggy found nowhere else in England. The cat's - or cats' - name was given as "Wardle," after UK locomotive builder Manning, Wardle.

After making an unintentional spectacle of myself in high school due to adding a hidden gorilla skull in a still life drawing that was displayed in a downtown store, I only added a gag object to an image once or twice after that... though I "overlooked" a good deal of similar behavior over the years by younger people who answered to me; I was strict enough about keeping out something objectionable, but I generally laughed right along with them.

Now I have to go bug someone about digging out Plate B166-11 of EMD Engine Parts Catalog #300 for me to look at.

ETA:

Back in the days when my old employer was still producing castings, if the guys in back saw that drawing with the bird, they'd probably have laughed and said "look at the flash on that casting." After which they'd have photocopied it, circled the bird with a highlighter and taped the copy on the message board.

I am definitely on the list of folks who had not noticed the bird. For all those who are curious, the page in question is attached.

Thanks very much for posting the .pdf of this! It's a treat to finally see what my Dad described in the past. I regret that he's passed on, since he would have surely gotten a kick out of seeing this again!

One of the toughest parts of engineering design is to get other people on the project to review and comment upon the drawing package before it goes out to bid. One of my mentors had a slick idea to get people to take drawing reviews seriously. Before sending the package out to review, Tony would place a "Kilroy" at an obscure location on one of the drawings. Whomever first found the Kilroy won $5, which was a fair amount of money at the time. This bird just might be the equivalent of Tony's Kilroy.

/s/ Larry
Lawrence G. Lovejoy, P.E.

Alas, there idoes not seem to be a particular callout for the bird -- at least not in the version provided. (What is the actual callout for items 13 and 14, though?)

The callout for items 13 and 14 are "washer" and "bolt". There does not appear to be a callout for the bird. Since the document is searchable, I did search for "bird" and did not get a result.