Road Switching

[bearman]

Let see if I have this right.  A train is blocked in a yard and is off on its merry way. It reaches a location where there may be several rail served industries and either 1.  Picks up what has to be picked up and drops off what has to be dropped off with the train loco doing the heavy lifting.  Or, 2. it may pick up and drop off on an interchange track.  

Finally, the industries may own their own switcher so the main line train just picks up and drops off and the switcher does the haevy lifting.

Am I right?

[m horton]

Or both, depends, sometimes a mainline freight just drops cars for local to work. Sometimes it does switching too. An industry with its own loco would probably switch the plant and leave/pickup at interchange.

[wjstix]

bearman

Finally, the industries may own their own switcher so the main line train just picks up and drops off and the switcher does the haevy lifting.

It's unlikely each industry would have it's own switcher, unless each one was quite large, or that the industries in the area would pool their resources to buy a switcher that they all could use.

In a small to medium sized isolated town the railroad might assign one of it's switchers to the town so that a road freight could drop off a cut of cars, pick up a cut of cars, and leave again with little time spent. Then the assigned switcher would move the cars to and from the various industries in the town.

[bearman]

That is where I was going with this Stix for the switching layout I am building with my grandson.  A switcher assigned by the railroad to serve several industries.  Obviously the way I worded it was not very accurate.  

[BRAKIE]

bearman

That is where I was going with this Stix for the switching layout I am building with my grandson.  A switcher assigned by the railroad to serve several industries.  Obviously the way I worded it was not very accurate.  

 

You could go one step farther and have the railroad own by the industries it serves or operate it like Progressive Rail's  Airlake industrial park operation. PR picks up cars off the CP interechange and delivers them to the industries located in the Airlake Industrial Park. 

 

[jjdamnit]

Hello All,

"There is a prototype for everything."

At a rail-served cement plant south of Boulder, Colorado; Arcosa Lightweight, they have a retired FM H-16-66 that was used to shuttle hoppers around the facility.

Last time I visited, the plant had replaced the FM with a track mobile.

Another cement plant outside of Paonia, Colorado, has a pair of MUed GP40s at the ready, and a derelict SW 600/900. 

The GP40s are there to break and make trains in and out of the facility. The SW seems to be too much effort to scrap.

I would not consider each of these facilities "large" but they did/do warrant dedicated locomotive(s) whether owned or leased by the facility or railroad.

Hope this helps.

[dehusman]

You can find pretty much any combination of locals, switchers and through freights.

Through freights can set out and pick up blocks of cars at yards, stations and interchanges along the way.  Road locals can switch industries of carry blocks over all or part of a subdivision (50-150 miles).  Travieling switch engines/ dodgers/zone locals/etc. can work industries over a 50 mile swath of railroad.  Switch engine can work industries right around a yard or station.

[BRAKIE]

dehusman

Switch engine can work industries right around a yard or station.

On some roads that would be the job of a TSE crew not the yard or passenger terminal crew. There are Company and Union job classes that must be followed.

A TSE would be a added job on a large layout DCC would be the better choice for this type of operation.

What in tar nation is a TSE? That's a Traveling Switch Engine that does odd jobs around the yard including switching any  industries in or near the yard.  IIRC on the PRR any industry beyond a 1/2 mile of the yard had to be switched by a urban or perhaps a road  local depending on the location of the yard. I'm sure that might have varied from each division.  

The handling of cabooses was done by a caboose switch job.. Their job was to switch the caboose service track,add or remove cabooses on inbound trains and add them to outbound trains and to spot caboose on either the storage track or the outbound track. 

[dehusman]

BRAKIE

What in tar nation is a TSE? That's a Traveling Switch Engine that does odd jobs around the yard including switching any  industries in or near the yard.

Depends on the railroad and labor agreement.  On the MP, it was a specific type of crew.  The labor agreements specify what work crews can do, how they get paid and from which pool of workers jobs are filled.  In a really general sense there are through freight crews, local crews and yard crews.  Each group has different work rules and different pay rates.

Generally switch engines are supervised by yardmasters.

In order to increase flexibility, the RR & the unions made an agreement that where there was an over the road local, the railroad could use a through freight crew to operate a "traveling switch engine" that would operate over a aggregate 50 mile territory (25 miles either side of a terminal or 50 miles in one direction) and would be able to switch like a yard engine.  One TSE crew at a location would be paid "footboard yardmaster" rate of pay and would nominally coordinate the moves of the TSE's and the moves of the through freights and the TSE's.  TSE's were not assigned to home terminals where there was a yardmaster or regular switch crews.

That created very flexible crews that could do many different kinds of work and didn't require a separate extra board.  For example, I worked on a 36 mile branch line that had a local and 11 TSE's a day.  They did everything, they did yard switching, local work, hauled "transfers" from the main yard to the yards on the branch.  I worked at a classification yard on the other side of town and once again TSE's did all sorts of jobs.  They were the lead jobs in the yard, they were the "locals" that switched industries along the main line and they were hauler jobs that transfered cuts between that yard and other class yards in the area.

While the gory details don't matter to modelers, the concept of a "footboard yardmaster" is perfect for a model railroad, many "yardmasters" are switch engines too.  The flexibility is perfect for a model railroad too.

[dknelson]

From what I recall of the Chicago & North Western situation in my youth, it was something of a hub and spoke system.  Road freights would pick up and set out at the "big" yard at Butler WI on Milwaukee's far north west side.  A variety of purely local switching freights would originate at Butler that served industries in its general area.

But a smaller yard, Mitchell Yd on the south side would often also see a road freight dropping off cars and perhaps also picking up (Mitchell was also the site of an interchange track with the Milwaukee Road).  I think Butler also sent locals to Mitchell Yd.

The various locals that served the southern suburbs seemed to originate at Mitchell Yd.  Of note also is that there very small "yards" (often just two tracks off the main, but often tracks on either side of the double tracked main, scattered here and there in the larger suburbs, such as West Allis and Cudahy. My hunch is that the local switching freight would leave cars it picked up at those local yards to be picked up on its return trip, rather than needlessly trundle those cars around while it completed its daily tasks.

I lived in a southern suburb, South Milwaukee that had several sidings and one industry (Bucyrus Erie) large enough to have its own locomotives, between 2 and 4 active locomotives at any one time.  For all the business that that industry generated, I think it was always served by the local switching freight, not by road freights.  And there were yard-like holding tracks (almost like frontage roads) in South Milwaukee on both sides of the double tracked main so again the local switcher could drop off cars for its return trip to its home base while it served still further-south suburbs such as Oak Creek/Carrollville.  Rather than haul cars south only to have to haul them north later.

I believe much the same system was used at the next big city down the line, Racine WI.  It had a yard and its own local switchers that originated there.

Late of an afternoon a train, the Waukegan Turn, would leave Butler Yd and presumably serve Mitchell Yd, taking the various loads and empties the local switchers had returned to the home yards down to Waukegan for interchange with the EJ&E, or to be held at the larger yard at Waukegan for later taking to the C&NW's much larger yards in the Chicago area such as Proviso or 40th St.  I don't know if the Waukegan turn stopped at Racine first, or whether the Racine switcher would itself take cars to Waukegan.  The road freights presumably took cars from Waukegan to the big yards.  Again this hub and spoke system helped minimize having road freights tying up the main with hugely long trains trying to back up into a siding and such.

Dave Nelson

[BRAKIE]

dehusman

On the MP, it was a specific type of crew. The labor agreements specify what work crews can do, how they get paid and from which pool of workers jobs are filled. In a really general sense there are through freight crews, local crews and yard crews.

Dave, I don't know about the MP or any other road.I do know on the PRR the yard crew jobs was pullers,hump crew,cabin track crew,local yard switch crew and TSE. At Russell on the Chessie (C&O) the majority of the train make up was done by flat switching even though there was a hump yard on the West end of the yard. A TSE switched the Raceland car shops,caboose service tracks and added or removed cabooses from trains. 

C&O ran what we called a sweeper train.. This crew would drop off and pick up cars for  the Northern Division at Limeville,at the Maysville yard, Stevens and of course Cheviot. After '81 Queensgate. This crew would also drop off MOW cars where needed. Industries was switched by a local crew from Russell to Maysville. A Maysville to Stevens local would switch cars at industries located between those two yards. I know there was a fuss when CSX combine these locals into the sweeper train..Of course by the early 80s there was few customers left on the Cincinnati Division.

Back then a road crew could only make three setouts or pickups. To get around that PRR and C&O used a "sweeper" train to drop cars off at various points.

[jeffhergert]

BRAKIE

Back then a road crew could only make three setouts or pickups. To get around that PRR and C&O used a "sweeper" train to drop cars off at various points.

 

That working three intermediate points was a labor contract work rule.  It didn't prevent a crew from working more than three intermediate points.  What it did was any road crew working more than three points (earlier agreements allowed four locations) received the higher local rate of pay for the entire trip.  This was standard across the unionized industry.

There were also exceptions to the three station rule.  Perishable or livestock traffic didn't count.  Neither did setting out cars that became defective enroute.

There were places where road trains would do local work.  Generally it was locations where there wasn't enough local work to have a dedicated local train.  Some areas might have a local put on seasonally to handle rushes but other times of the year one of the through trains would do the local work.

There were a lot of practices, especially the further back you go, that were supposed to be done by specific class of road, local or yard jobs.  Much is invisible to the casual observer.

Jeff

[BRAKIE]

Jeff, Those "sweeper" trains got around any extra pay since they was more/less a division local.. 

The Maysville-Stevens and Russell -Maysville local was replace by the sweeper but,it didn't matter much since there was few customers left.

On the PC there was dicated switch crews that switch GM Fischer body in Columbus. The assign crew was old heads with  years of senority.

[Shafty]

From my memory of the U.P. 40 and more years ago, the through freight trains between Yermo to Los Angeles did not ordinarily set out or pick up cars.  The trains with setouts or pick ups that I remember were lined up for setouts or pickups for Barstow, Oro Grande, Victorville, San Bernardino and Colton when leaving Los Angeles or Yermo.  Besides preventing delays, as mentioned above I have a vague memory that if a through freight train had two or more pickups or setouts, the crew went onto a local train pay rate, which the railroad wanted to avoid.

 

The Anaheim Local handled Montebello and Pico on the Main Line, and then the Anaheim Branch.  Years later when the KAT House (Kenosha Auto Transport) moved to Montebello, they were switched by switch crews out of East Yard.  I don't know any details about how the labor agreements for road crews and yard crews worked for switchmen leaving yard limits and doing that particular work out on the main line.

 

There was a FPU (Fruit Pick Up) later known as the Nite Local.  It made a round trip between East Yard and Mira Loma and did all the switching between Pico and Mira Loma.  If I remember correctly, in later years when the City of Industry built up the Nite Local did not normally go any farther.

 

Locals from Riverside or Colton handled the business east of Mira Loma.  The Night Local sometimes exchanged cars with them at Mira Loma.

 

Eugene Crowner