OldEnginemanNot sure if they still do this today, but they were at least experimenting with it back then. If anything, I would think their capabilities are much greater today.
On the one line we run - they can't even log you out of PTC when there's a problem (just about every trip). No, I've never had an engine being started or shut down from far away.
It's been fun. But it isn't much fun anymore. Signing off for now.
The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer, any other railroad, company, or person.t fun any
jeffhergertMy BSometer just pegged. There's very little that can be done by remote. They can 'see' remotely some things. Very little that can be reset remotely. Even had the help desk say that using the reset button for the DP say it doesn't really do anything. Any time I've had a DP unit act up or shut down, it's required someone to get on the locomotive and physically reset or restart the engine.
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Jeff wrote: "My BSometer just pegged. There's very little that can be done by remote. They can 'see' remotely some things. Very little that can be reset remotely"
They had it on the B&A (Conrail) back some years ago. I was told by an engineer working there. He lost a trailing unit, called up and told the dispatcher, and a tech at some remote location was able to connect with the unit, reset whatever the fault was, restart it, and put it back "on the line".
Not sure if they still do this today, but they were at least experimenting with it back then. If anything, I would think their capabilities are much greater today.
Of course, this would only work on some (newer) units. Older locomotives without digital capabilities -- no go.
jeffhergertAny time I've had a DP unit act up or shut down, it's required someone to get on the locomotive and physically reset or restart the engine.
Maybe my wild guess was right.. A traveling engineer would need to respond to fix the problem..
Crewless trains sounds like a nighthare.
Larry
Conductor.
Summerset Ry.
"Stay Alert, Don't get hurt Safety First!"
OldEngineman BigJim asked: "So, when that rear unit shuts down, who is going back to get it going again?" They've been doing that by remote control from the dispatcher's office for years now via radio. They can pretty much do almost any reset that the engineer (or a tech) could do "from the cab". And probably access resets that the engineer couldn't "get to" anyway.
BigJim asked: "So, when that rear unit shuts down, who is going back to get it going again?"
They've been doing that by remote control from the dispatcher's office for years now via radio. They can pretty much do almost any reset that the engineer (or a tech) could do "from the cab". And probably access resets that the engineer couldn't "get to" anyway.
My BSometer just pegged. There's very little that can be done by remote. They can 'see' remotely some things. Very little that can be reset remotely. Even had the help desk say that using the reset button for the DP say it doesn't really do anything.
Any time I've had a DP unit act up or shut down, it's required someone to get on the locomotive and physically reset or restart the engine.
BRAKIE I was in the simulator a few weeks ago. They've started calling engineers in, 2 at a time, to figure out new guide lines for operating the land barge trains they want to operate. The thing is, there's no feel. You can tell a lot of what's going on by the seat of your pants. Something missing in the simulators they use. Jeff dehusman Modern railroads also have simulators that have portions of the railroad loaded into them. The simulator has a selection of different train types and the engineer can operate over a territory virtually. I believe the more advanced ones were certified as a qualifying trip. Cool. I dunno but,I think the old fashion way was better since the engineer got to know the territory literally by the seat of his pants as far as train reaction over the territory.. As you know no two trains operate the same.
I was in the simulator a few weeks ago. They've started calling engineers in, 2 at a time, to figure out new guide lines for operating the land barge trains they want to operate. The thing is, there's no feel. You can tell a lot of what's going on by the seat of your pants. Something missing in the simulators they use.
Jeff
dehusman Modern railroads also have simulators that have portions of the railroad loaded into them. The simulator has a selection of different train types and the engineer can operate over a territory virtually. I believe the more advanced ones were certified as a qualifying trip.
Cool. I dunno but,I think the old fashion way was better since the engineer got to know the territory literally by the seat of his pants as far as train reaction over the territory.. As you know no two trains operate the same.
BigJim John-NYBW It probably won't be long before the trains are driven by computers and/or remote control. Real railroading is getting more like model railroading. So, when that rear unit shuts down, who is going back to get it going again?
John-NYBW It probably won't be long before the trains are driven by computers and/or remote control. Real railroading is getting more like model railroading.
So, when that rear unit shuts down, who is going back to get it going again?
That reminds me of the trip I took on VIA Rail a couple years ago from Halifax to Montreal. BOTH units broke down in the middle of the night and they had to send relief units. By the time they arrived, the crew reached the time limit for their shift and we had to wait for a relief crew to arrive. I guess they couldn't figure out that would happen when they dispatched the relief locos. Then of course because we were so far behind schedule, we were running up against opposing freights and spent at least half our time waiting for one of those freights to clear. The train was supposed to arrive in Montreal at 10:00am got in well after midnight. A scheduled 21 hour trip was closer to 34 and of course that meant everybody's travel plans were screwed up. I could almost forgive their incompetence but what I will never forgive is the arrogance and indifference of the train crew. It was without a doubt the worst travel experience of my life. I wouldn't book another trip on VIA Rail if they paid me.
My wildest guess will be a computer will notify a traveling engineer and he will go and restart the locomotive..
The ugly side.
Now if that TE is busy elsewhere or needs to travel several miles to reach the train then the stopped train could block steet crossings for a long time and if its on single track there will be a backup of trains in both directions.
This is progress?
John-NYBWIt probably won't be long before the trains are driven by computers and/or remote control. Real railroading is getting more like model railroading.
There have been crewless "trains" for decades. Numerous commuter and people mover systems have operated for decades under automatic control. I realize that they are very different from a freight train and ususally operate on a limited route under very controlled conditions with much, much smaller train, but they have operated.
Dave H. Painted side goes up. My website : wnbranch.com
BRAKIE I dunno but,I think the old fashion way was better since the engineer got to know the territory literally by the seat of his pants as far as train reaction over the territory.
I agree, but sometimes there are advantages if there are several crews to train, sometimes crews end up only running over a territory most of a territory at night, sometimes trains don't make it all the way over a territory. Nothing beats the actual thing, but having options has benefits too.
John-NYBWIt probably won't be long before the trains are driven by computers and/or remote control.
They already have the technology for that according to a article in the January 2018 issue of Trains Magazine.
As of now they want to go to one man crew and have a traveling conductor that will answer any emergency call like a break in two or dragging equipment.
Yup, from a 5 men crew to four men crew, then a two man crew to one man crew and one to done.
BRAKIE dehusman Modern railroads also have simulators that have portions of the railroad loaded into them. The simulator has a selection of different train types and the engineer can operate over a territory virtually. I believe the more advanced ones were certified as a qualifying trip. Cool. I dunno but,I think the old fashion way was better since the engineer got to know the territory literally by the seat of his pants as far as train reaction over the territory.. As you know no two trains operate the same.
It probably won't be long before the trains are driven by computers and/or remote control. Real railroading is getting more like model railroading.
dehusmanModern railroads also have simulators that have portions of the railroad loaded into them. The simulator has a selection of different train types and the engineer can operate over a territory virtually. I believe the more advanced ones were certified as a qualifying trip.
Modern railroads also have simulators that have portions of the railroad loaded into them. The simulator has a selection of different train types and the engineer can operate over a territory virtually. I believe the more advanced ones were certified as a qualifying trip.
In addition the detector cars have cameras on them and the railroads have video of the the majority of the main tracks that employees can view, some of the more recent footage is "street view" style where the user can rotate the camera 360 degr as they are moving down the tracks. Those can also be used for familiarization, especially for dispatchers or other people that don't have to actually operate the engines and just need territorial familiarity.
dehusmanQualifications were sometimes set by agreement, sometimes by the railroad, some places had qualifying tests, some places you just had to make so many (2-4) "student" trips.
Chessie(C&O) engineers made (IIRC) seven trips with four operating the locomotives while the engineer watch.. Then a ARFE would ride along on that engineers first solo trip to qualify him..
I don't think I would like a ARFE watching my every move while running over a new division solo for the first time..It was bad enough having my conductor watching my every move while I was learning the Maysville switching routine..
Make no mistake a conductior could make or break a brakeman's career. 99% was good solid men but,that other 1% was pure company men that would write a brakeman up for a minor rule infraction and with all the old and new rules it wasn't hard to make a infraction.
It got worst after November 1, 1980.
Crews work under an agreement with the company that sets their pay and working arrangements. Crews operating out of a terminal might have several different agreements, especially after all the mergers.
The routes or yards a crew can work will depend on which agreement under which the crew is working. At Houston, TX on the UP/MP there were Palestine (IGN, northeast) crews, Ft Worth (Brazos Valley, north) crews, Kingsville Division crews (south) and DeQuincy crews (Gulf Coast, east), plus a variety of branch line crews, most of which were under the IGN agreement. An IGN crew couldn't work to Beaumont (DeQuincy) or to Bloomington (south on the Kingsville Div). Similarly a Dequincy crew couldn't work to Palsestine or Ft Worth.
At Angleton, TX, all the through freight crews between Houston and Bloomington were Kingsville Div crews (St. Louis, Brownsville and Mexico RR), based out of Houston, but all the crews operating on the branch between Angleton and Freeport came out of Palestine (International Great Northern RR), 120 miles north of Houston. That is because at the dawn of time, the IGN line from Palestine to Houston went through Houston and down to Angleton, crossing the StLB&M at Angleton and went to Freeport. Later after the MP merged the IGN and StLB&M together the IGN route from Houston to Angleton was abandoned and the StLB&M route from Houston to Angleton was used, isolating that little pocket of IGN seniority people.
Then there were locations, like Kansas City, where there were multiple crews with different seniority that operated over the same route. Kansas City to Jeff City there were ex-MP crews, ex-MKT crews and ex-SP crews all mixed together working the same trains but with different seniority and agreements. There could be a UP train with an ex-MP engineer, an ex-MKT conductor and an ex-SP brakeman.
Later (1990's?) the agreements changed and "hubs" were created which grouped the various crew boards so often a crew could be used on more than one route and a lot of legacy crew differences were eliminated. Often they had to balance the mix of the crews (something like 3 out of every 5 trains had a MP engineer, one had a MKT engineer and one had an SP engineer).
Qualifications were sometimes set by agreement, sometimes by the railroad, some places had qualifying tests, some places you just had to make so many (2-4) "student" trips.
Thanks Larry
Henry
COB Potomac & Northern
Shenandoah Valley
BigDaddy So it's not something you can qualify for by memorizing the time table. How many trips does it take, or is division dependent?
So it's not something you can qualify for by memorizing the time table. How many trips does it take, or is division dependent?
That can vary.. I made five trips as a brakeman and I studied the TT map to help me learn the track work and other items like the operation rules covering that division.
As a rule example: (say) Maysville Carnation Siding locomotive must not operate beyond the Engine stop sign. Good to know.. I will need to use idler cars to reach any pickup or to make a setout beyond that sign or perhaps: Maysville yard track #7 out of service: Account bad switch. I now know not to even think about using track 7.
Actually learning the rules of a new division was the hardest for me due to the various operating rules and yes,that included track speeds.
Sometimes this issue of being qualified comes up on conversations a railfan can overhear using a scanner. I can recall on the CP out of Milwaukee the DS updating the crew what their changed routing was going to be once they reached the Chicago area. "Um ... I'm not qualified on that line" the engineer replied. Long sigh (on open mic) from the DS. He was going to have to relieve that crew well before their hours were used up.
And it went the other way too. Sometimes it was the DS who was filling in and not "qualified" in that he didn't know the territory. I can recall a crew telling the DS that it looked like they were going to have to set out a bad order car "at Powerton" south of Milwaukee. Powerton was the site of, and named for, a long gone junction and interchange between an electric railroad and the Milwaukee Road - coal hoppers for a power plant. It kept that name for decades. A little used industrial siding was all that remained. There is no "place" called Powerton but the qualified crews and the regular dispatcher all knew where it was. This dispatcher asked "where is Powerton?" The crew answered "it's near Waterford Avenue." "Where is Waterford Avenue?" asked the DS. Finally the crew looked it up and gave him the milepost number.
Dave Nelson
BigDaddy A little bit off topic, but watch Emperor of the North: Lee Marvin and Ernest Borgnine. Earnie had his own caboose. Lee was riding without a ticket.
A little bit off topic, but watch Emperor of the North: Lee Marvin and Ernest Borgnine. Earnie had his own caboose. Lee was riding without a ticket.
Excellent movie. Two Academy Award winning actors and trains. How could it go wrong.
BigDaddy BRAKIE Yes, one needs to be qualified for the division they worked on Hey Larry what does that mean? What is the pathway to become qualified on a division?
BRAKIE Yes, one needs to be qualified for the division they worked on
Hey Larry what does that mean? What is the pathway to become qualified on a division?
To be qualified for a division one needs to make student ( qualifying ) trips under qualified crews. This way you get to know the trackage including location of passing sidings,juctions, crossings (rail and road) ,signal locations and in some cases the location of industries.
If you was a unqualified brakeman and I told you we will be setting out 17 cars and picking up 22 cars at Middletown road you would have no clue on its location or what it is.
Now being a qualified brakeman you would know that Middletown Road is a division juction interchange track. See the difference?
Middletown Road is located South of Crestine on CR's (now CSX) Columbus Line and was a crew change point and a three division interchange point.
BRAKIEYes, one needs to be qualified for the division they worked on
John-NYBW I have a question about crew assignments. Would a train crew typically be assigned to the same route most of the time. Yes, crews established their seniority on a particular district, which was usually between +/- 100-150 miles. The reason I asked this is I read a long time ago, I think in a John Armstrong book, that cabooses were assigned to a specific crew. That was true, cabs were assigned to a Conductor and he kept his cab. It was taken off at the crew change point and the next conductor's cab was tagged on to the train. Many a train crew bunked in their assigned cab at the away from home terminal. Then, along came the signing of the Pool cab agreement. At that time through freight crews lost their assigned cabs for roughly $1 per trip. The cabs were pooled and stayed on the train at the next crew change point or district. So, a cab would wind up anywhere on the railroad. Local turnaround shifters kept their cabs. Then everyone lost out as the EOT's came to be, with the exception of jobs that might need a cab if a long shove move was to be made. I used to play golf with a railroader who worked out of Conrail's Roberts Road yard on the west side of Columbus. He had seniority going all the way back to the Pennsy days. He use to carry a pager on the golf course to alert him when his crew's turn had come up. We use to kid him that his pager only seemed to go off when he was having a bad round. He told us he almost always was assigned to a train running between Columbus and Indianapolis. If that is the way crews were assigned then I should be assigning my cabooses to the same routes session after session. On the other hand if they were assigned to whatever route was the next on the schedule, I should assign my cabooses on a first in-first out basis. Up until the pool cab agreement was signed, which was somewhere in the late '60s I think.
I have a question about crew assignments. Would a train crew typically be assigned to the same route most of the time. Yes, crews established their seniority on a particular district, which was usually between +/- 100-150 miles.
The reason I asked this is I read a long time ago, I think in a John Armstrong book, that cabooses were assigned to a specific crew. That was true, cabs were assigned to a Conductor and he kept his cab. It was taken off at the crew change point and the next conductor's cab was tagged on to the train. Many a train crew bunked in their assigned cab at the away from home terminal. Then, along came the signing of the Pool cab agreement. At that time through freight crews lost their assigned cabs for roughly $1 per trip. The cabs were pooled and stayed on the train at the next crew change point or district. So, a cab would wind up anywhere on the railroad. Local turnaround shifters kept their cabs. Then everyone lost out as the EOT's came to be, with the exception of jobs that might need a cab if a long shove move was to be made.
I used to play golf with a railroader who worked out of Conrail's Roberts Road yard on the west side of Columbus. He had seniority going all the way back to the Pennsy days. He use to carry a pager on the golf course to alert him when his crew's turn had come up. We use to kid him that his pager only seemed to go off when he was having a bad round. He told us he almost always was assigned to a train running between Columbus and Indianapolis. If that is the way crews were assigned then I should be assigning my cabooses to the same routes session after session. On the other hand if they were assigned to whatever route was the next on the schedule, I should assign my cabooses on a first in-first out basis. Up until the pool cab agreement was signed, which was somewhere in the late '60s I think.
John-NYBWWould a train crew typically be assigned to the same route most of the time.
Yes, one needs to be qualified for the division they worked on.. On the Chessie(C&O) I was qualified for the Big Sandy Sub-Division..Later I became qualified on the Cincinnati Sub-division because FRED displaced a lot of low seniority brakeman on the Big Sandy including me.. I was lucky to get three runs a week on the Cincinnati Div due to the low traffic volume and assigned crews..
On the PRR some road freights and locals had a assigned crew and usually a cabin from the pool. On the Chessie (C&O) some through freights, mine runs and locals had assigned crews but,the cabooses was pool.
The majority of us was on the extra board subject to call any time.
On the PRR I worked the city pool. That means I filled in on the urban locals when a assigned brakman marked off. I was qualified for three urban industrial leads in Columbus..
Whether a crew has a "regular" job or not -- with regular reporting times and relief days -- depends on the railroad, the service, and the location (and union agreements).
In passenger, nearly all jobs are regular jobs. Of course, there's an extra board to fill vacancies as well.
In freight, there's often "pool service" where a crew (conductor/engineer) will typically work together, but they are "subject to call" whenever a vacancy shows up.
Back in the Conrail days, there used to be pool jobs at Selkirk with "assigned trains" one way, and "first extra on return" (after your rest).
In terminals that had yard jobs, the yard jobs were almost always "regular jobs" with specified relief days.
Same for "local freights" and "traveling switchers". These could be "5 day jobs" with 2 relief days, or "6 day jobs" with only one relief day.
Of course the freight terminals have plain old extra boards that can cover any vacancy, extras, etc.
Back when Conrail still had Danbury (CT), there was at least one job that just about always got the same caboose. The conductor rode the head end, but the brakeman, well, regarded it as "his caboose". It was a night job and the caboose could get used in the daytime as well. If anyone messed up Ray's caboose, they'd be hearing about it!