Remote Control

[Anonymous]

BNSF is now phasing in RCO at West Quincy,MO. It has been three yrs since the RCO era began on BNSF. The first yards on the system to use it were Newton,KS & Bismark,ND. I have to question if the carriers are saving anything on this. Since the operation is slower w/out an engr, production drops and to make up the lost car counts, extra jobs are called--some w/an engr. Nationwide, there have beeb several accidents involving RCO. The new operation wears the hell out of brk shoes and more money is being spent to replace worn out shoes. These are just a few things about RCO. Even though is does not work as well as the old way, it is here to stay and more or less is another union busting method by the carriers. Does anyone have their own stories or thoughts about RCO?

[Anonymous]

Remote control technology has been used up here in Canada for the better part of two decades.

As they were phasing in this technology at the CP Rail yard in Coquitlam, they slowly did it one shift at a time over a period of a few years, everytime a new shift went to remote technology they have never since called back a locomotive engineer.

The CP yard in Coquitlam and Vancouver is 100% remote control and has been for a good number of years now, no matter what we like to think, the technology is here to stay, and the yard hogger (in this part of the system) has gone the way of the fireman and the caboose.

[Anonymous]

Remotes are trying their best to take the place of hoggers at my yard, but the remotes keep messing up on a regular basis. Customers and tired of hearing excuses and want the job done, which means putting engineers back on the job. On Friday night I was working remote and it was working fine and then the powered units stopped loading and no power was being transfered to the traction motors. I thought a generator field switch had been tripped, but all of that was fine. We had to use the other remote job to pull our junk power onto the pit. Then we used the other job's power only to have it continually give us brake pipe pressure faults. I think it had to do with the cold weather. The remote computer is kept in an old BH8 or something, with no heat. Every time it gets really cold the remotes go haywire. We ended up messing with these things all night and not a single car in the yard was switched all night. We suggested the yardmaster arrange to get a few engineers out there, but that didn't happen until first shift. The trainmaster arrived furious and having us do everything we had already tried. The next night I was working with an engineer with no problems. I'm sick of these remotes; they are a sorry excuse for the replacement of engineers. At least make sure the technology is dependable before switching the entire yard over to remote. The waste of time and loss of switching productivity recently is enough to make me vomit, and I'm not even a yardmaster or trainmaster!!!!!!

[Anonymous]

Right on stephenson. I was forced assigned to RCO training two yrs ago but have never worked a RCO job since becoming qualified. I have heard about the failure rate in cold weather. One job one night took six hrs to switch 80 cars on the lead. RR's will do anything to abolish a human job regardless of how badly it slows up the operation.