Crew district, division points - Where is there a list or map or chart? Individual Railroad. Suggestions?

[SAMUEL C WALKER]

Where are the crew distirct or division points where crews change? Is there a source for this informtion. List? Chart? Map? Single railroad company or all?

[Toddavia]

At least for North America, the best source would be the employee timetables of the various railroads, more and more of which have been uploaded to websites by helpful railfans.  Stations listed as having standard clocks and general order books / bulletins tend to be places where the crews start or turn.

Doing some Internet searching by railroad name and "employee timetable" should yield good results. 

Be aware, the crew districts and divisional adminstrative arrangements may change with time.  Especially as train speeds increased, the districts were often extended.

Toddavia

 

 

 

 

[BaltACD]

Since the end of steam, crew change points have been is state of constant evolution with the carriers making longer and longer runs.  The carriers can also change the 'home terminal' of crew runs depending upon how well the work force from a particular location protects the work that is available at the location.

[jeffhergert]

There are maps of Amtrak and BNSF crew districts here on the trains site.  I didn't see one, but think they once had UP crew districts, too.  There are holes on the map pages, so maybe older maps (of any subject) might get removed.  

I don't know how old the two maps they have are, or the accuracy of them.

Jeff   

[tree68]

North Baltimore in OH is often a crew change point, although some trains that merely pass nearby (ie through Deshler) change, usually at South Deshler, having arrived via cab.

That said, a lot depends on how traffic is running and how much "dog catching" is going on...

[mudchicken]

Terminals/ crew change points also moved when local politicians got stupid (taxing railroads like their own private piggy bank) Whole towns would move virtually overnight. That I can think of:

ATSF: Coolidge KS to Syracuse KS

UP: Hugo CO to Limon CO; Oakley KS to Sharon Springs; Ellis KS to Hays

DRGW: El Moro CO to Trinidad CO

 

Mother nature forced a few to move as well (a la San Marcial 1929 ... facilities merged with the small shop at El Paso... Several large steel tanks and water treatment equipment was moved from San Marcial to La Junta)

Would like to know more about the move from Elkhart KS to Boise City, OK between 1913 and 1936 in conjunction with the Cimmarron Cut-off...that project was "adjusted" several times. Can't find much on that whole episode.

[SD70Dude]

Divisional points usually became the biggest town in their area, and often still are.  Using Google Earth you can follow a route and look for a town with a decent size yard with a wye (or at least the 'footprint' of one), which most divisional points had.  

CN still has most of the original crew change locations out west, with only a few exceptions.  In Saskatchewan Kamsack was moved to Canora back in the 70s or 80s and Biggar was merged into Saskatoon during the mid-2010s (this also saw the end of Watrous as a divisional point).  The town and railway facilities at Pacific, BC (good luck finding it on a map, even better luck getting there....) were closed and moved to Terrace when the Kitimat Sub was built in the 1950s.  

Outside of the larger cities Rivers, Melville, Wainwright, Edson, Jasper, Blue River, Kamloops and Boston Bar remain as crew change locations on our mainline, with Dauphin, Canora, Humboldt, North Battleford and Vermillion on the 'Prairie North Line' (former Canadian Northern route between Winnipeg and Edmonton).  McBride, Prince George, Endako, Smithers and Terrace also remain on the 'Trunk Line' to Prince Rupert, though most trains west of Prince George have 'extended run'/'double sub' crews and skip Endako and Terrace.  

CP did a fair amount of moving things around, but by the 1920s had pretty much settled on their current mainline arrangment.  Gleichen, Canmore, Laggan (Lake Louise), Donald and Rogers Pass Station (right at the summit on the original 1885 line) were all divisional points at one time or another, and have been consolidated into Calgary, Field and Revelstoke.  Trains to and from the Windermere valley line also change crews at Golden.