The original suggestion for the trackmobile was presented by a person with actual experience. The trackmobile approach is basically a small-scale verson of what large shippers who do not use unit trains have done for a long time, the in-plant railroad and interchange. Whether the move would save time or not depends in part of the topography. Suppose the car is in the middle of the train, saving blocking time and effort in the yard. If the train is on level ground, it should be possible to cut the train behind the car, then in front of the ar and pull the train ahead, board the trackmobile spotted just short of the switch, throw the switch, couple to the car, pull past the switch, reboard the enginer and recouple the train, pump up the air, make the air test, and leave within less than 20 minutes. The pick-up manouver should be as isimiple. However, if a grade is involved, then the setting and removing handbrakes on the rear portion of the train will add time.
Again, this is an idea for railroad labor to consider. Wihtout their approval, it cannot work, except on shipper-ownded short lines.
It sounds like the crew typically serves the lumber siding on their way back to the yard. That's no big deal, we do the same thing with our branchlines. Serve the industries with trailing point switches until you hit the end of your run, then on the way back you do the sidings that are pointed the other way.
The problem here sounds like either one or more of the following:
1) crew has too much work
2) crew has too little time
3) there is no handy crew available for a recrew when the first crew is about to blow up.
In either case, I don't see how making up a complicated maneuver involving extra engineers or trackmobiles ls is going to help. If anything, it will take more time so another customer doesn't get his cars. Bigger picture sort of thing.
The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer, any other railroad, company, or person.
edblysardThis skips stopping a major train on the main and moving to spot the car, which dispatchers and corridor managers don’t like one bit…for big trains’ time is money, especially if there is a car or two in the train that have a performance bonus attached to them.
While the fact that it's a two-track main makes tying the line up less of an issue, CSX does do this regularly at Utica.
Pick-ups from the Utica yard (Mohawk, Adirondack & Northern) are made by a westbound manifest (usually Q621, I think - Selkirk-Massena), while drops are made by an easbound manifest. I've never seen a drop made as they occur at the east end of the yard, out of sight of the station. CSX runs no locals that I know of on that portion of the line.
Traffic for Rome (the bulk of the traffic handled at Utica) is covered by MA&N, which has a trackage agreement with CSX.
While I'm sure the CSX crews rarely dawdle (encountered one where the conductor went to a nearby donut shop, all while the train tied up the main), it still takes time to throw the hand throw switch and derail, get in, couple up, get back out, get back on the train, pump it back up, and get going. I'd estimate it takes at least an hour most days. (MA&N leaves the cars on yard air, which means the CSX crew doesn't have to inspect them.)
CSX does the same thing at Utica for the Susquehanna (eastbound only for drops and pickups).
There are crossovers both east and west of Utica. But as busy as the CSX Chicago line is, it's entirely possible to sit at the Utica station for an hour and more and not see a single train.
Larry Resident Microferroequinologist (at least at my house) Everyone goes home; Safety begins with you My Opinion. Standard Disclaimers Apply. No Expiration Date Come ride the rails with me! There's one thing about humility - the moment you think you've got it, you've lost it...
Ebly, you came up with well thought-out and exacting objections to my plan. The original plan, which seemed OK at first glance, had the customer's trackmobile on the railroad line. This might work with a shipper-owned short line, but elsewhere liability insurance, railroad managment wishing to have their employees and their employees operate on their property, all are good objections. So I came up with an alternative, and you pretty well showed that to be non-starter. But I did have a previous plan, that of keeping the status quo as long as the railroad gives reasonably good service, and holding truck transportation as a last resort, and trying to help the railroad locate other industries on the siding to make an investment in upgrading with a run-around and/or switches at both ends a useful investment.
My plan would work only if engineers were willing to run a trackmobile for a few minutes, but not for a half hour. And if all crewmen who were qualified as engineers could do so, since the car might be at the rear or middle, not at the front of the train. It would involve less time than your good plan, because the siding could be filled or emptied in either direction with the same scenereo' and the only backup move would be in recoupling the train. 9A wye or run-around track is usually not as convenient as in your exapmple) Blocking cars properly in yards takes time and adds to the time the cars spend in the yards. Taking a car past a destination or origination siding because the siding has only one switch takes time. My idea would stretch the car supply, add to railroad efficiency, and might make loose car railroading profitable again . It still might be worth considering, BY LABOR..
But it is solved…
If the carrier will spend the time cutting the car in behind the locomotive on the inbound train to accommodate your idea…they would save time and money skipping that and instead, spend the effort cutting the car into the local outbound to spot.
This skips stopping a major train on the main and moving to spot the car, which dispatchers and corridor managers don’t like one bit…for big trains’ time is money, especially if there is a car or two in the train that have a performance bonus attached to them.
I handle a car like that every day, the clock starts the moment the car hits PTRA property, if we can turn and spot it in Delta Chemicals with a 12 hour period, we get a performance bonus…we meaning the PTRA, not me of course.
Notice I said turned…this car arrives most of the time facing the “wrong” way….it can only spot in Delta with a particular end in first, the car is even marked, “This end I first Painesville Ohio”, and the other end marked “This end in first Deer Park Texas” and the movement is the same as Murphy’s, a facing point move on the “wrong” side of the track for our normal flow of traffic.
So our “local” has to cut this one car out of its train, take it to a wy about a mile away, run around it and shove back to Delta to spot it.
And we charge a fee to turn the car, $450.00 if I remember correctly.
Keep in mind there will be following main line trains also…and some of them will also have a timed performance bonus.
Every morning our DTS, (director of train service) our yard master, the dispatchers at TD Spring, and the corridor managers for both BNSF, UP and KCS all get together on a conference call, and map out the days strategy.
If the UP corridor manager says there will be a grain train announced at 11:00am, you can pretty much set you watch by it, that train will be sitting at Market street waiting to get in our yard at 11:00 am…and we will have called an extra crew to take it to the Cargill elevator as soon as the UP crew detrains…if we can get that train in to Cargill, and they unload it and we get it back to Market Street ready for the UP to crew it in under 48 hours, we get a performance bonus, as does UP.
Now imagine there is a BNSF coal train, and a BNSF grain train right behind the UP grain, and a yard to yard transfer from Englewood behind all of them….do you really think the corridor managers from BNSF and UP are going to willing add an hour (or even a half hour) onto their time frames so a single lumber car can get spotted?
Or do you think they are going to want that lumber car spotted by the local the next day, because the local has an allocated time frame out on the main line…it is budgeted into the time frame of all this movement.
And by the way, it was voted on…and rejected by both the UTU and the BLE…the carriers didn’t object much either because engineers get paid for each locomotive they operate, and get paid for the weight on drivers for each model of locomotive they operate, the pay scale for engineers in the national contract doesn’t include trackmobile, no one could agree how to pay the engineer.
And of course, if you could get an engineer to run a track mobile, you do away with his craft autonomy, if you can force him to run a trackmobil, then how about tomorrow you get him to run a front end loader, or a dump truck, or drive the crew van?
He is a locomotive engineer, nothing more and nothing less, not an “equipment operator”.
The FRA doesn’t classify trackmobiles as locomotives, and, unless the trackmoblie meets the FRA safety standards for a locomotive, (ditch lights, bell, horn, air brake system and all the other safety appliances) the FRA frowns on it being on the main line unless the line is under repair and it is operated by MOW personnel under red flag protection.
Yes, trackmobiles are used by MOW on the main line, but they are not operated by engineers, and they are not moving revenue cars…same applies to HI Rail vehicles, which are operated by MOW personnel and use main lines with specific time and track warrants and temporary traffic restrictions under control of the dispatcher or control point operator.
Every movement of a train on the main line telegraphs back to the train behind it…a half hour lost spotting Murphy’s car may be just the half hour the following train needed to make it to a crew change point, and now the new crew is stuck trying to find their train, which isn’t where it is supposed to be, they have to spend time getting to where the last crew died on the HOS, so now the half hour has become an hour and a half, and that translated into every following train now being a hour and a half behind its slotted time, and all of this impacts the receiving yards, train that should have been there and were expected at say, noon, now show up at 1:30, which just cut an hour and a half out of the switch crews time to work and get their job done….and yes, often times, even though it doesn’t seem that way track side, we do run on a fairly tight time frame.
Its not exactly the same every day, but each day’s work is planned out in advance, and any disruption to that plan causes a lot of lost time.
Every single movement of a main line train affects all aspects of all operations on a daily, if not hourly basis.
There are those who love to run out the phrase that we railroaders don’t like change, or we do it” this way because we have always done it that way”, which is true up to a point, but what you are looking at is a century plus of evolving operation practices, and we do it the same way as often as possible so when things do go wrong and delays happen, we can find the bottle neck by backtracking and fix it.
And a lot has changed, and just recently.
In the 17 years I have been in the industry, lots and lots of thing we used to be able to do have gone away, like drops, which would solve Murphy’s problem in about 10 minutes,
Getting on and off moving equipment is gone, but we now have Red Zone and Three Step protection, Key Trains, bigger and more efficient unit trains, bigger manifest trains, and we move more “stuff” more miles with less men, less equipment and less track than 20 years ago, so the idea we don’t want to do anything differently simply because we don’t like change is silly…we love changes if it allows us to safely and more efficiently do our job.
23 17 46 11
The problem of the facing-point siding is not solved by your last sentence.
And yes, possibly it should be an idea voted upon by the national membership.
daveklepper 1. Union agreements can be modified if increased business can make employment secure and even result in additional hiring to add to union membership. Of course if the car were spotted near the front of the train, the engieer would be the one to move to the trackmobile and then back to his engine after the dar is on the private siding, free of the railroad-woned line. 2. i agree that only 10 or 12 cars a year doesn't seem applicable for my plan. But for a car a week, 56 per year, it might make sense. For five days a week, it would make a lot of sense.
1. Union agreements can be modified if increased business can make employment secure and even result in additional hiring to add to union membership. Of course if the car were spotted near the front of the train, the engieer would be the one to move to the trackmobile and then back to his engine after the dar is on the private siding, free of the railroad-woned line.
2. i agree that only 10 or 12 cars a year doesn't seem applicable for my plan. But for a car a week, 56 per year, it might make sense. For five days a week, it would make a lot of sense.
No, they can’t, or more correctly, they won’t.
This is a national contract, ratified by all the local unions, you can’t simply decide a paticularrailroad needs to make a little money so toss this part of the contract for this paticular customer….it would have to be voted on by the entire membership, after section six notices were served on the carriers, opening the entire contract to re negotiation, which is, under normal circumstances, a year long deal.
All for one car a to a single customer once a month, or even a car a day?
Not going to happen.
If the carrier can expend the effort to place the car in a way to make it convenient for the engineer, they could just as easily expend the same effort to place the car in such a manner so that the local can spot it every day.
PNWRMNM daveklepper Again, the shipper/receiver people do not enter onto the railroad's track. only operate on the private siding itself. Dave, To solve Murphy's problem, a facing point switch for the southward local, the trackmobile would have to enter the railroad's main track to get the car. Your proposed cure is worse than the disease. Mac
daveklepper Again, the shipper/receiver people do not enter onto the railroad's track. only operate on the private siding itself.
Again, the shipper/receiver people do not enter onto the railroad's track. only operate on the private siding itself.
Dave,
To solve Murphy's problem, a facing point switch for the southward local, the trackmobile would have to enter the railroad's main track to get the car. Your proposed cure is worse than the disease.
Mac
Comment withdrawn. You did call for rail crew operation of trackmobile on RR owned property.
If I read the rest of the post correctly, Murphy only receives around 12 cars a year?
Why would the railroad own a trackmobile just for one customer?
Why lease one for just one customer who only gets 1 car a month?
Makes no sense dollar wise.
And it has been explained before, it would have to be FRA compliant, go through a 92 day inspection, and be crewed by a certified engineer, which I can promise you the railroad will not supply.
Crew consist agreements on Class 1 roads prohibits any other crew member acting as an engineer, (even if they have a current license)
If you start on duty as a conductor, you have to finish as a conductor, (engineer, brakeman) by national contract.
With a carrier without a union presence, your idea could work, but the railroad would still not lease or buy a trackmobile just to service a customer who gets so few cars.
One of the train crew (one of the three) would operate the trackmobile while on railroad property. I thought I had made that clear and apologize if I did not. Without that condition, I would agree with you. Remember that the railroad owns the trackmobile. It is leased to the shipper/receiver. When you rent a car from Hertz, and the car needs servicing for one reason or another before you drive off, it is the Hertz person that drives through the car wash or to the gas pumps, not you.
(1) Liability out the roof
(2) Union agreement
(3) Blue Cards
(4) Operating rules tests & FRA requirements (Bubba, the so-called expert probably has a snowball's chance in Hades of ever passing one of those. He'll be busy lookin' for phantom DPU trainmen to complain to)
(5) New O/O/M agreements for the track.
(And I agree on the BN/BNSF culpability issue. It smells more of BN than BNSF. Industrial development people shoulda caught that.)
While it's a pain for the customer, Murphy's lumber yard in this case, the BNSF may still be making money off this car load. At least for maybe the first couple of times it goes past without being spotted.
Since the local is an out and back type operation, no one probably thought too much about the hassle of spotting the lumber yard. In a perfect world, there should be no trouble with the local spotting it on the return trip. What they don't take into consideration is that often things aren't perfect. The local is delayed on the outward leg to the point that they are either close to running out of time (HOS) or just going on over time. I know on our company, local instructions often say that all overtime on industry jobs must be approved by the officer on duty. I could see a local trainmaster, considering how few cars the lumber yard gets, telling the crew to high ball the work. They save money in the short run, but alienate customers and lose business in the long run.
Railroading is rife with things that look good on paper, but don't work out so well in actual practice.
Jeff
daveklepperLeasing comes with a maintenance contract , maintenance with the railroad's other highway equipment. Railroad expects proper care, just as rental truck and car companies expect.
If you're going out on the rail system (mainline), wouldn't the trackmobile need a FRA blue card (And all associated maintenance/inspection costs)?
Seems like a costly proposition.
Murphy: Nevertheless, I see a possible revolution in loose car railroading for private owner siding shippers and receivers that may such railroading profitable and assure prompt handling:
The railroad does mass purchasing of new trackmobiles for this type of service and leases them to siding owners.
Trains both shippers and crews for their operation.
All operations from a few feet of the switch through the coupling of the delivered car or the uncoupling of the outgoing car (either one empty or loaded) is handled by railroad people.
Siding-owner's side from the switch everything is the shipper's/receiver's responsibility, and it is his to use for any other functions as well.
Leasing comes with a maintenance contract , maintenance with the railroad's other highway equipment. Railroad expects proper care, just as rental truck and car companies expect.
s
PNWRMNM [snipped - PDN] . . . The other issue is your spur. I looked on Google Earth and whoever laid it out to open north should be shot, since there is plenty of open ground to the south. It appears that the spur could have, and certainly should have been, built to open to the south. Had it been you would not have this problem. . . .
Murphy Siding [snipped - PDN] . . . Our new location, built 5 years ago, should never have had a rail spur. But, no one asked me. In 100 years, we will not save enough in freight to pay for the investment. What rubs me the wrong way, is that at nowhere along the planning stages did anyone from the railroad have the gumption to tell our owner that a rail spur was really not a good idea.
All of the above is OK as far as it goes - but the railroad has at least some moral culpability in the Murphy Siding layout. Said railroad had to review and approve the siding layout, and purchase and install the turnout (switch) for this spur, which should have involved both the Operating and Engineering Depts. And no one from either Dept. realized that the traffic to/ from this spur would be coming from the 'wrong' direction most of the time ?
It seems that it is the only 'facing point' spur in the vicinity, such that it's the one that is 'out of step' with the prevailing direction of all the other spurs in the area ? That unusual fact didn't strike anyone from the railroad as odd or a potential future problem ?
Another seldom-mentioned reality is that changes in the railroad's operating plan can render a spur or even an extensive industry track layout as obsolete even overnight. A spur that works well in one direction with the present-day "operating plan" may quickly become a hindrance or even an encumbrance when another operating plan is implemented, such as one that has the local freight coming from the other direction to serve customers in the vicinity. Several years ago I saw the plans for a rail yard to serve a proposed quarry load-out at a local junction between a branch line and a main line. I questioned the direction of the tracks, and was told that the local operating folks had requested them to be that way. That sounded good then, but there was nothing compelling or obviously logical about that direction. I could instead equally well envision another superintendent reversing the operating pattern and directions to serve that end of the branch in a more logical and efficient manner (at least in his view). What result for the yard layout ? It would be mostly backwards then ! So a shipper/ receiver - who believed in good faith what the railroad said when the spur was built - may come to grief when the railroad changes its mind about that. All it takes is a new operating plan or blocking pattern, merger, sale, or abandonment of an 'upstream' connection, a new route or pattern for the local freight, etc. and "the best laid plans o' mice and men, Aft gang a-gley" (from Scottish poet Robert Burns).
- Paul North.
No demurrage charges. Once we release the car to the railroad it's theirs. It can sit there as long as they want it to.
Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.
Paul North: why pay $5.99 for something that I have in my archives? Oh, not everybody keeps back issues, nor has everybody has been subscribing forever. I did buy some back issues (earlier than April 1952), and it was hard to scrape together the 25 cents each cost me. That is an interesting account, in that it points out many important things that one department may be totally unaware of when it makes a commitment.
MC: Now the railroad is responsible for any demurrage charge?
Johnny
Murphy Siding Who's the comedian who says "There's your sign?.................
Who's the comedian who says "There's your sign?.................
That would be Bill Engvall.
(1) Jeff Foxworthy
(2) The minute you notified BNSF that you now had an empty, constructive placement was on your side. Can't do much about the culture of cheap (don't have a problem either with old equipment that is well maintained); can't undo the hard feelings on both sides (so un-necessary & counter-productive), as for ol' Einstein - reality will catch up with him someday.
Who's the comedian who says "There's your sign?................. Our car was released for pick up by noon on the 24th, but has not been picked up yet. Every time a train rolls by, even if it's a rock unit train from the Dakota and Iowa Railroad, the world's smartest forklift operator, who knows everything about railroads because he once worked for a grain elevator has a conniption fit, because the train didn't stop to pick up the car. Yesterday, a unit grain train went by heading south. It had a DPU on the tail end. Mr. Einstein said he now had proof that the railroads don't know what they're doing. "All they have to do, is stop the train, and have the guy in that back engine pull our car out and hook it onto the rest of the train, and the problem would be solved.".............. There's you sign.
zugmann Guelph Junction Will the trainmaster approve of this method. Probably. More like probably not. No way am I going to let someone take their dinky/track mobile onto the mainline I am occupying without my bosses right there giving me explicit permission. Sorry, but way too many things can go wrong.
Guelph Junction Will the trainmaster approve of this method. Probably.
More like probably not. No way am I going to let someone take their dinky/track mobile onto the mainline I am occupying without my bosses right there giving me explicit permission. Sorry, but way too many things can go wrong.
BaltACD My experience with the lumber business as it relates to railroads has been that the Shipper consignes the car to themselves at some distant point, as they have not yet sold it's contents to the ultimate buyer. While the car is in transit, the Shipper finds a buyer and contacts the railroad where the car currently locates and initiates a reconsignment and diversion order to send the car to the buyer of the contents. Such a operation keeps the shipper fluidly loading product as well as creating a shorter delivery time frame for the final buyer of the car load.
My experience with the lumber business as it relates to railroads has been that the Shipper consignes the car to themselves at some distant point, as they have not yet sold it's contents to the ultimate buyer. While the car is in transit, the Shipper finds a buyer and contacts the railroad where the car currently locates and initiates a reconsignment and diversion order to send the car to the buyer of the contents.
Such a operation keeps the shipper fluidly loading product as well as creating a shorter delivery time frame for the final buyer of the car load.
Murphy Siding [snipped - PDN] . . . Some time back, Mark W. Hemphill wrote about how there is some business the railroads just don't need. We fit that bill, right down to his telling a story about a receiver seeing his car go by, but never see it spotted. . . .
* http://trn.trains.com/en/Magazine%20Issues/2004/November%202004.aspx
Looks like that issue is still available for $5.99, etc.: http://www.kalmbachstore.com/trn041101.html
More like probably not. No way am I going to let someone take their dinky/trackmobile onto the mainline I am occupying without my bosses right there giving me explicit permission. Sorry, but way too many things can go wrong.
WOW!!
After working many years as a yard co-ordinator you learn how to be creative. So let's be creative at minimal cost. A good 2nd or third hand track mobile plus a coffee maker could get your "hot" car to your spur in record time. But first, work on building a good rapport by asking the crew for a solution. If they can't suggest a means to help you, you suggest that perhaps the next time they have a car for you they could split their train at your switch and you could send your track mobile to grab your load of lumber. After you clear and the conductor has his train back together, you offer to drive him up to his head end with hot coffees for the crew. I guarantee that on their return trip they will slow down to see if you have unloaded the rail car, and if so they will stop to pick it up. Just make sure that your coffee pot is ready. You will also notice in the future that likely your rail car will arrive right behind the locomotives on a regular basis. The pluses. You get your rail car and the train crew gets an attaboy in the form of a coffee. The lumber company avoids demurrage charges. The quick turnaround of the rail car gets it back to its own railway faster, thus reducing foreign car fees to the receiving railway. Upper railroad management loves that. Will the trainmaster approve of this method. Probably. The less times he receives phone calls from irate customers the better his disposition. He may come to your siding to witness the maneuver to ensure safety protocol is followed. Give him a business card and a coffee and you might find that you will receive a phone call announcing the arrival of your next rail car.
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