CN is currently taking delivery of and leasing new locomotives while UP has parked alot of theirs due to the implementation of PSR. Given that everyone today is running the same two locomotive models why not create a locomotive pool which can be drawn upon by any member railroad? This would be much like the pooling of autoracks.. each railroad would contribute locomotives to the pool and draw them out as required..
That seems like a great idea. I wonder if would be possible to get the railroads interested. After all, the railroads constantly use locomotives from other railroads on run-thru trains, horsepower paybacks, etc.
The Class 1's might be a bit leery of a joint power pool as proposed because of possible antitrust issues. Besides, there are several leasing firms that already have a similar setup.
reliability/ fuel consumption/ competition w/ brand X
(Pre-1990's merger you did not want Burlington Northern's locomotives anywhere around you, especially the ones in coal service - they ran the crap to failure. DRGW ran their locos as plain as they could from day 1 to retirement, the only difference being the oddball MU pin-connection set-up.)
Pooled locos between railroads happened, but not on a universal basis. Power BY The Hour had its own pratfalls (Oakway/ Gelco/GECX/LMX et al).
Ulrich CN is currently taking delivery of and leasing new locomotives while UP has parked alot of theirs due to the implementation of PSR. Given that everyone today is running the same two locomotive models why not create a locomotive pool which can be drawn upon by any member railroad? This would be much like the pooling of autoracks.. each railroad would contribute locomotives to the pool and draw them out as required..
Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.
I suspect it's probably easier / more economical to just lease engines as needed. Over the years, it hasn't been uncommon for a railroad to lease engines for a limited time from another railroad. Soo Line at one time regularly leased engines from the Missabe Road and Minneapolis Northfield and Southern. Rock Island leased New York Central diesels during grain rushes in the 1950's.
I have actually noted a decrease in non CSX leaders in my neck of the woods. Could it be that there are PTC problems with locos from other than home RRs operating on track segments ?
wjstix I suspect it's probably easier / more economical to just lease engines as needed. Over the years, it hasn't been uncommon for a railroad to lease engines for a limited time from another railroad. Soo Line at one time regularly leased engines from the Missabe Road and Minneapolis Northfield and Southern. Rock Island leased New York Central diesels during grain rushes in the 1950's.
zardozI did not know railroads leased locomotives from each other; I thought leasing went thru an actual leasing company like GATX or CIT.
That's been going since steam days.
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...
On my desktop, I currently have a picture of a Louisville & Indiana GP38-2 leased to South Shore and MU'ed with a South Shore GP38-2. Admittedly, the two roads have common ownership but it is an interesting sight.
What anti trust issues. Look at TTX, which is a freight car pool operation joinly owned by the Class 1 railroads. No anti trust issues there, so why would there be any with locomotives
caldreamer...so why would there be any with locomotives
The devil may be in the small print. Oftimes rail equipment is purchased not by the railroad directly, but by equipment trusts. Those agreements might contain restrictions. It's already been mentioned as a reason why locomotives excess to a railroad's needs may sit in storage lines instead of being disposed of immediately.
Biggest issues I can see are in maintenance and inspection. If you've ever heard of the term "rent a wreck" or "rented mule" you know how it goes. Everybody treats everybody else's stuff like it is fully expendable. It already happens somewhat. With locomotives being the cornerstone of railroad operations, I just can't see how the companies would release that much control over their fleets. Besides, the horsepower-hour protocol already works well as needed and takes care of the short-term trading back and forth that goes on in order to make some of those hand-off more efficient and the like. Sure there are sometimes that roads get in a power pinch but most often the tide rises and falls with most everybody. It is actually kind of unique right now that CN is power hungry and nobody else is. Usually everybody needs power around the same time. Back in 2013-2016 or so GE's order book was stuffed, and we saw NS and CN buying scraps because they were also power hungry along with virtually everybody else, but they were worse off. Everybody else could afford to wait for their orders to come in. So it ebbs and flows, and I just can't see enough of a justification to create a big power pool, especially once the "tragety of the commons" comes into play.
A huge problem with that would be them ALL being trail only in Canada.
Canadian CN crews require a microwave, which NO other Class One has and a fridge, which many Class One engines also do not have.
10000 feet and no dynamics? Today is going to be a good day ...
traisessive1 A huge problem with that would be them ALL being trail only in Canada. Canadian CN crews require a microwave, which NO other Class One has and a fridge, which many Class One engines also do not have.
UP outfitted some engines for Canadian service. Run throughs with CP I believe. They had a hot plate and tea pot and a stretcher. I don't recall if they added the microwave. I know some of the ones outfitted were already equipped with a refrigerator, so I don't know if they had to add ones to any engines.
Other than run through unit trains that don't change power, it seems like the junkiest power gets interchanged.
It wouldn't surprise me with PSR in vogue, that the class ones don't want to lease out their stored power. That's probably their reserve has active engines have major failures. Reactivate a reserve engine and put the heavy bad order in storage instead of fixing it.
Jeff
jeffhergert traisessive1 A huge problem with that would be them ALL being trail only in Canada. Canadian CN crews require a microwave, which NO other Class One has and a fridge, which many Class One engines also do not have. UP outfitted some engines for Canadian service. Run throughs with CP I believe. They had a hot plate and tea pot and a stretcher. I don't recall if they added the microwave. I know some of the ones outfitted were already equipped with a refrigerator, so I don't know if they had to add ones to any engines. Other than run through unit trains that don't change power, it seems like the junkiest power gets interchanged. It wouldn't surprise me with PSR in vogue, that the class ones don't want to lease out their stored power. That's probably their reserve has active engines have major failures. Reactivate a reserve engine and put the heavy bad order in storage instead of fixing it. Jeff
CP contract only requires hot plates and fridges, so I doubt those units got microwaves.
We've had a bunch of UP units running around up north lately (including the CNW heritage unit), and every one I've seen has been trail-only. Just because of the lack of cab amenities, mechanically they are as good/bad as any of ours.
Greetings from Alberta
-an Articulate Malcontent
For the life of me, I can't see why someone hasn't ruggedized a microwave-enabled version of one of these.
(With replaceable liners in the oven cavity, so any little unsanitary messes can be changed out before they ... age. This is also a potential solution for Amtrak 'public' microwaves or ovens.)
I cant imagine ANY crew being hungry enough to eat out of a locomotive microwave.
IAFarmerI cant imagine ANY crew being hungry enough to eat out of a locomotive microwave.
You just don't know railroaders. Remember they will use the diesel's exhaust manifold or other hot surfaces on the locomotive as a stove.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
BaltACDYou just don't know railroaders. Remember they will use the diesel's exhaust manifold or other hot surfaces on the locomotive as a stove.
Those would be cleaner than the microwave. I don't even like the coolers (and take my own water. God knows how long those bottles of water have been sitting in a storage container).
The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer, any other railroad, company, or person.
BaltACD IAFarmer I cant imagine ANY crew being hungry enough to eat out of a locomotive microwave. You just don't know railroaders. Remember they will use the diesel's exhaust manifold or other hot surfaces on the locomotive as a stove.
IAFarmer I cant imagine ANY crew being hungry enough to eat out of a locomotive microwave.
http://www.nebraska-locksmiths.org/articles/ManifoldM.pdf
"When Milk is hot enough to melt the butter about 30 mins to 1 hr at high throttle (Soups ON!) remove and enjoy. Don’t forget your crackers."
zugmann BaltACD You just don't know railroaders. Remember they will use the diesel's exhaust manifold or other hot surfaces on the locomotive as a stove. Those would be cleaner than the microwave. I don't even like the coolers (and take my own water. God knows how long those bottles of water have been sitting in a storage container).
BaltACD You just don't know railroaders. Remember they will use the diesel's exhaust manifold or other hot surfaces on the locomotive as a stove.
CN still buys 175 ml cups of water with foil lids (like the old McDonalds kids juices). They taste pretty awful after sitting in the sun, but if you nuke one for a couple minutes (remove the lid first!) it steams the microwave and then you can easily wipe out all the 'leavings'.
It takes way too many crewpak wet wipes to clean the thing out, but plenty of guys (myself included) bring a container of big alcohol wipes in our grip. Way better to wipe down the controls, desk and microwave with.
In my experience the locomotive fridges and microwaves aren't any worse than the equipment found in any other blue-collar workplace lunchroom.
Thanks for reminding me of Manifold Menus - a precious reference.
I will have to find my Locomotive Lobster Newburg recipe. Much better than using a microwave!
There are so many particulars...
Cab signal. NS and CSX have PRR/CR based systems. NS needs the addition of LSL to run on the NEC. CSX converted the RF&P to 100Hz carrier to match PRR/CR system. UP has their own version of the US&S cab signal plus the old CNW system. BNSF has some old CB&Q (I think) plus the old ASTF inductive train stop system. Each of these has their own approach to penalty braking.
All of this carries on even in the days of PTC.
Then there are the road-specific agreements that require facilities in the cab. Hot plates, coolers, seat specifics, and a whole bunch of other stuff. You can get away from having it on "run thru" power and balancing out HP-hrs, but if you try that as a way to avoid complying with the agreement, you'll get called out...
eventually.
-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/)
oltmanndAll of this carries on even in the days of PTC.
I wonder if the next generation of PTC (PTC - the sequel!) will make all the cab stuff obsolete?
Or if RRs will start to petition to remove cab signal stuff since they have PTC.
It's kind of ironic because I bet a lot of the stop signal violation crashes (not all) would have been prevented if cabs/lsl were present. But that's my opinion.
And then there was the fellow (as related in Trains) who decided to heat up a can of Spaghettios on the manifold. Except he didn't open it first, so the can opened itself - with some gusto. I think it was on an F unit and the aroma was around the engine room for days.
Have you seen the state that those "_(you name it)_" RR engineers leave the cab? Would you want to be the engineer when it came back to home rails?
Semper Vaporo
Pkgs.
There are hundreds of run through engines on foreign roads all the time. I have seen UP engines leading trains on NS tracks, BNSF engines leading on UP tracks, etc. NOT the same systems, but they do run, They do NOT need the same control systems.
Ultimately, I think it boils down to the fact that when things get busy, none of the seven large roads want someone else rationing locomotives.
- "Mine! Mine! Mine! Back! Back! Back! Down! Down! Down!" - Daffy Duck, 'Ali Baba Bunny"
TTX functions pursuant to an ICC/STB approved pooling agreement. Under STB's governing statute, such an arrangement, when approved by the agency, isn't subject to antitrust laws. There's a somewhat similar STB approved pooling agreement covering pooling of multilevel autorack cars. I'm not aware of any similar arrangement as to locomotives.
That said, there is a lot of joint use of locomotives between individual railroads which isn't pooling. For example, there are lots of "run through" arrangements where the power on a a train being interchanged between two roads isn't changed at the interchange point. Rather, the road using another road's power "pays" the owning road either by allowing the owning road to use some of its power or (less frequently) a cash settlement. That's why you may see (for example) UP power on an NS train on the east coast.
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