ns145 Erik_Mag BaltACD As I have stated - Dispatchers implement the policy that their superiors dictate. It is no suprise whan NS policy is for The Cresent. Much the same way that Amtrak's Surfliners are treated on Metrolink owned tracks. Remember being held up multiple times commuting on Amtrak (Solana Beach to Irvine) some years ago. Somewhere in my railroad scanner recording collection, I have a sound file from 2012 where the NS train dispatcher that controls the joint NS-UP-CN-KCS-Amtrak trackage on the south side of Springfield, Illinois referred to Amtrak trains as "Gub'ment Locals". They have been treated accordingly ever since NS took control of the new Springfield bypass trackage in 1994. And now with the Auto-Router in charge it's only gotten worse. To be fair, though, there a few NS dispatchers who do try their best to give Amtrak trains fair treatment. Here is just one example: https://www.flickr.com/photos/ns145/22221366122
Erik_Mag BaltACD As I have stated - Dispatchers implement the policy that their superiors dictate. It is no suprise whan NS policy is for The Cresent. Much the same way that Amtrak's Surfliners are treated on Metrolink owned tracks. Remember being held up multiple times commuting on Amtrak (Solana Beach to Irvine) some years ago.
BaltACD As I have stated - Dispatchers implement the policy that their superiors dictate. It is no suprise whan NS policy is for The Cresent.
As I have stated - Dispatchers implement the policy that their superiors dictate. It is no suprise whan NS policy is for The Cresent.
Much the same way that Amtrak's Surfliners are treated on Metrolink owned tracks. Remember being held up multiple times commuting on Amtrak (Solana Beach to Irvine) some years ago.
Somewhere in my railroad scanner recording collection, I have a sound file from 2012 where the NS train dispatcher that controls the joint NS-UP-CN-KCS-Amtrak trackage on the south side of Springfield, Illinois referred to Amtrak trains as "Gub'ment Locals". They have been treated accordingly ever since NS took control of the new Springfield bypass trackage in 1994. And now with the Auto-Router in charge it's only gotten worse. To be fair, though, there a few NS dispatchers who do try their best to give Amtrak trains fair treatment.
Here is just one example: https://www.flickr.com/photos/ns145/22221366122
To be fair - Amtrak screws over VRE and MARC commuter trains every opportunity they have. I had first hand experiences with both VRE & MARC dealing with the trains MARC trains on the Brunswick and Camden Lines. I continue to hear continuing complaints for MARC trains operating on the Penn Line.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
Somewhere in my railroad scanner recording collection, I have a sound file from 2012 where the NS train dispatcher that controls the joint NS-UP-CN-KCS-Amtrak trackage on the south side of Springfield, Illinois referred to Amtrak trains as "Gub'ment Locals". They have been treated accordingly ever since NS took control of the new Springfield bypass trackage in 1994. And now with the Auto-Router in charge it's only gotten worse. To be fair, though, there a few NS dispatchers who do try their best to give Amtrak trains proper priority.
jeffhergert BaltACD BLS53 BaltACD jeffhergert ... Now my co-worker has said that his son, and others given the boot, are being recruited to come back to work again as dispatchers. They're being offered to have their seniority restored and some other deal sweetenings to get them back. They are having trouble finding new dispatchers off the street who can cut it. Jeff Despite what the carriers are trying to claim - Train Dispatchers ARE NOT entry level positions for anyone coming 'off the street'. Not if you want your railroad to run efficiently. Depends on who you hire off the street. I don't know about now, but back in the 1990's, BNSF had success hiring veterans who had been military air traffic controllers. I would say these applicants have more aptitude for the job, than some low IQ in-house candidate, who has been walking the ROW in a yellow vest for the last 10 years. CSX also gravitated to hiring former military ATC's. They did have a higher success rate than those with other employment histories, however it was not a 'fool proof' hire as some could not get their thinking around dealing in only two dimensions that could not be changed. I have a book, authored by a retired Milwaukee Road/Soo Line dispatcher, about his experiences. It's titled, "Trains don't Fly." It's a reference to a dispatcher trainee who had been an air traffic controller. The trainee had been fired when PATCO went on strike in the 1980s. Evidently, the trainee had told a train to increase altitude to X thousand feet. His mentor responeded that trains don't fly. Jeff
BaltACD BLS53 BaltACD jeffhergert ... Now my co-worker has said that his son, and others given the boot, are being recruited to come back to work again as dispatchers. They're being offered to have their seniority restored and some other deal sweetenings to get them back. They are having trouble finding new dispatchers off the street who can cut it. Jeff Despite what the carriers are trying to claim - Train Dispatchers ARE NOT entry level positions for anyone coming 'off the street'. Not if you want your railroad to run efficiently. Depends on who you hire off the street. I don't know about now, but back in the 1990's, BNSF had success hiring veterans who had been military air traffic controllers. I would say these applicants have more aptitude for the job, than some low IQ in-house candidate, who has been walking the ROW in a yellow vest for the last 10 years. CSX also gravitated to hiring former military ATC's. They did have a higher success rate than those with other employment histories, however it was not a 'fool proof' hire as some could not get their thinking around dealing in only two dimensions that could not be changed.
BLS53 BaltACD jeffhergert ... Now my co-worker has said that his son, and others given the boot, are being recruited to come back to work again as dispatchers. They're being offered to have their seniority restored and some other deal sweetenings to get them back. They are having trouble finding new dispatchers off the street who can cut it. Jeff Despite what the carriers are trying to claim - Train Dispatchers ARE NOT entry level positions for anyone coming 'off the street'. Not if you want your railroad to run efficiently. Depends on who you hire off the street. I don't know about now, but back in the 1990's, BNSF had success hiring veterans who had been military air traffic controllers. I would say these applicants have more aptitude for the job, than some low IQ in-house candidate, who has been walking the ROW in a yellow vest for the last 10 years.
BaltACD jeffhergert ... Now my co-worker has said that his son, and others given the boot, are being recruited to come back to work again as dispatchers. They're being offered to have their seniority restored and some other deal sweetenings to get them back. They are having trouble finding new dispatchers off the street who can cut it. Jeff Despite what the carriers are trying to claim - Train Dispatchers ARE NOT entry level positions for anyone coming 'off the street'. Not if you want your railroad to run efficiently.
jeffhergert ... Now my co-worker has said that his son, and others given the boot, are being recruited to come back to work again as dispatchers. They're being offered to have their seniority restored and some other deal sweetenings to get them back. They are having trouble finding new dispatchers off the street who can cut it. Jeff
Now my co-worker has said that his son, and others given the boot, are being recruited to come back to work again as dispatchers. They're being offered to have their seniority restored and some other deal sweetenings to get them back. They are having trouble finding new dispatchers off the street who can cut it.
Jeff
Despite what the carriers are trying to claim - Train Dispatchers ARE NOT entry level positions for anyone coming 'off the street'. Not if you want your railroad to run efficiently.
Depends on who you hire off the street. I don't know about now, but back in the 1990's, BNSF had success hiring veterans who had been military air traffic controllers. I would say these applicants have more aptitude for the job, than some low IQ in-house candidate, who has been walking the ROW in a yellow vest for the last 10 years.
CSX also gravitated to hiring former military ATC's. They did have a higher success rate than those with other employment histories, however it was not a 'fool proof' hire as some could not get their thinking around dealing in only two dimensions that could not be changed.
I have a book, authored by a retired Milwaukee Road/Soo Line dispatcher, about his experiences. It's titled, "Trains don't Fly." It's a reference to a dispatcher trainee who had been an air traffic controller. The trainee had been fired when PATCO went on strike in the 1980s. Evidently, the trainee had told a train to increase altitude to X thousand feet. His mentor responeded that trains don't fly.
When the railroad is full at Flight Level 0 - it is FULL and your exit has to be formulated in the physical plant you possess - nothing more.
line.
BaltACD...as some could not get their thinking around dealing in only two dimensions that could not be changed.
I am reminded of the story of a British tram (trolley) driver who was faced with a parked car blocking his way. The driver of the car eventually arrived, then motioned for the tram driver to simply "go around..."
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...
One might wonder if gamers might make good dispatchers. They are used to dealing with virtual situations, and planning their next move, etc.
For that matter, an avid chess player is usually in the habit of thinking several moves ahead.
Back in the fifties, the PRR's E units only had the Engineers and Firemans seats. I had to stand for the whole trip. Unless they didn't let me in on a secret because I was "managment" Still enjoyed the rides.
BaltACDThere is still a 3rd seat on engines. When you operate a single unit train that is slated to have both Engineer Trainee and Conductor Trainee, you have problems.
Some engines have 4 (one being a jumpseat).
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
Lithonia Operator Is there a third seat in the cab? Or did the conductor have to ride in the second unit?
Is there a third seat in the cab? Or did the conductor have to ride in the second unit?
There is still a 3rd seat on engines. When you operate a single unit train that is slated to have both Engineer Trainee and Conductor Trainee, you have problems.
Still in training.
A few years ago, I had a dispatcher trainee ride with me. He got on with us when we changed crews in Fremont. His plan was to ride with us through Omaha/Council Bluffs to Missouri Valley. There he planned to get off and ride a westbound the "short way" via Blair back to Fremont.
Normally, at that time, it took about 3 to 4 hours to go via Omaha (the "long way") to Missouri Valley. It all depended on congestion at Council Bluffs.
Not that day. There was congestion, yard engines and trains working off the main blocking the route through CB. It took us 8 hours to reach Missouri Valley. As I set air to stop at Mo Valley to let him off, a "dynamiter" in the train put us into emergency.
He got an education on how things work that day.
SFbrkmnMany DS positions enter the industry off the street because there are no longer other clerical crafts to draw out of. One reason why job cuts make no sense. We had a little college gal,who was a student @ Univ of Virginia studying for a pharmical degree, wash up on shore w/BNSF after the company was doing on- campus recruting. One night she rode w/us on our shuttle job. I give her credit for taking the effort to come down from Kancks and ride the Ark City Sub when so many others do not. You could see the light bulb go off in her head when we passed by a control point where BNSF & UP connect. Seeing something real is much different compared to colored lines and dots on a screen. Several months ago I looked her up on the roster and nowhere to be found. Hope all is well. Very few train craft ppl enter the field as management wishes not to have them. 20 yrs ago, there was a condr class that I help train, pardon the pun. One of the hires was a single mom, hispanic. After being a condr well over a decade, she expressed an interst in the management trainee program (a mistake) and applied for a dispatcher class. Passing the testing w/flying colors, she was declined.Reason: being over qualified (aka..knowing too much and being a smart employee). This person used the "card" to challenge the decline and did get hired in a DS class. As a condr/brkmn, this person was solid as we had worked jobs together. As for going "ATSF" exzempt, I don't know how the job performance is but I would rather have her in the seat dispatching territories she work on in the craft compared to someone who hired in from a grocery store as produce manager. True fact. Sam
When the CSX Baltimore Dispatching office existed from 2008 to 2017 it had dispatchers that had come from a number crafts - Engineer, Conductor, Signalman and Clerks. Don't recall anyone from the Car Dept., Locomotive Maintenance or the track department. Those hired 'from the street' mostly had a background of being a military air traffic controller.
While CSX did have road review - most of the time Dispatchers were expected to Hi-rail with Track Supervisors over the territories they were reviewing - it was faster than riding trains as times could be more closely managed. Personally, when I was qualifying in 1970, all my road review was done on trains.
Many DS positions enter the industry off the street because there are no longer other clerical crafts to draw out of. One reason why job cuts make no sense. We had a little college gal,who was a student @ Univ of Virginia studying for a pharmical degree, wash up on shore w/BNSF after the company was doing on- campus recruting. One night she rode w/us on our shuttle job. I give her credit for taking the effort to come down from Kancks and ride the Ark City Sub when so many others do not. You could see the light bulb go off in her head when we passed by a control point where BNSF & UP connect. Seeing something real is much different compared to colored lines and dots on a screen. Several months ago I looked her up on the roster and nowhere to be found. Hope all is well. Very few train craft ppl enter the field as management wishes not to have them. 20 yrs ago, there was a condr class that I help train, pardon the pun. One of the hires was a single mom, hispanic. After being a condr well over a decade, she expressed an interst in the management trainee program (a mistake) and applied for a dispatcher class. Passing the testing w/flying colors, she was declined.Reason: being over qualified (aka..knowing too much and being a smart employee). This person used the "card" to challenge the decline and did get hired in a DS class. As a condr/brkmn, this person was solid as we had worked jobs together. As for going "ATSF" exzempt, I don't know how the job performance is but I would rather have her in the seat dispatching territories she work on in the craft compared to someone who hired in from a grocery store as produce manager. True fact. Sam
tree68Alas, old stereotypes die hard. As much as we try to be open-minded, sometimes those stereotypes still come through. It's certainly not unique to the railroads.
It's certainly not unique to the railroads.
The CSX Dispatching office in Baltimore which numbered about 40 people, had approximately a dozen women - women that held regular jobs among all tricks as well as relief and extra list positions. Every desk in the office had either a woman with a regular position on the desk or had a female extra list person that was qualified on the desk. Many of the women in the Baltimore office were former military, women that did not take any 's..t' from anybody..
When CSX was holding its Dispatching School at Atlanta, a number of the instructors were female that had previouly been regular dispatchers.
Alas, old stereotypes die hard. As much as we try to be open-minded, sometimes those stereotypes still come through.
While it could be construed as sexist, it was not meant that way. I know that progress is being made in the amount of diversity in the business but since this thread was discussing the profession, I wanted to try to determine how much progress has occurred. I still remember back when I had my first female Amtrak sleeper attendent. It was in Charlottesville and I was transferring from Southern's Piedmont to the (predecessor to Cardinal) George Washington. As I started to pick my suitcase up to start up the car steps, she reached down, grabbed it, and stated strongly. "I'm your PORTER". And she was. Did a great job. I watched her lower an upper birth bed and while she (not a tall person) had a hard time using the key over her head, she got it done. I've had female Amtrak engineers on trains and seen RR's tout their female jobs. My Senator lost her legs as a marine while flying a helicopter. Equal Oportunity is real and it should have happened earlier. I've worked for women and respected them for what they did.
Electroliner 1935 I am hearing more female sounding voices on dispatcher radio channels. What percentage are now female. I don't detect much difference in how they handle their territory. Anyone have any issues?
I am hearing more female sounding voices on dispatcher radio channels. What percentage are now female. I don't detect much difference in how they handle their territory. Anyone have any issues?
Kind of a sexist question. I have met/worked with female dispatchers that are just as good and knowledgeable as the best male ones. I have met/worked with female dispatchers that are just as bad as the worst male ones.
I am not sure why there is even a question here.
An "expensive model collector"
There used to be quite a few female dispatchers that would work my territories. Since the purge awhile back, not as many as before.
Any issues, and some did have some, were more from being novices in the field. Something that affects the male dispatchers, too.
Besides, with the computer dispatching systems being used (Movement Planner, CAD and the new CAD-X, et.al.) do we really need humans who know what they're doing? The answer is YES, but those who run the company (but really don't know how the company runs) don't think so. Automation is the answer to everything.
As I told one dispatcher, they want to automate both our jobs out of existance. He agreed.
UP has/does/did have dispatchers ride their territories. You get to know the dispatchers just by interacting with them so much. One of the dispatchers was in my engineer's class, that helps, too. Another one, plus one coming back, were trainmen in my territory.
One of the problems with them riding the territory, they often are pressed for time. This means they tend to be put on the hot trains that get across. They really need to ride the lowest of the low junk trains to get a real feel for how things work. Or don't work as is often the case.
For sever al years I drove I-40 between Williams, AZ and Albuquerque, NM. I had a scanner tuned to the BNSF frequencies and several times listened as dispatchers and crews used personal names when communicating. I think BNSF, at that time, trained dispatchers by having them ride in cabs across the SUB they were to be dispatching. It was my perception that this helped the RR run very well.
BaltACD Bad Train Dispatchers see the clock on the wall (or their work station) and feel it isn't advancing to the arrival of their relief fast enough.
Bad Train Dispatchers see the clock on the wall (or their work station) and feel it isn't advancing to the arrival of their relief fast enough.
Meh. I know plenty of good dispatchers that don't want to be there. Being good at your job and wanting to be at work are not mutally exclusive.
Has NS management decreed that their dispatching computer is making the dispatching decisions?
So, when Wick Moorman became CEO of NS, he took a particular interest in how NS was doing with its Amtrak trains. In fact, he wanted a daily report showing performance...using the data Amtrak uses to measure NS - that is using conductor reported delays.
Amtrak developed an automated process to get their data sent to us each day so we could scrape it up, and store it in a database. The daily report went to Wick and anybody who was anybody in Transportation.
So, did things improve because of this focus? Not really. Sometimes things ran very slickly for a period and performance was pretty good. Then things would slide and things would be bad for a while.
The biggest driver of this turned out to be how the rest of the railroad was running. If the freight trains were running more-or-less on time, Amtrak did well. If the RR got congested due to weather or chronic lack of locomotives or crews, and the trains started running habitually late, Amtrak did poorly.
I would often watch the dispatcher's track line view and most often it looked to me that the dispatchers were doing about as well as they could. One time in particular, the LSL was departing Elkhart in a long conga line of westbounds. Why not run him around? There was an equally full eastbound conga line. It wasn't this way every day - I didn't dig into the particulars (actual work got in the way, you know!) but I suspect the LSL was a bit late and the other trains were just enough early and/or late to cause the spot of congestion.
On the other hand, I've seen the Crescent get stuck behind a stuck train because of stupidity. A multilevel train (remember them?) leaves Atlanta heading north. A bit later, the Crescent departs Atlanta. The Piedmont is running with the UTCS movement planner at the time (still is...) The ML train hits a detector and stops to inspect. The Crescent catches up. It's a simple run-around move - there is nothing else coming either way and the RR can accomodate it. But, the Crescent just sits and waits. Why? The movement planner thinks the ML train should be moving so doesn't plan and execute the pass. It only knows what gets input. When it hit the detector, the dispatcher was supposed to input the anticipated delay. He obvously didn't. Who knows why? With UTCS, they doubled up a lot of dispatcher territories. Maybe he was busy with something else? Who knows. But, it was a 45 minute delay to the Crescent that shouldn't have happened.
FWIW, the UTCS movement planner has Amtrak priority turned up to 11...(or at least it did as of a couple years ago.)
-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/)
A good Train Dispatcher is never surprised with anything that happens on 'his' railroad. With every action they take they have plans B, C, D, E, F, G and so forth in case something happens.
VISION VISION VISION VISION VISION VISION
The truth is Train Dispatcher 'see the future' and manipulate it to their ends.
It's like being a dispatcher in the OTR industry. There's those that are thinking about how they are going to keep their drivers running after they get them empty and then we have the one's that can't even be bothered to try to find a reload until the truck is empty. Those are the ones that drivers hate and they tend to be run out pretty quickly. The others are cherished and loved to the point where they get loyalty from their drivers. We have a dispatcher that literally has reloads waiting for 90 percent of his drivers the day before they make delivery. The other 10 percent are in the tank fleet and they normally get to bounce home empty.
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