MP173I think "15 trains" was an exaggeration...sounded like a frustrated dispatcher. Last week both mains were tied up with dead trains at NWO and they were running trains thru the yard to bypass. No one in any industry has enough labor. We dont, my customers dont, and we will not until an answer is formulated.
Last week both mains were tied up with dead trains at NWO and they were running trains thru the yard to bypass.
No one in any industry has enough labor. We dont, my customers dont, and we will not until an answer is formulated.
I don't know the present specifics at NWO!
That being said - REMEMBER crews work in two (or more directions) at a crew change point - trains at NWO can be being held for crews to Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit and Cincinnati. Under those circumstance it doesn't take all that long to develop a situation where there are 15 or more trains that are stopped waiting on crews.
Remember, the Train Dispatcher is a juggler - juggling 10K-15K foot long trains with the available track space on his territory in a manner to keep movable trains moving and dodging parked trains with minimal delay.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
I think "15 trains" was an exaggeration...sounded like a frustrated dispatcher.
From a Dispatching standpoint when it comes to parking trains - you never want to put the cork in the bottle. In parking trains you need to leave a Main Track path through all the parked trains.
MP173"15 trains without crews at NWO"
I've seen trains tied down outside of NWO, on the main, when visiting there. Not sure there is room within NWO for fifteen trains, especially the land barges that are now quite common.
I don't think they like to do it, but Deshler seems to be a frequent location for crew changes. Generally those changes involve trains going onto or off the Toledo Sub to the south.
It's not unusual to see a train tied down on the west siding at South Deshler for a good many hours. The east siding was OOS last I knew.
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...
MP173I dont have inside info on CSX but I do watch / listen to two Ohio web cams - Berea and Deshler. The scanner conversations are often fascinating. Last week CSX was essentially single tracking from Defiance to the Indiana/Ohio border due to five trains parked on one of the mains due to "lack of crews." There seems to be a big issue with crew availability at North Baltimore (NW Ohio terminal). This morning the dispatcher said "NO" to a request for MOW work due to "15 trains without crews at NWO". He might have been exaggerating. MOW responded with work MUST be done...dispatcher reluctantly gave up the EC1. The intermodals seem to be running fairly close to normal but the Merchandise trains seem to have fallen off the radar screen. Again, no first hand info, just listening in. ed
Last week CSX was essentially single tracking from Defiance to the Indiana/Ohio border due to five trains parked on one of the mains due to "lack of crews." There seems to be a big issue with crew availability at North Baltimore (NW Ohio terminal). This morning the dispatcher said "NO" to a request for MOW work due to "15 trains without crews at NWO". He might have been exaggerating. MOW responded with work MUST be done...dispatcher reluctantly gave up the EC1.
The intermodals seem to be running fairly close to normal but the Merchandise trains seem to have fallen off the radar screen.
Again, no first hand info, just listening in.
ed
Crew issues are the most insidious of all the operating problems. The lack of crews at a crew change point, just compound all the crew issues. Crew change locations only have so many places for trains that are to change crews (normally one). If that place get occupied by a train waiting on a crew, it can't be used for the following train(s) that will also be waiting on crews and each train gets parked in turn at increasing distances from the crew change point. On multiple track territory that distance will be dictated by road crossings that cannot be blocked; on single track it will be set by the passing sidings that can be used to hold the uncrewable trains until crews become available. With each parking of a train the 'single track' nature of the resulting railroad grows longer and longer when dealing with trains that don't require crew changes at the crew change point (interdivisional type crews).
When crews become rested it will generally require two crews to get one train moving, one crew to bring the train from its parking spot to the crew change location and another crew to move the train from the crew change location to the next terminal for the crew. The crew bringing the parked trains to the crew change location MAY only be able to work on one side of the crew change location.
I dont have inside info on CSX but I do watch / listen to two Ohio web cams - Berea and Deshler. The scanner conversations are often fascinating.
Shutting down the humps and then farming out the classification work seems to mean trying to process 10 gallons of stuff through a 5 gallon bucket. A train comes in and sets out enough cars to fill up 1/4 of the yard, and there are three more right behind it to fill up the rest of the yard.
Trains are held out and most of them are tied down and will need recrews to drag them in. I remember reading the recrew report once, "Too much train, not enough yard."
I always thought the goal was to handle cars less. PSR seems to mean handling (switching) cars more because they pass through intermediate yards where they are reblocked.
They may be saving money in one pocket, but I think they are paying the same, if not more, out of another pocket. As long as they can maintain the specific metrics they want to use, everythings OK.
Jeff
The cars still need to be sorted. So instead of having a copuple crews do many trains at a humpyard - you have many crews spending hours (many OT) blocking and sorting their trains out before they leave an upstream yard.
Is it really saving anything? I dunno. But it's not like the need to sort cars just goes away when you close a hump.
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
(1) Anyone who thinks hump yards are more efficient by default is out tap dancing in a minefield. Location, workforce, traffic etc are all limiting factors.
(2) The upper-end operating bubbas try to collect hump yards like so-much bling..
(3) Queensgate Yard (CSX 1976-78) put NYC/PC/CR Sharonville Yard finally out of operation (at one time, two humps and then most of the business was moved north to Columbus' Buckeye Yard)
n012944 gregc nanaimo73 Avon and Selkirk were built by New York Central, as was Frontier (Buffalo), if it is still open. Where would the other 2 (or 3) be, and who were they built by? Willard is no longer a hump yard, and Selkirk is for sure still humping cars.
gregc nanaimo73 Avon and Selkirk were built by New York Central, as was Frontier (Buffalo), if it is still open. Where would the other 2 (or 3) be, and who were they built by?
nanaimo73 Avon and Selkirk were built by New York Central, as was Frontier (Buffalo), if it is still open. Where would the other 2 (or 3) be, and who were they built by?
Willard is no longer a hump yard, and Selkirk is for sure still humping cars.
Looking at this map concerning Toledo. Did they remove the hump from Stanley? Or just closed it?
An "expensive model collector"
nanaimo73Avon and Selkirk were built by New York Central, as was Frontier (Buffalo), if it is still open. Where would the other 2 (or 3) be, and who were they built by?
greg - Philadelphia & Reading / Reading
They re-opened Frontier; the hump and bowl tracks are gone.
Throughout my career, there were a continuing parade of Officials, one group would 'close' a number of yards and report savings of million$. Another group would gain power and 'open' the closed yards and report savings of million$. Through most of those swings, the yards, when closed, were left to rust in place, thus making the cost of 'opening' them negligible.
When Hurricane Harrison struck CSX, some of the yards that were closed, had their rails pulled up and sold for scrap (Tilford Yard in Atlanta) thus making it very difficult to 'reopen' the yards without the expenditure of large $um$.
Most of Frontier was closed back in 2009-2010.. I guess the other question would be. How much of Frontier is even left today?
samfp1943So that should give you a sense of our willingness to revisit things over time,
In other words, closing it was a mistake...
samfp1943I'd bet that BaltACD can fill us in?
I retired in 2016 BEFORE Hurricane Harrison hit the property. I have no first hand knowledge of the damage that was done.
OWTX Radnor Nashville (L&N) Rice Waycross (ACL) Queensgate Cincinnati (Chessie)
Radnor Nashville (L&N)
Rice Waycross (ACL)
Queensgate Cincinnati (Chessie)
From the linked site, is the following statement,
[ RE: CSX YARDS];
@https://www.trains.com/trn/news-reviews/news-wire/07-csx-reopens-hump-at-yard-in-nashville/
Quote friom Article: :...“We just turned the Nashville hump back on. So that should give you a sense of our willingness to revisit things over time,”Chief Financial Officer Frank Lonegro told an investor conference this week.
“It was absolutely the right decision to make.”
CSX will revisit other hump-yard decisions if merchandise traffic grows significantly in certain areas, Lonegro says. The railroad’s merchandise traffic is up 4 percent this year, though it remains well below levels of a decade ago.
The Radnor hump was idled in July 2017 as part of the broad operational changes made by Harrison.
In 2016, Radnor was CSX’s third-busiest hump — behind only Waycross, Ga., and Selkirk, N.Y. — as it classified an average of 1,477 cars per day. That’s within the range that Harrison said was sufficient volume to justify the operating costs and capital expense of a hump yard.."
So apparenbtly, CSX has an unknown number of HUMP YARDS [ The article mentioned a total of 8 yards were converted to flat switching] ; now in operation?
I'd bet that BaltACD can fill us in?
This article mentions that CSX has 5 hump yards
https://www.railwayage.com/cs/tytreporter-tightens-up-csx-avon-yard-ops/
Avon and Selkirk were built by New York Central, as was Frontier (Buffalo), if it is still open. Where would the other 2 (or 3) be, and who were they built by?
Thanks!
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