A few months ago while driving down the road I ended up behind a van painted white with the words TRAK TIME Professional Railroad Services "The Texas Tornado".
My only guess as to what the Professional Railroad Service is that they offer is to move employees or tools as fast as possible over the road to locations on the railroad.
Does anybody know how the van or vans are actually used?
Thank You,
Andrew
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Not recognizing the company, I'll take a stab and guess that it's a company contracted by the railroad as a "taxi" to ferry crews over the railroad.
This is one owned by a different company at the CSX / Pan Am Railways interchange at Barbers Jct. in Worcester, Mass. Given that there's a CSX service truck next to it, the nose door on the locomotive is open, and the train is blue-flagged at both ends, I'd guess it was hauling CSX maintenance personnel.
A google search reveals
Trak-Time Inc 2 Cheshire CtRockwall, TX 75032 Phone: (469) 273-4100
Trak-Time Inc is a private company categorized under and located in Rockwall, TX. Current estimates show this company has an annual revenue of $94,000 and employs a staff of approximately 2.http://www.manta.com/coms2/dnbcompany_f3zj7
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from a picture you can tell that the engine is blue flagged? I dont see the blue flag am i missing something here?
How are crews ferry over the railroad?
Why would maintance personell come in a cab, would it not make sense to come in a gang truck so they have tools and supplies to work on the repairs if this is whats going on?
TRAK TIME has to have more than two employees because the Van was in Michigan, which is a long way from Texas.
That Google search result never says exactly what they do for the railroads.
wabash1from a picture you can tell that the engine is blue flagged? I dont see the blue flag am i missing something here? How are crews ferry over the railroad? Why would maintance personell come in a cab, would it not make sense to come in a gang truck so they have tools and supplies to work on the repairs if this is whats going on?
The locomotive is blue-flagged on the other side of the crossing just out of frame to the left (I took the photo) - the derail itself is not in the photo.
I don't actually know if the van was carrying maintenance personnel - it could have been just the train crew. But I know they were doing something since the nose door was open, the engines were shut down (I heard them start up a few minutes after I took the photo) and there were people poking around the locomotive. This was definitely not a routine crew change because they never apply blue-flag protection.
Barbers Jct. is a crew change at the CSX / Pan Am Railways interchange. Q426 comes from Selkirk to Worcester, MA, where it splits off the CSX mainline to head a couple miles north on the Providence & Worcester to Barbers Jct. The CSX crew gets off and gets driven off in a crew van. Later a Pan Am crew gets on and runs the train (with CSX engines) to Ayer, MA as symbol SEAY.
On the return journey AYSE runs from Ayer to Barbers Jct with a Pan Am crew, which leaves the train where I photographed it. Then a CSX crew takes over and runs the train to Selkirk. I would guess that something went wrong with one of the locomotives on either the trip to Ayer or on the way back so they sent a CSX crew in the truck to fix the locomotives at Barbers Jct.
Various contractor vans are used for Crew Transport by most if not all the Class I carriers. Contractor vans would not be used by either roadway or mechanical department personnel.
The vans that transport train crews here in Arizona don't have any markings of ownership. The web site for Trak Time says they are an IT company with only two employees, so this is obviously not the same company.
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