You only get what you pay for.......article in Trains

[daveklepper]

When I mentioned previously on this thread the idea that a scheduled railroad would be both more efficient and better for crews, of course I meant UNPUBLISHED schedules. Except for those shippers willing to pay, publishing schedules makes no sense whatsever, unless there are all kinds of footnotes giving all kinds of reasons for modifications of the times shown. Also, I realize a lot depends on the nature of the traffic. Some industrial plants do manufacture at a pretty steady rate and require inbound materials at a pretty steady rate. Obviously the unpublished schedules must be adjusted for seasons. No sense having grain shipment schedules when grain isn't being moved. But then possibly crew assignements according to seniority should be different for these different season. The goal is to assure crews sufficient rest, move the traffic efficiently, and not have crews, power, or freight cars sitting around idle any more than necessary. Possibly some of the best and latest computer technology can help this problem.

[arbfbe]

BaltACD

Smell the reality, I live the reality. Explain to me why I am expected to do what the railroad allegedly cannot. The unions seem unwilling to carry the ball on this even though it has been shown to work in places like Sheridan, WY. The industry needs to come down from their high and mighty and see the reality themselves. There is no reason for them to continue to bury their heads in the 'sand' and continue to play Russian roulette with crew rest and schedules every day. The reality is it is not 1890 any more.

[BaltACD]

QUOTE: Originally posted by arbfbe

In the end it boils down to the fact the railroad expects the employee to do what the railroad claims they can't do. The employee is expected to guess the arrival of their train within + or - 30 minutes in order to be rested for their connection. My calls have varied within the final 12 hourss of my expected call by +36 hours and -12 hours. No body, no way is going to be properly rested to work under these circumstances yet that is what the companies demand from their employees given the absolutely abysmal information the train line ups provided by the companies allow.

Give us a 10 - 12 hour call instead of 90 minutes and look at how fast the railroads will improve their line up figures and their train performance.

Alan

Grow up and smell reality!

[Anonymous]

That's exactly what the railroad expects. And as long as the wage is good, they'll find plenty of warm bodies to put in the seat in the cab to put up with it. But if the wage falls relative to other jobs the same people can land, forget it. No warm bodies. Then the railroad will change. Not one day before then. Check out Army and Marine recruiting (severe shortfall!) vs. Navy recruiting (surplus, call back next year!) Gee -- pays the same, one I get shot at, one I don't, no brainer. The only question is which one will change first, the Navy cutting its pay and benefits, or the Army and Marines raising theirs. Economics will prevail.

I guess you could hope for regulation to change the way railroads call crews, but in this political climate? Not very likely, not without a much higher death toll to motivate the public into action. (I'm really aggrieved that the NY Times would spend so much ink on railroad safety, and totally miss the real stories and fall for these dumb sideshows. If I didn't know better, I'd almost suspect a really clever railroad lobbyist steered the NY Times onto this wild goose chase.)

By the way: the way you framed the conflict is brilliant. One I've seen no one strip it to the economic essentials so nicely.

OS

[arbfbe]

In the end it boils down to the fact the railroad expects the employee to do what the railroad claims they can't do. The employee is expected to guess the arrival of their train within + or - 30 minutes in order to be rested for their connection. My calls have varied within the final 12 hourss of my expected call by +36 hours and -12 hours. No body, no way is going to be properly rested to work under these circumstances yet that is what the companies demand from their employees given the absolutely abysmal information the train line ups provided by the companies allow.

Give us a 10 - 12 hour call instead of 90 minutes and look at how fast the railroads will improve their line up figures and their train performance.

Alan

[Anonymous]

Ed--I wondered when somebody finally was gonna say it--they are already "scheduled", albeit loosely in most cases.

It probably would be useful for some of the other participants who don't normally deal with this issue (and I'll do it here--just because I have nothing better to do right now than stick my neck out) to note that you can distinguish between a schedule and a PUBLISHED schedule. Modern RRs have typically tried to "schedule" through operations, if for no other reason that on a crowded main line, there is only so much capacity, i.e. a fixed number of operational "slots", and you want to try to fill them as optimally as possible. The difference between this kind of operation and a published schedule (like what airlines use and the RRs used to use) is that there are legal and regulatory (even with deregulation) ramifications and requirements associated with publishing a schedule that can load the system with inefficiencies. As an example, to use the airline analogy again, missed conex due to some operational factors are penalized by requiring the payment to pax, in cash, services, or both, of compensation--think of the meal vouchers and getting put up in a hotel room overnight. That's why airlines will routinely hold many evening conex, particularly the late-night cleanup trips, for late inbounds with transferring pax. Similarly, with a published schedule, you're stuck and you can't leave early, even if you are full (with some small tolerances allowed in today's environment). Imagine a RR with available track slots and a crew holding a full intermodal or (let's talk big bucks) through chemical train in the yard for 4 hours before releasing it for no good reason until the published scheduled departure time, just because it got in early or got switched early--in the old TT days, they got around this problem by going on and dispatching it as a section of a previous schedule so it still had rights (extras had essentially no rights), and if you publish and hold to a rigid schedule, you're right back at the same point, but probably without the options they had back in the old days. On the other hand, being late to the gate due to a non-airline problem such as traffic or even security will largely get you a sympathetic look and possibly on-site help in arranging a new flight, if you're lucky and you hit a non-surly day and don't get a brush-off (I know--I've been accused by some crews of putting in more airborne hours in a month than they do, and I used to work for one of the major ALs).

But, since the RR uses the "schedule" generally for internal operational management only, AND DOES NOT PUBLISH IT, there is no per-se legal obligation to the customers to run the train exactly when the RR decided and published that it was supposed to be run. In other words, a terminal delay can cost Southwest Airlines a potload of REAL $$ paid out to the pax (shippers) in addition to their internal costs for delay and lost opportunity, because the fact that the schedule is published puts that obligation on them, and in some of those situations, the connection does go out empty (or emptier) in order to stage the equipment and/or to keep a crew from going into their rest time, which can cascade into the next operational day or two and REALLY screw things up. But, if you don't publi***he schedule, the extra costs don't exist, because you are not advertising (and ultimately contracting for) arrival at a certain time. And, you can easily hold the departure for a hot block of cars without the feds getting uppity.

Now, that said, there are contractual obligations with major shippers like UPS that do effectively put some trains on demanding and sometimes ambitious unpublished schedules. And, in many cases, like the airlines, if the driver misses the ramp cutoff, that trailer doesn't get lifted on schedule and gets back in line depending on the contractual obligation. So there are very real schedule issues still extant in the RR industry.

But back to the original issue--would running an officially scheduled RR make it more efficient. I'm afraid I have to agree with Ed, Mark, and several of the others: probably not, primarily because there are too many significant terminal delay variables that cascade down the line and cause way too much variability. Build extra yard capacity just to hold a bunch of trains waiting to meet a published time? That's inherently cost inefficient and can propagate even worse delays and reductions in quality of service. Want to clog a hub airport? Just have a bunch of flights land early ahead of the current bank's release time. There is really no reason to institutionalize a rigidly fixed, published schedule for freight operations, particularly given that the RR already is running on a de facto schedule anyway, but with the critical flexibility of being able to release a train early or dispatch an extra if a slot is available. As nice as it may appear to be able to put crews on a fixed clock, with today's environment it won't work very well for a lot of reasons that have been discussed in other posts. And it wouldn't work well in the airline industry, either, if the potential for highly inefficient long delays were as common as it is in the RR industry.

Besides that, with the exception of some big intermodal operators, most rail shippers and consignees are more interested in reliability and consistency in delivery and not raw speed. What they need is the delivery made day-by-day within the agreed-upon window, and not within X hours of shipment. They really don't care if it takes 9 days (that's just less warehousing cost to them, anyway), as long as it gets there every day between, say, 7 PM and 3 AM, spotted and ready to unload. That's not the case with the pax airline model, where time is money.

Think about this. You put mainline crews on a fixed schedule and they bid a schedule, like an airline crew, that requires that they spend night 1 at location X, night 2 at location Y, etc. They show up at Z and take their train 101 out. Two hours later, some bozo (I'm not starting a new thread here) runs in front of them at a grade crossing in the middle of nowhere, gets smacked and goes to bozo _____[you fill in the blank here, preferably in another forum]. Now, we get to wait for the police, and the coroner, and all the rest of the happy crew that got yanked out of bed, and 4 hours later, we move at restricted speed the rest of the way to Y because bozo damaged 101's lead locomotive just enough, and we get in 15 minutes under the law. But, the crew was scheduled out on a tight turnaround, which they now cannot make because they must get their rest time per Federal law. So does 102, that they were scheduled to take out, just sit there waiting for time? Probably not. Instead the extra board goes to work and someone has to haul our late crew to Z. Now compound this, because bozo didn't just delay 101, he delayed every train following and every one approaching. And so now the crew schedulers must play the same game with a whole bunch of trains. It should be readily conclusive that it won't take much to cause the whole system to crater and really drive costs through the roof, just on all the extra board crews and shuffling to get people in place and back on schedule. That's why the airlines couldn't come back to full service instantly after 9/11. Almost every piece of equipment and every crew in the country was out of place in the rotation and had to be repositioned before normal operations could resume. This takes time--lots of it. They have the same problems with multi-hour weather events, but all of these are extraordinary. On the other hand, a RR has similar delays as a matter of routine, just because it moves at a slower pace, rendering it very costly and difficult to put mainline crews on fixed schedule or to move freight on a rigid published schedule.

[edblysard]

Just finished a switchmans class, and marked up the class before with their foreman rights...won't be another class for at least a half year.

As for the shippers demanding a heavy scheduled service, most of them dont want it and wont pay for it...
The refineries down here run 24/7, scheduling a delivery of 100 tankcars to Shells Deer Park Plant cant be done on any realible basis....because we cant find out when the cars will be released, until they tell us...

They can't tell us with any set schedule, because they may, or may not empty the car, (or load out the cars) on a schedule....they buy this stuff months, sometime a year in advance for production runs.
So, how can I tell a Class1 that say, UTLX20043 is scheduled to run to South LA out of the PTRA North Yard, on Nov 4, 2004 at 0630, on the PTLA, if I cant find out if the car is released from Shell, untill their switch crew sets it out in the pull track?

Or, what if Shell is 24 to 48 hours behind their run, and have no place to put the contents of the cars?

But, we have them scheduled for a delivery, and the cars are in the train on the way to the plant?

And if Shell can't take the cars, then the schedule to turn the cars, and get them back to the shipper is shot, and so is every scheduled car for Shell behind thoses....

So you purpose we peanalize Shell for this?
One of our biggest customers, and we slap their wrist?

Besides, they dont need scheduled delivery, at least not as tight a schedule as you purpose...and they dont want to pay for something they dont need.

It dosnt matter to them if the tanks arrive today, tomorrow, or next week, (in most cases) because the product they having shipped in are is such quanities and destined to be stored on site for a while anywhay.

Your comparison between passengers and freight cars is flawed somewhat...
For a passenger, getting to LA on a set date at a set time is a service they will pay for, and demand, because the business appointment they are traveling for, or grandma's birthday, cant be changed, it is set in stone...but for a freight car,
most of the time, getting there early means sitting in the plant a few more days...they are scheduled, but a very loosely, to allow for all the variables we discussed earlier...

Ed
Ed

[rrnut282]

Your point about shippers not wanting to pay for the convenience of "scheduled delivery" makes this all an exercise in "what if". Until shippers start demanding this, there will be no reason to consider changes in operations of mailnline railroading. Although, don't the intermodal trains promise a 'available' time?

BTW you didn't answer my question about hiring.[;)]

[edblysard]

My point exactly, it flys empty..which might explain why so many airlines are going broke so fast...
But look at Southwest...
They offer you a seat, a soda, and the promise that they will fly you where you want to go, and if you missed the 11:00 flight, thats ok, there is one leaving at 12:30, 2:00......
They dont fly everywhere, but where they do service, they do so with a vengence.

Which is what the passenger is paying for, a service, with a guarantee to get them from point A to point B by a specific time....

On the other hand, the guys shipping a boxcar full of soybeans, or a flat car of sheet steel will not pay for a guaranteed time frame on delivery.

For the most part, to the shippers, and receivers, a day or two either way really makes no difference, and the extra cost of a guarantee isn't worth it to them.

Question...
What do you do for the other 300 passengers(railcars) that didnt make it to the air port on time, due to a traffic accident on the major highway(main line) leading to the airport(yard)?

Do you give them a refund, or do you stick them on the next flight out?
Do you cross book them on another airlines flight?

As for having the cars inspected while I am switching them in to live tracks?
Only if you want dead car knockers...

The inbounds from class 1s are inspected in the receiving yard, long before I ever touch them, bad ordered on my list, and I cut them out to a rip track.
Same for inbounds from our industries to the class 1s, before we switch them into a outbound train, they get checked.

The whole process is a lot more efficent than you think, we (the entire industry)moved more freight this year than ever before.

Thats right, this is the banner year for freight volume by rail.

We did it with less T&E employees, less locomotives, less track.

We can do this because we are more fluid than the general public thinks, we are not locked into a schedule, but can put together a "hot" train, in a few hours, and have it on it's way in a 8 hour shift.

Fact is, my counter part on the Class1 outbound side of the yard routinely builds 3 to 4 trains per shift, I regularly disassemble 3 inbounds, and build up 3 or 4 outbound to our industries per shift.

You can't schedule it, to many variables....

Ed

Not just my railroad, but most any one can do this.

[rrnut282]

Ed
If the 747 had only 10 cars on it and it had to be somewhere in 14 hours for 400, then yes it goes.

It will take a radical change in thought processes to make scheduling work. The car knockers will have to be inspecting as the cars are assembled, not waiting until departure time to find problems. Watch a pilot when he arrives at the airport. He does a walk-around of the plane before he gets his paperwork, to report any mechanical problems that can be fixed prior to departure. EVERYONE works together to get the flight out on-time, the petty turf wars can be fought later.

That said, it would appear that a terminal/switching railroad is somewhat unique in terms of scheduling, especially since its power isn't part of a larger system.

I can see why there might be a few corvettes in the parking lot, given some of the rules you described. Are they hiring?

[zardoz]

I did not consider the fact that the crew districts are set up to run as close to the 12 as possible. That was beyond my experience. Back in the 80's when CNW tried to run some "interdivisional" trains, the crews had scheduled on-duty times. That was the only way they could make the 200+ miles the run required. That experiment did not last a year. Most of the time, it seemed like we needed most of our 12 just to get to Butler from Chicago (96 rail miles). And frequently most of the delay was in trying to get out of Proviso yard. There have been times in winter that a crew never got out of the yard; 12 hours sitting in various parts of Proviso...talk about tough to stay awake !!

So your point is very well taken; with crew districts that long, scheduling would not work.

[daveklepper]

Again, I argue for a Scheduled railroad and as close to one-speed operation for each territory as possible. This would be a step in the right direction to defuse this problem, also.

[Anonymous]

One other aspect of trying to schedule a 'daylight railroad' operation.

Major industrial concerns don't want crew switching in their plants while the industry's work force is attempting to manufacture the industry's product.....so such switching is performed between 5 PM and 7 AM as a general rule.

Secondly, on the railroad the track and signal systems must be worked on, for the most part M of W and Signal personal do all their 'scheduled' work and inspections during 'normal' daylight working hours.

As a consequence of the above two realities, most of the train operations of the railroad occur between 3PM and 7AM. REAL railroading is a night time operation.

[jeffhergert]

Gee, I haven't got this issue yet in the mail.
At my last check-up, my doctor said that our jobs (railroad mine and doctor his) were very similar. The hours per week are about the same. Both of us are on call. Pay is about the same. He said that his job had one advantage. He gets to sleep in his own bed every night.
As for pay cuts, I have temporarily taken about a 1/3rd pay cut. I was a conductor but now I am a student engineer. I'm glad it's only for about 6 months. I'd hate for it to be permanent.
Jeff

[ValleyX]

I am well convinced after many years of railroad work, both in train and engine service, most all of it on the road on extra boards and regular pool assignments (not assigned calling times and not assigned trains, just chain gang pool jobs) that nighttime was made for sleeping and daytime was made for working and the only scheduled railroad I would really like would be one that would permit me to work in the daytime only. Now, that's unrealistic and I know that's not going to happen.

I don't think scheduled freight trains are going to happen, either, not anytime soon. It's easy to schedule them out of the originating terminal but there's so many things that can happen down the road that by the time the train gets to the second, third, fourth, or fifth crew change point, the schedule will probably be destroyed. That's only talking about one train and we are, I assume, discussing running everything on a schedule. It could happen only with radical change to what we see in today's industry.

[edblysard]

Your right,
They would be...

Two types of guys ride the board.

Those with little or no seniority, and those who love money.

Our contract states that if you have a second start time within 22&1/2 hours from your last start time, the second call is all overtime.

So, in one day, a guy could earn 8 straight plus any overtime, and up to 12 extra overtime hours.

If you went to work at 11.59 pm, and got off at 11:59am the following morning, making the hogs,and they call you back out before 10:29 pm that night, your working a double at time and a half, plus you have already earned 8 hours straight pay, and four hours ovetime from your first call.

Any thing over 8 hours a call is overtime, so if you hog out, its 8 straight, 4 at time and a half, plus any deadhead.
Double out, its all overtime.
Work through your first meal period, thats another hours pay, work through your second meal period, its a hour and a half straight pay...
So, you can see why the guys who like the money ride the board as long as they can.

And even when the board is turning slow, they work under a guarantee, as long as they stay marked up the entire half, (15 days) they are guaranteed to get paid for 11 days, even if they only work 3, 4 or 5 days.
Not a bad deal....


Somewhat the same for guys on a regular job.
I can be required to work over 8 hours, but anything past 8 and up to 12 hours is overtime.
The meal period pay is the same, miss the first, its a extra hour at straight time, miss the second, its a extra hour and a half.

For guys on a regular job, like me, it aint all that bad either.
I work from 6:30 am to 2:30 pm, if I hog out, I still get off at 6:30 that night, so I have time to go home, eat, watch some TV or do things with the family.
National holidays are time and a half...

Other roads pay mileage, different trip rates, things like that.

And depending on when you went railroading, say, pre 1985, you get a lot of perks, away from terminal pay, productivity pay, air pay, short hand pay....a protected man can make almost as half again much as I do, just by showing for up for work!

What a country!

Ed

[jeaton]

I agree with Mark's logic as he laid out the situation for T&E crews, and you, BaltACD and others have reinforced his point that there may be no PRACTICAL way to establish scheduled crew start times.

The fatigue issue could probably be addressed by adding more bodies to first in, first out rosters. However, not only would the railroad risk increased costs from guarantees, if in place, and the ever accruing benefit expense, but there might also be many on the roster that would not be happy with the less work, less pay situation.

I'd bet a Coke that more than half your extra board roster would be PO'd if they didn't get just about all the work the law allows.

Jay

[Anonymous]

Very good point Ed, and very well put. Nobody lied to me either about signing up and I knew from the get go that I'd be working a lot of undesirable hours, but my love of money and a comfortable living drives me to keep going.

[edblysard]

Carrying the plane game one step further...
If only ten people arrived on time to board your 747, you depart with only 10 paying customers on board?

Which covers the cost of one flight attendents taxi ride to the terminal...

There is a reason the class 1 gave up on scheduled passenger service....
and scheduled freight trains.

By the way, we do monitor each and every car in the yard.

In seconds the yardmaster can tell you when it arrived, what track it is in, where it's going, when we expect it to be turned(load out or emptied), and what train we expect it go back to the class 1 in...

We work pretty much non stop, right up to the time UP or BNSF pulls, tacking every car we can on to the outbound, and still leave time for a initial terminal air test.

There isnt any penalty siding...they cost too much to waste on storing cars.
If a car dosnt make it on the train we planned for it to, it gets put on the next one out.

You cant schedule this stuff more than that, too many variables, such as...

Did Shell run 12 hours behind on the production run, so the tanks are late?

Did the switch crew at Phillips split a switch, so we cant spot or pull them.

But we scheduled a crew and serviced a locomotive to take the Phillips train to Casey yard...so we paid the crew to sit on their fannys 8 to 12 hours...
earning the railroad nothing in return for their saleries?

And now there is a locomotive sitting idle, that could be used on the Sweeny coke train, or a dock job, but it's scheduled to take the Phillips train, which cant get here, which means the cost of that locomotive service is a waste of money.

What if Uncle Pete gets one on the ground out on the Rabbitt?

We all stand around here at the Port, getting paid to watch ships move up and down the ship channel, waiting for the scheduled train to show up, but its three deep behind the derailment on UP?

Whoops, we cant send the scheduled train out of here either, it has to go out the rabbitt also....

The only way to efficently use the physical plant is build outbounds as they come in from our industries, and take 'em apart and swicth as they come in from our member lines.

As soon as its built, it goes....

By the way, one thing not really touched on...
Both sides of the fatigue/ pay coin are...

The carriers want the way we work to remain the way it is...it gives them a on call, 24 hour a day pool of employees to move the trains.

It gets built, call a crew and get it on it's way.

It has to be fluid.

Any rigid schedule will fail, due to any of the variables.

All it takes is one thing going wrong, on any of the connecting lines and roads, and your schedule is shot.

What if a yard in South LA is full, but I have a scheduled train to send to them?
Do I send it, hoping they clear the problem up before the train gets there?

Or, do I stop working on that train, and get working on the BNSF train for Fort Worth, which, so far, is almost built.

Call a crew when I spot it for ground air, and by the time the car men have finished the air test, it's crewed, the dispatcher has got it lined up out of here, and has a plan to get it to Fort Worth.

Dwell time in yards kills railroads, fast.
You cant store anything for any length of time, you need that 50' one car occupies, and you needed it two hours ago.

Yes, there are places to hold cars, they are called SIT yards,(storage in transit) purpose built to store cars, full of inventory, sorta warehouses on wheels.

The employees, for all the griping and complaints, like it this way too.

Why?

We have guys on our extra board that made $100,000.00 last year, for such a small railroad, there are a lot of corvettes in the parking lot!

I work the morning shift, 6:30 am to 2:30 pm...make a pretty good living, am home every night.

I have enough whiskers to hold pretty much any job on my road.

The guys who work the board like making the money, adjust their personal lives to fit it, the guys who work the shifts like what they do, and adjust their lives to fit it also.

Belive it or not, there are a lot of guys who like working from midnight to eight in the morning, a lot of guys who dont want weekends off, (I am one of those)

No one lied to us and promised anything more than what we have...I was warned up front I would work weird hours, in rain, in the cold, in the 100 degree plus summer heat, get dirty and sweaty....

And I signed up right quick.

You cant schedule what we do anymore, the rest of the world is moving too quick to wait for the schedule to catch up to their needs...

Either we get it out to them as fast as we can, or we dont.
If we dont, we lose their business.


Ed

[BaltACD]

Scheduling begins way before we can even consider the entitiy know as a train.

Trains are operated for one reason alone....to serve the customer. Each train operated has a definate purpose and group of customers that are served. To really serve the customer the railroads have to go to the customer (car load freight) and in most cases do the placing, pulling and intra-plant switching that is required for the customer. Customers are 'funny' people, their shipping and receiving needs are not evenly scheduled. Some days a Yard or Road Switcher crew may be able to perform service for a customer in 20 or 30 minutes; other days the required service may occupy 2 or 3 hours. Some days the Yard or Road Switcher crews may complete all their industrial switching in 4 to 6 hours; other days they may not complete the requested work in their 12 hour tour of duty and the uncompleted work will have to be done by a relief or dog catcher crew or the customer given an excuse and the work performed on the following day. So right off the bat the railroads can't accurately schedule the arrival of business into their major marshalling yards.

The second impediment to accurately scheduling over the road trains is the amount of switching that is required to turn arriving industrial cuts into outbound trains. Some 'To Switch' tracks can be switched in a short amount of time, some take a much longer amount of time to handle the same number of cars. Once the cars are switched into outbound trains come the next impediments to keeping the schedule, coupling the train line and the car departments final inspection which can and do detect shop cars in the track that must be switched out before the track can depart on a train.

Now comes the next impediment....Power - is there enough for the train and is it serviced and ready for use. Engines don't grow on trees and arriving power cannot always be 'main tracked' to an outbound train. In the ideal world, when a train crew is called from an originating terminal they would find the power attached to the train, the brakes having been tested and the train waiting for the Train and Engine crew to board the engines, relase the brakes and pull the train out of town.....Most terminals are far from the ideal. The engine, if already serviced, are taken from the engine service track and opeated thorugh the yard to the departure track to couple to the train (in many yards the train will occupy more than one track and the train will need to be 'doubled' together and after the train is completly assembled the train line must be charged to the required level of air pressure (75 pound minimum) as measured by the End of Train Device then the brakes applied and the train inspected for visual observation of the brakes being applied throughout the train, the the brakes are released and the train is inspected another time to visually observe that all the brakes have released after this inspection and the restoration of a least 75 pouds of air on the EOT the train is ready to depart, if there is space on the railroad for it.

Of course once the train is on the line of road, it is 100 or so independent mechanical vehicles made up of serveral thousand parts that are subject to independent failures that can cause the train to stop and require the crew to inspect the train and remedy the offending problem....and as we all know a man can walk 9000 or more feet, with a brakemans lantern, on main track sized ballast , in the dark, without any delay at all....NOT. Any time a train stops you have to figure it will be stopped for an hour or more, sometimes much more and while it is stopped it is generally affecting a number of other trains on its subdivision.

Accurate scheduling of trains is an admirable ideal, however, like most ideals it is not attainable in the real world be it for the Customers benefit, for the crews benefit, or for the railroads benefit. There are way too many variables that are beyond the control of anything or anybody that prevent accurate scheduling from being an attainable reality.

[rrnut282]

Jay
We didn't wait. The plane left on-time so that it would make its destination on-time with those who arrived in time to board. And had a fighting chance to leave on time at the next stop. But as I stated above, someone would still need to make that call, can I afford to let this one wait or should I send it on without them.

Ed
Yard capacity would have to be closely monitored, even more than it is now. If you "book" a car on specific train and all the trains arriving at a yard are "booked(capacity limited) you automatically take care of the yard capacity problem when things are running on-time. One of the points of scheduling cars like passengers is that you can control the number arriving at any one time. If there is no room, they sit in the penalty box (siding) until a time slot opens up, just like they do now.

[jeaton]

Mike, In a converse to Ed's comment, if it is departure time and the passenger isn't there, is the plane obligated to wait?

If the contract for transportation called for airlines to provide service from door to door, I suspect that maintaining the airplane schedules would be a real SOB.

Jay

[edblysard]

Mike...
One thing with your comapirson to passengers vs railcars...
When the passengers arrive at the airport...but the plane isnt ready yet...what do the passengers do?
They wait, or course, but where?
In the lounge, bar, or the waiting rooms ....
but you cant do that with railcars and yards, the capacity isnt there.

[rrnut282]

1. I'm not seeing your point. How does knowing the schedule in advance make service and costs worse? Again I'm looking at an airline model where 1 car = 1 passenger and locomotives and crews are scheduled. The schedule is built so that a delay at one point doesn't necessarily mean a delay at the next, ie it's padded with some extra time. As far as cars not making the connection to a once-a-day freight, that's where the hub service manger (chief dispatcher or yardmaster or ?) decides whether to hold the outbound to prevent the missed connections or provides a re-route of the cars. Cycle times on loose car railroading may be longer, but don't a lot cars sit out on sidings somewhere "waiting" for the next load anyway?

2. I've been there with maxed cards. As I pay them off the payment gets lower! Yea! So I'd still have to classify them as varible for that reason.

3. I think we still agree.

[gabe]

My (less-than-original) thought was that doctors, like lawyers, artificially keep their numbers down in order to keep wages up. It is possible that the amount of doctors in this country are the only ones tallented enough to competently carry on their practice and the exclusion that is being done is entirely for the benefit of the public. On the otherhand, it is also possible that doctors understand what their wages work much like that of a busy rail line. Excess capacity lowers wages.

This position isn't an attack on doctors; It is nothing short of alarming what doctors are making in real wages now days--largely because of your aforecited reasons. I just hope the doctor who is operating on me has not been on call and up for the last 36 hours.

Gabe

[jchnhtfd]

Just one minor thought on rrnut's comment... may I remind folks here that the Class I's of today are not broke? In fact, they are pretty good investment quality stocks. This is emphatically NOT true of the major airlines (I just read that one of them is losing money at the rate of $400,000 plus per hour -- 24/7/365). I do think -- as a former pilot, among other odd doings -- that pilots should be paid well; very well (someone once said that flying [for an airline] is 99% boredom and 1% sheer terror. But the majors have paid, and paid well, for the schedule reliability which the heavy staffing rrnut mentions allows. But that remark could apply equally well to almost any engineer, brakeman, or conductor -- and while dispatchers don't have the terror factor (or do they Mark?!) that 1% is still there.

Overall, I would agree that... you get what you pay for, and the railroads do need to pay a premium over flipping burgers!

[gabe]

Originally posted by Mookie

I will be brief.

Good points! I just read the article and at the time thought "Mark is reading my mind!"

Many years ago - railroading wasn't all that wonderful as the old timers will remember, but the men made very good money and that made up for a lot of no family time, not the best working conditions, and not much personal life, either.

But taking up Zardoz thoughts - what about new doctors - they work how many hours on call with little or no sleep and the medical community doesn't change any of their working conditions. Plus they probably don't make all that much money.

So guess it is a trade-off and the amount of money to make while railroading will always be a lure for some - just like gambling. Some people don't gamble and some don't want to make those kinds of sacrifice. Others will always be willing. So why should the railroads or medical community change? The oops will always be covered by insurance or offset by the bottom line.
[/quote

I am not sure railroading and doctors are comparable. In railroading, at least if I understand the above arguments correctly, the hours/lack of sleep etc. is the market driving the employee's hours. In medicine it is the employees driving the market.

In any event, aspersions concerning family time aside, whether it is an engineer in control of an incredibly powerful train containing hazardous chemicals or a doctor with a scalpal with a patient's life in her hands, I think it says a lot about our society in terms of what we are willing to compromise with regarding sleep deprivation.

Gabe

• Reply