Hi, back in steam days a division was roughly 100 - 150 miles, give or take. How about now in the modern diesel / computer world? Have they lengthened? Have they doubled up? Another question is Amtrak and the Northeast Corridor. On a train travelling Boston - Washington, how many crew changes will take place and where? Would it be Boston - New Haven -NY- Phil- Wash or just a crew change in NY? Of course I'm talking about railroad employees- engineers & conductors, not Amtrak employees such as food service, car attendents, etc.
Some places have longer crew districts. Usually by running through one terminal, turning two former districts into one. Some places still have crew districts that haven't changed since the steam era.
Some places may have interdivisional runs were some trains will run through a crew change point, while others still stop to change crews.
Jeff
pajrrHi, back in steam days a division was roughly 100 - 150 miles, give or take. How about now in the modern diesel / computer world? Have they lengthened? Have they doubled up? Another question is Amtrak and the Northeast Corridor. On a train travelling Boston - Washington, how many crew changes will take place and where? Would it be Boston - New Haven -NY- Phil- Wash or just a crew change in NY? Of course I'm talking about railroad employees- engineers & conductors, not Amtrak employees such as food service, car attendents, etc.
I think you are using the wrong terminology. When you say "division" are you talking about a crew district or a subdivision or a division?
The UP currently is about 32,000 miles and 21 divisions. Evn the steam era Reading, a small railroad had 3 divisions.
Crew districts vary all over the place, some less than 100 miles and some pushing 300 miles. Amtrak has very long crew districts because the trains travel at a higher speed and so can go further in 12 hours.
The engineers and conductors on an Amtrak train ARE Amtrak employees, they don't work for the host railroad, they work for Amtrak.
Dave H. Painted side goes up. My website : wnbranch.com
On NS, the crew districts are still pretty short, although there are places were some trains will run "long pool" crews that span a couple districts. It's mostly the intermodal trains that use the long pools. For example, a NJ to Chicago intermodal train will use four crews. Croxton to Harrisburg, Harrisburg to Conway (Pittsburgh), Conway to Toledo, and Toledo to Chicago, bypassing the Altoona, Cleveland and Elkhart.
NS also took 3 on the CNO&TP and made two a couple years ago.
Other than that, little attentioni is paid to decreasing running times so crew districts can be lenghtened. In fact, some have gone the other way. Where Conrail used to regularly run merchandise freight from Enola to Conway with one crew, NS typically uses two, changing in Altoona.
It's a fertile field for cost savings and service improvement. I just needs to be plowed.
-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/)
Since "inter-divisional" or "ID" is a current term used to describe a pool of T&E service, or crew district, I'm thinking that there is, in fact, a term "Crew Division" separate from operating Divisions, a group of sub-divisions. The term may have fallen out of favor these days and been replaced by crew district, which in my experience is mostly a railfan term as we called them pools.
On my carrier, under the contract in effect on my territory, the company has a lot of flexibility in setting crew districts and specific runs in those crew districts.
The overall idea is to minimize crew starts and move all the traffic in a timely manner. Several years ago, we had a pair of assigned runs that spanned 3 crew districts - with the traffic level that existed at that point in time, these runs routinely accomplished their full trips. As traffic on the territories involved increased, the completion of full trips became more problematical, to the point where the 3 district runs were abolished and replace with a 2 district interdivisional pool and a single district run. With increasing traffic levels, even these runs are problematical at times.
Just because trains operate at 50 or 60 MPH doesn't mean that traffic on a territory will permit them to run at that speed for the entirety of their trip. When one has crew runs of much over 200 miles, depending on the territory, one starts asking for trouble in having crews complete the run within their allowed 12 hour on duty time.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
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