WRONG BOXCARS DELIVERED!

[Anonymous]

How often do railroads deliver the wrong car to customers? I would think that this would be a real problem, despute the advantages of computerization. I would hate to be a customer who opens a boxcar expecting say lumber, only to find it loaded with refrigerators! This would be a real expense for the railroad to fix, since they would need to despatch a crew/locomotive to change cars. How are screwups avoided?

[Anonymous]

I have never spotted the wrong cars, I am pretty consciencious of that and read the workorders closely. What I have done is spot the cars in the wrong places, especially when there is nobody at the plant to ask. I cought the job off of the E board and had not worked that industry before..The trainmaster gets a little sad to say the least.

[edblysard]

Actually, not very often. One, the customer knows already what cars are being delivered, and what the car numbers are, and cars are sealed with a security device, which is numbered, again the customer has this number, and would not open a car that didnt match their paperwork. Two, the crews which spot industries know what type of car each plant gets, and the final paperwork the crews have has been gone over several times by clerks, both shipping and billing clerks. I have been at this six years, and have yet to put the wrong cars in a industry. Although I have left the cars on the wrong "spot" in a plant.
Remember, these cars have been on the road several days, at least. They have been through several yards, and have been checked against a shipping invoice several times before they ever get to the final destination. And last but not least, railroaders dont mind doing the work once, but having to do it twice, well, double handling cars is something we avoid at all cost.
As my work orders show the contents of a car, I sure wouldn't spot a boxcar of refridgerators at a lumber yard, or a tank car of peanut oil in the Shell refinery. Although, thats kinda tempting...
Ed

[Anonymous]

ED,
Someone once told me that at the switching yards they have a spiecial track were they set cars that have questionable paper work or destination's. IS this true? Also while listening to the scanner several weeks ago. A train that was waiting for a clear signal, The dispatcher requested that someone get out a physicly check a car number. Would that be called to staiten out a clerk's confusion?
TIM A

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the thorough reply. I am a railfan, but not a railroader. I have no doubt that railroaders are conscientious and also skilled, however mixups are always inevitable.

I didn't realize that customers get car numbers ahead of time. Do they normally have someone present to monitor car delivery? I suppose major customers would and smaller customers would not.

[edblysard]

Hi Tim,
Yes, most yards have a lost car track. Here at the port, we get a lost car report with our switchlist and workorders, when we find one, we call it in to the tower, they check the computer/data bank. If it belongs somewhere else, like at BNSF, we switch it into their next outbound, if no record can be found, we set it over in a small storage track. As for physicaly checking a car number, it may be that a clerk mis-routed a car, or the AEI scanner didnt read the tag, (they get knocked off a lot) or they needed to confirm that the car was a good cover car, or just checking to make sure it was in the train. Some shippers will pester the heck out of you keeping track of a "hot" car, because some companies work on the just in time delivery system. Also the car may have tripped a hot box detector, and they wanted to confirm the car number.
Ed

[edblysard]

Yep, they do. At Cargill grain, they are often waiting on us, with their switch engine. As soon as we start shoving in, they check the cars, and as soon as we cut away, they start unloading. Some small customers also wait, even for one car, if it is a hot car...
Ed

[Anonymous]

Tim,
At NS, these types of cars are called "no bills" The name is self-explanatory. Sometimes they are set out and sometimes they're not. If the car in question were in a unit train placed 35th of 90 with the same commodity, same type of car, etc. we would let it go to destination of the others and have the paperwork straightened out by the time it got there.
In cases where no one has any idea, the cars are set out pending resolution. No need to send one further out of route.
Right after the Conrail transaction, there were a lot of misrouted cars and no-bills. It's a pesky job to try to figure these out and can get tedious. Some customers didn't even know the cars were supposed to be coming. We also had the unhappy condition of what became known as ping pong cars. Through a computer glitch during the days just following the tranasaction, the car movement system would receive a car at its destination and instantly record it as an empty, whereupon it was returned to origin before it was delivered to the customer. When it was placed as an empty, the customer would see the original seal and would open it to discover it was still loaded. They notified us and the car was reshipped and it happened all over again...hence the name ping pong. That only served to create more congestion. It would drive you nuts trying to find the glitch that caused this. Turns out it was a human mistake in information technology.
gdc