henry6 Paul Milenkovic All of those things require manpower that is not currently employed by the carriers. The manpower that is employed is doing everything within their power to keep the railroad running as it is. No one is saying that the current manpower is not doing their jobs. The original point is that there is nothing intrinsic about railroads that make them all-weather apart from a large number of people going out and doing a lot of hard, hard work. It has already been commented upon that railroads have greatly reduced their staffing levels. It goes beyond manpower. Today's railroads are run comletely different than those of even the 70's and 80's. You have fewer, longer trains for the most part; remotely operated interlockings; no rear end crews and definetly smaller crews; no track gangs assigned to 5-10 mile stretches but larger expanses of line; cost cutting measures of no trains on holidays (double time and a half pay?); limited overtime; the railroad serves the bottom line rather than customers (tell them they can wait if they ask); just like other money men, higher up management (investment bankers, CPA's, etc.) looks at the work as M-F with bankers hours. In some respects they are right: today's modern plant don't need all those people because there is no need to be full operation 24/7 except in very rare instances. Any opportunity to trim operations (i.e. reduce hours of operation, reduce manpower costs), the do so. And if the need arises for greater demand, then it will have to wait until Monday morning or the next time the board meets to be discussed. Yeah, the manpower isn't there, but in too many cases, neither is the railroad company.
Paul Milenkovic All of those things require manpower that is not currently employed by the carriers. The manpower that is employed is doing everything within their power to keep the railroad running as it is. No one is saying that the current manpower is not doing their jobs. The original point is that there is nothing intrinsic about railroads that make them all-weather apart from a large number of people going out and doing a lot of hard, hard work. It has already been commented upon that railroads have greatly reduced their staffing levels.
All of those things require manpower that is not currently employed by the carriers. The manpower that is employed is doing everything within their power to keep the railroad running as it is.
No one is saying that the current manpower is not doing their jobs. The original point is that there is nothing intrinsic about railroads that make them all-weather apart from a large number of people going out and doing a lot of hard, hard work. It has already been commented upon that railroads have greatly reduced their staffing levels.
It goes beyond manpower. Today's railroads are run comletely different than those of even the 70's and 80's. You have fewer, longer trains for the most part; remotely operated interlockings; no rear end crews and definetly smaller crews; no track gangs assigned to 5-10 mile stretches but larger expanses of line; cost cutting measures of no trains on holidays (double time and a half pay?); limited overtime; the railroad serves the bottom line rather than customers (tell them they can wait if they ask); just like other money men, higher up management (investment bankers, CPA's, etc.) looks at the work as M-F with bankers hours. In some respects they are right: today's modern plant don't need all those people because there is no need to be full operation 24/7 except in very rare instances. Any opportunity to trim operations (i.e. reduce hours of operation, reduce manpower costs), the do so. And if the need arises for greater demand, then it will have to wait until Monday morning or the next time the board meets to be discussed. Yeah, the manpower isn't there, but in too many cases, neither is the railroad company.
Well, that's a bit harsh, don't you think?
"The RR serves the bottom line, not the customers?"
Then why is my RR going crazy trying to improve shipment performance? It's just about all we do or think about these days. What's all this "scheduled RR" stuff that's come about since the 70s and 80s?
How, exactly, is the bottom line totally divorced from serving the customer? As RR costs declined in the 1980s, the rates went down right along with them. This is bad for the customer? He would rather have kept the high rates and had more frequent service? He votes with his dollars and he voted "cheaper rates".
NS has operated thru every storm that's hit the property in the past 10 years. No shutdowns for weather. Period. They don't have any more people per ton-mile than anybody else. It's not just about people.
-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/)
RIDEWITHMEHENRY is the name for our almost monthly day of riding trains and transit in either the NYCity or Philadelphia areas including all commuter lines, Amtrak, subways, light rail and trolleys, bus and ferries when warranted. No fees, just let us know you want to join the ride and pay your fares. Ask to be on our email list or find us on FB as RIDEWITHMEHENRY (all caps) to get descriptions of each outing.
If GM "killed the electric car", what am I doing standing next to an EV-1, a half a block from the WSOR tracks?
Trains do work in the snow ...
Dave
Lackawanna Route of the Phoebe Snow
oltmannd Phoebe Vet I'd be more inclined to blame the fact that the Hudson River area of NY was without electricity for several days after ice took down many trees and power lines. The signals are still electric, aren't they? Yeah, but there are ways to do "belt and suspenders" these days. You can put standby gen sets at the CPs. You can do batteries with solar recharge. You can do coded track circuits. You can do ATCS radio code line backed up by cell phone (most cell phone antennas have back up gen sets) You can clear the ROW so that trees that fall don't block the tracks or wreck equipment, etc. If you're serious about running in all weather conditions, that is.
Phoebe Vet I'd be more inclined to blame the fact that the Hudson River area of NY was without electricity for several days after ice took down many trees and power lines. The signals are still electric, aren't they?
I'd be more inclined to blame the fact that the Hudson River area of NY was without electricity for several days after ice took down many trees and power lines.
The signals are still electric, aren't they?
Yeah, but there are ways to do "belt and suspenders" these days. You can put standby gen sets at the CPs. You can do batteries with solar recharge. You can do coded track circuits. You can do ATCS radio code line backed up by cell phone (most cell phone antennas have back up gen sets) You can clear the ROW so that trees that fall don't block the tracks or wreck equipment, etc.
If you're serious about running in all weather conditions, that is.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
As far as I can tell, the Cascades are still running but late. The Seattle area is having a bunch of "freeze point" snow now...
There was a comment here that the "Talgo" sets were out-of-order still; have not even verified that (I wouldn't want to call Amtrak and bother Julie for something silly). I would be interested to know how they do in snow.
"Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men's blood." Daniel Burnham
When I hired out (too many years ago to mention) the roads that comprise CSX employed more that 250,000 people in all areas of employment from operating, non-operating, freight, passenger and all officical position. Today CSX employs approximately 30,000 people. You do the math. There is not the manpower to throw against the weather today that there was over 40 years ago.
No matter all the technology that is in place to fight the weather. When the weather gets SEVERE, there is no substitute for man power. Men manning shovels and brooms, as well as designated snow removal equipment....all in mass quantities.
oltmannd A few quick anecdotes: In the early days of Conrail, when the bad winters hit Buffalo, they emptied out the offices in Albany, gave everyone a snow shovel and sent them to Buffalo to shovel out the yard. When they still had wreck trains, they'd empty out the division office and send everyone out 'wreckin'. To some of the men, this was like going on a Boy Scout camping trip - they loved it! When there was a local strike, they'd grab as many loose people as they could find and send them to the strike location to keep operations going. When an auto ramp couldn't keep up the pace of loading and unloading, they sent a bunch of guys up from HQ and Juniata to do the work for a week or so. Once employment on Conrail went down from 100,000 to 20,000, there just weren't any people to spare anywhere. The only time anybody got sent out was during a system wide strike to protect facilities.
A few quick anecdotes: In the early days of Conrail, when the bad winters hit Buffalo, they emptied out the offices in Albany, gave everyone a snow shovel and sent them to Buffalo to shovel out the yard. When they still had wreck trains, they'd empty out the division office and send everyone out 'wreckin'. To some of the men, this was like going on a Boy Scout camping trip - they loved it! When there was a local strike, they'd grab as many loose people as they could find and send them to the strike location to keep operations going. When an auto ramp couldn't keep up the pace of loading and unloading, they sent a bunch of guys up from HQ and Juniata to do the work for a week or so. Once employment on Conrail went down from 100,000 to 20,000, there just weren't any people to spare anywhere. The only time anybody got sent out was during a system wide strike to protect facilities.
Ahh, the good old days......
Ice on a third rail acts as an insulator. Some rapid-transit equipment comes with ice breakers on the shoe beam in addition to the primary third-rail shoe. The arcing while the ice is being broken up can be a real sight to see.
Ice storm.....while not an ice storm, the roads here are slick in spots with ice as I type this, and I am driving some 109 miles to take the Texas Eagle out of town as Engineer. I will be leaving in about 5 minutes. One often overlooked item is that prior to suburbanization, most rails lived within walking distance of their employer's terminal. It was a small matter to call them and for them to get to work in much worse weather.
First off, there is weather and then there is weather. The news program has video of a rare snowstorm in New Orleans, with the locals crumping their cars on camera. We sit here in Wisconsin and go, ha, ha, dumb Southerners can't drive when they see a flake of snow. Of course dumb Northerners, we got that kind of freeze-point snowstorm last Winter, a semi truck could not make the hill, and we choked up I-94 with smashed cars, turning it into a refugee camp for stuck travellers for the next 48 hours.
Then one of our rail advocacy people went on about how if we had a train. So, if we had a train, what about it? Freezing rain, freezing fog, freezing transition temperature snow, and a bunch of other weather events can shut near anything down -- the weather can get so bad that you can't walk unless you have skates.
I also wonder if there is something about weather in the Northeast being hard on trains. The Metroliners were rebuilt with rooftop air intakes for cooling dynamic brake grids and other accessories, and this has been a trend for commuter MU equipment as well. The Seldom Powered Vehicles (SPV-2000), Budd DMU's were tried in the East and done in by Winter. Budd had the RDC so what was the deal with the SPV, apart from maybe they were deployed where the weather was unkind?
Another data point was an old book we bought at our Public Library sale of their old books, back some 35 years ago. The title was something like "Daily Except Sunday", and it was a humorous look at being a commuter, which back in the day meant riding the suburban trains.
One suggestion was if you were the type who liked to "sleep in" on days with bad weather, a railroad line powered by a third rail was for you. It was explained that the third rail "could reduce an elephant to a sizzle in seconds" and "accelerate a train like rocket", but that the least bit of snow could leave it helplessly inert. Now many of you can relate to riding Chicago El trains in bad weather, but the author probably had some suburban train powered by third rail out East someplace in mind, with the weather performance embellished by humor.
I would not say anyone is getting soft, and I would accept that trains are certainly more all weather than cars or airplanes, but if you are talking ice storm, that can keep anybody at home.
They did it in an era where the industry was swimming with people. You could always "send a bunch of guys" to handle whatever came your way. These would be agents, crew callers, yard clerks, tower operators, etc. Many were already on the spot. Even train crews used to come with more people. Technology has largely eliminated those regular jobs, so there are less people available to "go send" when things get really tough. The "send a bunch of guys" era ended in the late 70s and early 80s. It is a lot tougher to keep going in tough weather these days, but in the east, Amtrak and NS ususally manage to keep their own lines going in bad weather despite the challenges. Those other guys still aren't quite up to it, yet, I think.
I just read on the Trains Newswire that Amtrak has cancelled trains on the Capitol Corridor in New York State, the Lake Shore Limited and the Downeaster service to Maine due to an ice storm. What happened to the days when a passenger train was the only way to get to your destination when the weather was bad? The private carriers touted their ability to get through snowtorms, ice storms, etc. when the planes were grounded and the highways weren't safe. They did so in full page ads in national magazines. They also did it with steam heated cars, telegraph communications, jointed rail and train order dispatching. Is Amtrak, the freight carriers and their employees really getting that soft? Our only choice now is to wait for the highways and runways to clear.
Our community is FREE to join. To participate you must either login or register for an account.