Mainline Misadventures Returns! 6/11-6/12/05

OK, Kids, its story time(as Krusty the Clown would say), and this time the topic is An early summer dose of gridlock on the River Sub. It all started simply enough, having reported fro work for my usual assignment, Q109-11 on Friday night, June 10th at 11 PM. If all goes well, we are usually on our way north from North Bergen by 12:30-12:45 AM. This night, due to a variety of reasons(late trailer loadings, for example), we did not head north until almost 1:30AM. Generally thats not a problem as we usually can make up the time enroute. Not this night. We soon were in a holding pattern at CP-10(teaneck) waiting a very late running Q118. With him by us, we are now heading north, and it is now 2:50 AM. We are now in the middle of a multi train parade that had (if I remember the order correctly) Q161, Q402, Q273, Q174, Q418, us(Q109), Q159, Q165, and eventually Q157. Unfortunately a few things just added to the delayes we encountered. A couple of slow orders, plus a “stop and protect” for three crossings in the city of Kingston all added to the mix. Add to the fact that everyone is running on the yellow signals( and in some cases red) of the trains ahead of us. In short order, we arrived at Selkirk at 8:45 AM, but still had to get the train recrewed. In short order, we were recrewed and off duty at 9:30 AM, just “a bit” behind schedule. We then went to the hotel to take rest. Here’s is where the fun begins, however....
We soon were called at 3:30 PM for a 5:30 PM on duty time(on our 8 hrs rest) to recrew Q268 in Kingston and take it south to NJ. We got to the yard office, and were signing up with the dispatcher( a van was in place to take us to the train in Kingston), and we were asjed if we wanted to make a few extra bucks and perform an additional move. Not that our arms had to be twisted, but we agreed to taxi to Alsen, MP 105, and recrew Q43809 and bring that train to Selkirk. After which we would then taxi to Kingston. As this was an additional train, it entitles us to additional compensation, so we got to Alsen and were on our way north by 7:45 PM. We took the train to Selkirk, yarded the train, took the power to the enginehouse and were soon back at the Selkirk yard office(about 9:30 PM). In the office was the new crew for the 159 that had died enroute early yesterday(Sat) AM, when the crew reported that they had only one working engine for 10,000 feet of train. The initial 159 crew was recrewed at MP 66, and now the second crerw was going to outlaw. So the powers that be then suggested that we go get the 159, bring it to Selkirk and then Deadhead home from there.(two additional days pay is involved with this maneuver). In the course of about 45 minutes, our orders changed at least three more times. We finally were told to taxi to CP-102 and recrew the Q118. The intial Q118 crew from Selkirk was used to recrew the 159, so now the 118 was sitting at CP-102 with no crew on it. We hopped in the van, and at 11:45 we were on board waiting for railroad. However, when the 159 outlawed, so did the train behind it, the Q410, and his rear end had CP-102 blocked, so now no one was going anywhere. THAT crew was awaiting relief to taxi from Selkirk.
Time Marches On! Eventually, the 410 was recrewd and pulled north and now we were told that we would have to await the Q161, which was just above CP-69. Eventually he passed us and we got the OK to head south. The Q268, sitting in Kingston since 6PM was now recrewed, and heading south. We departed CP-102 at 3:30 AM, with only 2 hours before WE outlawed. Behind us, waiting to come south was Q112 at Coxsaxkie(CP-118) and Q40911 and Q43911, both between Ravenna and CP SK. It was decided somewhere during all of this that we would stop at Milton, and get relieved by a northbound empty military train. They were in the siding behind a combined Q418/Q273 combo, combined as there was a shortage of rested crews that only complicated matters. We were relieved at about 4:30 AM, and my conductor and I retired to the second unit for the ride south. We eventually got off the train at the east(south) end of the NYSW/CSX Little Ferry Intermodal yard as the train was making its normal drop before heading to its final terminal at Kearny, NJ. When all was said and done we had 15 hours on duty(%;30 PM to 8:30AM) and made close to three days pay in the process. The southbounds behind us were due to be recrewed enroute, but at this point I simply wanted to go home. This was a classic case of “the snowball” effect. So after an absence of a few months, “Mainline Midaventures” is back, and I hope you find this as interesting as I’ve tried to make it. Unitl next time.....

Enjoyed it as always. Stay safe.

STEAM ON
/--OOO--~-oo--oo-

Glad to see Mainline Misadventures is back.

While it has to be frustrating as an engineer (or conductor) to go through what you just described, it must be even worse for the crew callers and the train dispatchers. That is one stretch of railroad I wouldn't want to dispatch. I took a shot at train dispatching during 2002 with NJT on the Mainline desk-Hoboken, NJ to Port Jervis, NY. I learned a lot and truly enjoyed the job. Unfortunately train dispatching didn't work out for me due to a very negative office/training environment within NJT and I was fortunate to be able to return to emergency service dispatching.

I have tried dispatching the River Line on Train Dispatcher 3 on my home PC and within a few hours on the simulater's fast clock I've brought the entire River Line to a screaming halt with trains in every siding and more trains stuck on the main all the way from North Bergen to Selkirk!

My hat is off to you and your co-workers in keeping that line running in the real world.....and I eagerly await your next installment of Mainline Misadventures.

Interesting stuff, the River Line has never changed, always busy and you
never know whether you will have a good trip or a bad trip.
I remember running TV-79 out of North Bergen one night with seven
hours to work after running a round trip passenger job between New York
and New Haven back in the Conrail days. Once we started pulling from
track 7 or 8 in North Bergen, we went out at what was then Bridge four
and never once stopped moving, had clear signals all the way to Selkirk
where we got relieved in the yard as the entire train was going through.
I also made plenty of trips like the one described here, won't go into
details now but still have some notes here somewhere.
Noel Weaver

With such fascinating [and frustrating] stories as this I have to wonder if CSX has considered the value of re-double tracking the line. Before somebody else point this out, yes I know this would create a problem with clearances in tunnels of which I can name three. But the ROW is two tracks wide, folks . . . .

As an alternate solution for the tunnels. why not leave them single track and upgrade the rest with either CTC double track or addtional passing sidings?

Great story, rscbd45. I hope you got some sleep that night!

Mainline Misadventure - Pacific Northwest (Much Shorter)

I was on a conductor familiarization trip out of my home terminal Portland OR south to Eugene. Green light run all the way, we could taste the cold ones (sodas) in the hotel lounge. Amtrak's Coast Starlight was holding the main two sidings away from our recrew, we went in the hole nice and slow and had our signal at the other end to get out. Halfway in, BANG...into emergency. As the conductor and I walked back, we heard Amtrak's crew say we had pulled out a drawbar right on top of the road crossing and naturally had frogged in the Starlight as well. We got back and assessed the damage...not only had we gutted the B end of the car in question, the drawbar had managed to become wedged underneath the following car, with the pin lifter wrapped around it like a ribbon. An hour later, the car department and a track inspector are on the scene..except nobody had bothered bringing any torches to cut away the lifter. After nearly putting the offending car on the ground with some power who had come in light from the north to help out, it was decided that hacksaws would be the only way to get the bar freed up. Hacksaws against hardened steel isn't the battle you want to be fighting. Two hours later the cars are free and everything is shoved into the siding behind our abbrevriated train. By then, the Starlight's crew had died, already 8 1/2 hours late to Seattle. They waited another two hours after we got cleared up and wound up a total of 17 hours late. It gets better...We were also going to set off the last car of our train (the one without the coupler on the ass end), but the Eugene car department didn't want to deal with it there OR in their shops at the yard. With some baling wire and a little magic, they managed to wire the FRED onto the rear of the train somewhat solidly and convinced the dispatcher that it was good to go all the way to Roseville (California, hundreds of miles away). Never mind that the train was to acquire distributed power to get through the mountains (gonna have to go on the head end, so much for "distributed"). My conductor and I are just shaking our heads and hoping like hell this FRED holds on until we swap crews. We make it in, 5 hours later than we should have and a very p'oed relief crew when they heard about the rear end device. I would have loved to see the look on the face of whoever found the Fred wired on to the end of that train.