Hours of Service

Railjunkie wrote:Cowford not all passenger trains are run with one man on the head end in ALB we have a train that has an engineer and a asst engineer every trip, and I do beleive that if a trip has a running time of over seven hours you must have a asst engineer

The florida bound trains all have a single engineer, im not sure about the other LD trains...

that sounds like another one of those absurd northern laws or outdated union CBA inclusions

Passenger vs. freight operations = apples/oranges comparison.

With passenger you have a solo operator on a short set of equipment with crewmembers a few steps away in the train -- compared to freight with a mile or two of equipment with an operator who would be totally alone out there.

Utility crews that can cover hundreds of miles of railroad, responding to problems that will arise at random? I find that unlikely to work well or be cost-effective.

If the Class Is are determined to achieve this "efficiency," they had better get their arms around the issue of crew fatigue first.

Here's an interesting link about that: Here

Cowford wrote:Noel, where you get that "management doesn't care about it's troops" from my postings is beyond me. To make such a blanket statement is unfortunate.

Yes, rest and one-man crews are two different subjects. They sort of got blended together in this string, maybe in part because the subjects would in a collective bargaining negotiation. Your claim that another is in the cab out of emergency necessity is hard to swallow. I don't see much concern about the fact that, to my knowledge, ALL passenger trains in this country are run with a one man crew in the cab.

Emergency necessity might be hard for you to swallow but on a passenger
train, the train crew is not far away, maybe a car or two behind the
engine and if the train happens to stop, they will be on the radio promptly,
no response from the engineer would generate a quick trip to the cab to
determine just what is going on. No such thing on a "one man" freight
train.
The only reason that this came up under the heading of "hours of service"
is because you chose to bring it up.
Noel Weaver

Nip, the one job that has two engineers on it is by design the train goes to Montreal and canadian rules state you must have two qualified men on the head end, I thought that the Auto train had to engineers. Most runs for us in Alb are pretty short six hours or less actual running times excluding the trip to Montreal.

Cowford wrote: Hotels price their rooms for railroads based in part on how often they can flip the rooms. Longer layovers means slower room turnover. Slower room turnover means eventual higher rooms costs.

This is why the railroad should just spend the extra $$$ to build their own hotel / lodging facility at major terminals such as Selkirk and Buffalo. It will be alot of money at first, but after it is built, I would think they would save more in the long run.

As for away terminals where thre only a hand-ful of crews, such as Boston, Worcester & Framingham.......the hotel would be most cost effective.

Railroads have too many assets on the books now, as compared to the revenue they bring in. Building internal-use-only lodging facilities will make it even worse. They are not, after all, in the hotel business. It makes much more sense financially to get rooms at the best negotiated bulk rate.

Hey -- how about the Greenbrier? Why not put crews up there?

By the way, the original Selkirk terminal had its own dedicated RRYMCA building. Crews stayed there until the late '70s when they tore it down and built a newer building. Unions wouldn't put up with it anymore after a while and they went to local lodging facilities.

There was a RRY in E Syracuse, too. What a dump!

RRYMCA was active for crew rest in Conway (a PRR facility) as late as 1989, I believe. It was located in the administration buiding on the east hump -- with retarders squeeling all around it. Yikes!

Noel - I only brought it up in the context of collective bargaining on the rest hrs issue.

So what you're saying is that the primary reason for having a second crew member in the cab is not operating safety, but personal safety should the engineer have a medical emergency. Interesting... I'm not disputing your position, but that logic should lead to having all truckers have co-drivers, right?

I like the idea of the Greenbrier opening a branch in Selkirk! : ) Take in a little skeet shooting or golf on your rest... Not your average CLC! Would the flavor of chocolate truffle left on your pillow be written into your local agreement???

Cowford wrote:I'm not disputing your position, but that logic should lead to having all truckers have co-drivers, right?

What you're not acknowledging is the major difference between a single, or double (or even triple) trailer truck and a 2.5-mile long train. As someone said earlier, what happens when a separation occurs way back there (and it happens a lot) and there is only one person on the scene to deal with it?

Utility crews wandering up and down the line to help out with these random events? You're looking and huge delays and more outlaws with the time it will take to get someone out there to take care of the situation -- or more cost for having more utilities spread out over the line.

Please explain how that might work. I really would be interested in that.

I will admit that I am not a cost accountant or economics wizard. I do not understand how a railroad can argue that a two man crew is not cost efficient. I just arrived home from working a trip that had a maximum car count of 137 cars. We moved those cars from our home terminal to the next crew change point. Many of the loads are heavy. The cargoes consist of items like metal ingots, animal feed, fertilizer, paper rolls and lumber. I could not begin to imagine how many trucks it would have required to move that much tonnage. Certainly it would have required more workers than the engineer and myself.

I would also argue that not all railroads are built alike. While the UP through the Great Plains might be an engineering wonder of capacity and efficiency, our little railroad ( just over three hundred miles long) undulates across river valleys and runs across ridges. We have few tangents, I don't think there are any flat spots and there is a multitude of farm, logging and highway crossings. During our trip we had an emergency application of the brakes. I had to walk back 117 cars to find the problem. The resolution of that problem could not have occured with a one man crew. A mobile utility person could not have accessed the problem point as it was deep in the woods along a river bank. I know I am wandering off the point a bit but I just don't know how reducing crew size would create any real efficiency. The variety and quality of todays rolling stock varies considerably. Not all cars are well maintained, some are just plain worn out. Issues like that have an impact on a trains operating efficiency.

I have also worked an Amtrak run that had two engineers. The run was over six hours between the crew change point and the end point of the train. The train operated in a territory that was signalled in parts but was "dark" or unsignalled in other spots. There was also a large number of farm, logging and highway crossings. Our passengers used to complain that the engineer sounded the horn to much but in reality the steady stream of crossings required it. I thought the two engineers had a positive impact on the on time performance of the train as it allowed the engineers to rotate their time at the throttle. The constant vigilance that is required is hard to maintain for such a long run. I know four of these engineers that have already lost time due to crossing accidents involving truck drivers running gates. I believe more people could have been injured if the engineers were not as alert as they were on that train.

Simply put I believe the discussion of reducing crew size flys in the face of reality. The days of five and six man crews are long gone. Today's engineers and Conductors handle a lot more work than their fathers and grandfathers did.

You guys may be right... railroads acknowledge that different work requires different staffing/equipment requirements. Three-man crews, cabooses, and such are examples of that. If the issue of pull aparts, etc. continue to dictate the status quo, then so be it. But I suspect that economics will eventually make one-man crews (on at least certain road trains) a reality. By the way, I'm not sure if it's still operating, but there was a coal-hauling railroad in IN (?) that was (is?) run completely by remote control with "0" man crews. And that was with 1970s technology.

I believe that line was the Muskegoon Electric? It was more of a "conveyor belt" than a railroad. It ran through private property and only consisted of a twelve car train set that shuttled from a mine to a power plant.

Railroading can be much more dynamic than that and operating conditions dictate that reality. Failure to adapt to conditions leads to situations like the current CSX melt down in my area of the country. Does the railroad have the emplyees and assets in place to handle the business? If not, the customer looses and the employees of those customers loose as well. We had a customer experience a plant shutdown because of CSXT's inability to deliver a severe back log of interchange to my railroad. No raw material, no production. I'm sure however some person at CSXT in Jacksonville is satisfied with the budgeted vs. actual man hour productivity on some computer generated report.

Snoozer, after that 117 car walk plus the walk back to the head-end, I bet you missed the silver & purple 8 doubles, LOL. As for shut-downs around here, I heard a few in Boston that do a dozen or more cars per day.(Champion Scrap Recycling in Brockton
Trojan Recycling in Brockton.)

After-all these two customers are dealing with one of the quickest growing commodities on the railroad.

Champion Scrap Recycling in Brockton
Trojan Recycling in Brockton.


Also the garbage guy at Beacon Park is starting to get plugged, well, actually he is plugging-up the yard with 60 or so loads waiting to go west, but no freight going out.

Hey CSX,
I have to say the long walks aren't the most fun that I have had but being away from the fast food on the South Station concourse ( 'Bourbon Chicken?, try some Orange Chicken?") has been a blessing in disguise! lol
I also don't miss Boston commuters!

Riding to Bellows Falls is also a nicer trip than Boston to Providence!

Failure to adapt to conditions

By whom???

I'm sure however some person at CSXT in Jacksonville is satisfied with the budgeted vs. actual man hour productivity on some computer generated report.

Snoozer - you know better than that...