CSX Track Upgrades & Infrastructure of Pan Am

F74265A wrote: ↑Tue Jun 13, 2023 7:43 am I’m disappointed to hear that csx mgmt wants to add 2d train pair via barbers but there’s no crews. With or without psr, staff shortages mean fewer trains
RRs need to make their jobs more attractive

Rigby just lost 2 engineers this week, people are continuing to leave in droves and I've heard Keolis is about to pick up some people from them too. The former PAR property is actually starting to be in danger of needing intervention of some kind on the manpower front.

newpylong wrote: ↑Tue Jun 13, 2023 8:32 am I think Hinrichs is probably the breath of fresh air that CSX needed. Time will tell whether his praise for improving employee relations and working conditions come true, but he speaks of it often.

Talk is cheap, so far nothing has changed at least for the guys up here. If they really wanted to help they would have started hiring as many people as possible and not basically sat and waited for the contract for fear of losing them to the B&E.

"Hiring as many people as possible" for the ex-PAR system would be worse than being understaffed temporarily. As Jim Foote stood in front of the STB and subsequently put in writing, anyone displaced by changes on PAS will be offered a position on CSX (whether it be the ST or elsewhere). It makes no sense to swell the ranks with the possibility (and uncertainty) of needing to absorb x amount of employees in the near future. Steady work is better than being shown the door in 6 months.

The turnover rate for trainee's is higher than it's ever been, and classes are smaller than they've ever been. They're managing to bring in maybe 4 people per class, and are usually left with 1 if any. Meanwhile the crew office is cancelling anywhere from 2-4 jobs EVERY DAY. They are grossly understaffed and with the length of training period for new hires, along with the experience needed for engineer's promotion they need to be onboarding a lot more than they are. Most of the time the jobs aren't even posted on the site. Like I said in a previous post, they are starting to be in danger of needing some sort of intervention as far as manpower goes.

Guess the question is why are so many people leaving? Worse working conditions? Bad management? New contract?

The short answer is manpower was short before the merger, and because of that management used Pan Am's "Work as directed" contract to it's advantage by basically stealing crews for whatever the deem most important at any given time. It's basically turned every job into the spare board. The long answer is a lot of others things but that's probably the biggest one. There's been a lot of contract gray areas that have been exploited because of how desperate they've become, including skating the day 6/7 off period by running around guys for a 24/hr period to reset their clocks.

QB 52.32 wrote: ↑Mon Jun 12, 2023 2:06 pm Don't expect PSR or use of Worcester as a hub to mix/match traffic or hold/originate/terminate trains, including use of main track west of CP-45, to end any time soon. Both have been too beneficial.

Without the former doubtful there'd even be this thread. Maybe even no more CSX crews who could "railroad" New England.

Without the latter, especially during this period of crew shortage from the so-called "self-inflicted" Covid Great Resignation widespread across our economy, there would be no benefit of better crew & power utilization and better service for the carload business that wants reliability over speed. The grade from CP-46 to CP-48 is less than that between CP-60 and CP-64 where trains, including without power, of loaded and empty auto racks have been tied down for almost 20 years.

To the extent and how Worcester might be used to handle blocks and trains (unlike a yard required to classify cars), at the intersection of growth & investment in East-West passenger rail and PAR, the next MA DOT infrastructure upgrade investment indicates further use of main track west of CP-45 and with a likelihood intermodal traffic and blocks over Barbers will be hubbed in Worcester as well.

It's the same grade, Charlton Hill, that ends at MP46 in Worcester, and it takes nearly the same number of handbrakes there as it does at CP57 or CP60. Now we are switching out trains on the side of the hill in Worcester, and any time you cut away from the train you have to secure it and do a handbrake test. So that means at least 15 to 20 of them applied, more in winter. Then you have to build up your air so that you will have brakes to switch with.

264 would usually outlaw there after tying the train down before they wanted the power to go to Worcester, and it had a straight shot for years before they started putting random auto racks on 424. Yet you would still be outlawed on the ride to the hotel.

Trains were tied down at 57, but only if you were going to outlaw. It wasn't a regular thing because Worcester couldn't handle the train like it is now.

I'm just telling you that this whole operation is part of the problem, and you can try to blame it on Covid all you want. I've already explained how they used Covid as an excuse to cut jobs that they want to cut anyway. They are not going to be able to continue this way.

It is self-inflicted.

I'm well aware of the physical characteristics of the B&A and this kind of activity outside a yard on a grade began well before PSR but for the same underlying reasons.

Nothing CSX did during Covid was outside of historic or other railroads', including non-PSR, behavior, or even to greater and lesser degrees across the broad economy. So in that case, you'd have to say everything was "self-inflicted" in the light of an unplanned-for disruptive 100-year pandemic.

The changes that CSX made saves crews and touches and if it doesn't save crews more immediately and crews & power moving forward they would and will pursue making changes. 100%.

From my experience, the move was actually smart both in terms of operations and service, though certainly adding to what's required of crews and a microcosm of the wider PSR v. labor debate. Looks like CSX wants to retain at least potential use of main track west of CP-45 in the MA DOT upgrade plans and before the actual simulations have been completed and with new intermodal traffic over Barbers likely to be mixed and matched in Worcester.

In terms of crews, crew shortages, and operations odds favor movement 2-5 years toward 1-man crews beginning with and at least the intermodals. The B&A has a history of being a testing ground, so maybe it'll become the place to begin.

Please point thread back to discussing facility upgrades to main lines, terminals and yards. Thank you.

Here are 2 videos of the work being completed on the CSX mainline and sidings just before the interchange with EMR/NBSR at Mattawamkeag. Even in it's unfinished state, it looks much more impressive than the unusable state it was in just a short time ago. There is work still to be completed.

The two videos are from a wildlife cam so no audio, but very good video of condition within the last few weeks.

https://youtu.be/Y8j2sHaNwIg

The second video shows that they are at least able to get a real train in there.

https://youtu.be/zKdhXWeuIms

Hopefully rail is next I think it's all like 85lb up there.

They have 136lb cwr dropped close by.

FRA Inspection trucks were on the Hillsborough Branch today. Why would the FRA be checking out the Hillsborough rather than CSX Crews?

Because it's connected to the contiguous US rail system and thus under their jurisdiction. They could be there for any number of reasons.

If it's the box truck, they were just on the Conway Scenic recently as well.

I noticed a recent addition to the bungalow at CPF 307, see the picture attached below. There are two mounted on opposite corners, one "pointing" east the other west along the tracks. As you can see they resemble the "shark fin" antennas on some cars nowadays. My 2016 Silverado has one which is for the On Star system which I never used after the initial free subscription expired. Does anyone know what these are for? Again no matter how I upload the picture it flips 90 degrees, this never used to happen.