Dispatching Moving from CSX to SFRTA 3/29/15

It looks like the control of the dispatching and maintenance of the South Florida Rail Corridor is scheduled to transfer from CSX to SFRTA, beginning on the morning of Sunday, March 29, at midnight. Hopefully this will mean an improvement to the reliability and timekeeping of this line.

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Okay. But has CSX been doing a bad job? They really don't have a big bunch of trains running between West Palm and Hialeah. They handled the Amtrak train that I was on last month very efficiently. So my question is: why the move?

Rockingham Racer wrote:Okay. But has CSX been doing a bad job? They really don't have a big bunch of trains running between West Palm and Hialeah. They handled the Amtrak train that I was on last month very efficiently. So my question is: why the move?

If they aren't moving a large amount of trains, that might very well be the actual reason. While not a perfect analogy, it could be like the Worcester-Framingham section of CSX's Boston Subdivision up in Massachusetts; after the closure of Beacon Park, there is freight traffic east of Worcester, but it's a fraction of the passenger traffic.

Good point.

You haven't lived until you ride a Tri-Rail train in the PM rush that has to wait at a signal because the CSX Dispatcher has let a CSX local freight job out to switch in the middle of the PM rush. At least now passenger trains will come first. Actually Amtrak is taking over the dispatching.
Noel Weaver

Hopefully the "cutover" to Amtrak Dispatching happens with few glitches,over time,the local
CSX freight crews will learn to work with the Amtrak DS.
How many thru freights from CSX run on SFRTA's territory?

CSX runs one TRAIN daily between Waycross, GA and Hialeah plus some extras from time to time. Several local freight trains are also in the picture again from day to day.
Noel Weaver

All those anticipating Nirvana will be disappointed. There are only so many things a change in dispatching can affect. Initially, the new dispatchers will suck - they have to learn the operation by their own internal clock time. It is easy to read a timetable - it is harder to have that timetable imprinted on the dispatcher's internal clock - have that internal clock be a few minutes off and bad decisions are the result.

Gotta luv the Tri Rail press release; doesn't the writer know that there is no "Midnight" on the railroad? I would presume the dispatching change time was 1201A Sun Mar 29.

Gilbert B Norman wrote:Gotta luv the Tri Rail press release; doesn't the writer know that there is no "Midnight" on the railroad? I would presume the dispatching change time was 1201A Sun Mar 29.

There is no 1201A on the railroad either. It's 0001. All the class 1's (except for one) use 24 hour time ... ie, 1PM is 1300. The one exception to the 24 hour clock rule is of course Amtrak which still uses 12 hour time in dispatching the corridor. Since this line was dispatched by CSXT using 24 hour time I assume Amtrak will continue to use that.

Hows everything running now that Amtrak is handling Dispatching??

Backshophoss wrote:Hows everything running now that Amtrak is handling Dispatching??

All three trains that I rode on Sunday were on time at all points. I think everything was pretty much on schedule on Sunday at least. Like anything else they may have had a few bugs with the changeover. It was more than a change of dispatchers, they changed the location of the dispatchers from Jacksonville to Pompano, the way the signals are controlled from radio to wires, the radio frequencies and probably more. Amtrak 92 was also right on time NB at Deerfield while I was there.
Noel Weaver

Does anybody know what radio channel Tri-Rail and Amtrak moved to after the changeover?

I don't think any of the "new" dispatchers are having any difficulty running this territory. There have been Amtrak Dispatchers involved in this territory for a long time before this but they only handled the trackage over the bridge in Fort Lauderdale which CSX refused to use or dispatch. They sat in Pompano with nothing else to do all three tricks, seven days a week. Now they simply have more to do each day they come to work. Control points are wired instead of radio controlled so ATCS no longer is functional in this territory. The radio frequencies have also been changed to:
Channel 91 (161.475) for a road channel which include train to train, conductor to engineer, defect detectors, calling signals etc.
Channel 10 (160.26) for communication between the train dispatcher and trains.
Channel 10 comes in good on my scanner at home while 91 is somewhat weak and low in volume while riding on the trains and I don't get as much of it at home either.
Noel Weaver