Return of Daily LD Service

Gilbert B Norman wrote: ↑Mon Dec 27, 2021 3:49 pm

WashingtonPark wrote: ↑Mon Dec 27, 2021 3:02 pm I often wonder if a customer comes to CSX or NS and wants a new 100 car freight run everyday, if they would tell the customer they can't find a "slot" for them unless they pay millions for passing sidings so they have the capacity to accommodate them.

I often wonder if a customer comes to CSX or NS and wants a new 100 car freight run everyday. After analysis by "folks that ain't dumb", it is dermined that each of these trains will put $30K more in the cookie jar than it will take out, if they would tell the customer they can't find a "slot" for them unless they pay millions for passing sidings so they have the capacity to accommodate them.

Of course not; they'd find a way.

I often wonder if a customer comes to CSX or NS and wants a new 10 car passenger train run everyday, the customer says all we will pay you is the allocated cost of the track, signals, and supervision, i.e. your trains over the total number of trains run, if they would tell the customer they can't find a "slot" for them unless they pay millions for passing sidings so they have the capacity to accommodate them.

If I were a shareholder in that road, they'd better.

disclaimer: author long UNP

Got it. The "can't find a slot" is pure BS. But the real reason, "can't make any money off of it", doesn't work as well to get the government hacks to spend taxpayer money like drunken sailors.

Railjunkie wrote:Nah doubt it, pay them more they would still find a way to prong Amtrak.
(Snip)
Funny every year around Xmas temporary speeds magically disappear so "Santa's" sleigh can get across the RR. Those UPS trains $$$, the rest of the year MEH

Thing is, if it's full rate then it's a negotiated contract as to service levels. Not much different than negotiating with UPS... which you even admit to a couple of paragraphs later.

Dispatching, it has gotten much worse over the years. The new kids cant or are not allowed to dispatch. I do not believe they even make trips over the territories they are qualified on any longer. The old timers understood time and distance knew the section of railroad they were dispatching (which was much smaller) and kept stuff moving with ease.

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Ah, yes, the "nobody can do it as well as us old guys" line....

I'm pretty certain that the greybeards were probably saying that about you when you started 20 or 30 years ago. If your union hasn't gone to bat over currency rides, you're wasting your dues.

Sent from my SM-G981U using Tapatalk

Mr. Norman: is #3/4 running with a transition sleeper right now (and has it since the return to daily service if not.)

Haven't seen such on any of my observations.

3-4 "Normal consist:

2 P-42
2 32XXX "Private Room"
1 380XX Diner
1 330XX Lounge
1 34XXX Coach
1 310XX Coach-Bag

Gentlemen. I really hope I am wrong, but it may be in a week to 2 weeks that we will see many train cancellations due to Omicrons' extreme transmissibility. We may be lucky to see twice weekly service. Hopefully if that does occur Amtrak can double up train lengths for at least some trains????

west point wrote: ↑Tue Dec 28, 2021 11:58 pm Gentlemen. I really hope I am wrong, but it may be in a week to 2 weeks that we will see many train cancellations due to Omicrons' extreme transmissibility. We may be lucky to see twice weekly service. Hopefully if that does occur Amtrak can double up train lengths for at least some trains????

There appears to be an actual NEC winter adjustment coming towards the end of January looks like the 24th. The plan appears to be a reduction of weekday round trips by 1 from the current schedule along with shifting some things around. The changes are in Arrow and can be viewed on website. I am guessing lower ridership is anticipated in the winter. This new schedule appears to be in place until end of July in the system. Though they could of course make an adjustment for the spring/summer season. It's sounding like there are some small LD train schedule adjustments coming as well - sounds like an annual adjustment based on recent OTP and what's been going on out there on the roads. So far haven't seen or heard anything about any other corridor or longer distance state supported.

eolesen wrote: ↑Tue Dec 28, 2021 7:09 pm

Railjunkie wrote:Nah doubt it, pay them more they would still find a way to prong Amtrak.
(Snip)
Funny every year around Xmas temporary speeds magically disappear so "Santa's" sleigh can get across the RR. Those UPS trains $$$, the rest of the year MEH

Thing is, if it's full rate then it's a negotiated contract as to service levels. Not much different than negotiating with UPS... which you even admit to a couple of paragraphs later.

Dispatching, it has gotten much worse over the years. The new kids cant or are not allowed to dispatch. I do not believe they even make trips over the territories they are qualified on any longer. The old timers understood time and distance knew the section of railroad they were dispatching (which was much smaller) and kept stuff moving with ease.

.

Ah, yes, the "nobody can do it as well as us old guys" line....

I'm pretty certain that the greybeards were probably saying that about you when you started 20 or 30 years ago. If your union hasn't gone to bat over currency rides, you're wasting your dues.

Sent from my SM-G981U using Tapatalk

I'm not allowed to do it as well as the the old timers who taught me. The rules that apply now would make their heads spin. Between the computers that tell me when and where to put the brakes on, will blow me in to everybody on the planet if I should screw up and rules and regulations written by them college types that have never ran anything but their dad's Lionel around the Christmas Tree what incentive do I have to "run the wheels off" like I was taught. The days of hey give me a good move between X and Y are GONE. The days of being able to run your train are GONE. Hell, the days of being a professional engineer and using the knowledge taught to you and what you have learned through personal experience GONE.
When I started it was a 5 aspect cab signal tree or signal indication. Look out the window and pay the hell attention to what going on OUTSIDE the cab. Now its ACSES or I-ETMS two different signal systems on the cab signal tree a separate computer screen constant beeping from speed changes even if your at or below the speed being enforced. Plus cab signal drops. Cant look out the window cause if something goes wrong INSIDE and you fail to notice have a nice vacation. Unpaid of course.

As for currency rides, I will assume you mean re familiarization rides T&E are required to make trips to remain qualified on all territories within their crew base. If you do not make a trip within a years time you lose the ability to work as a conductor or engineer over such. Want to get it back you can do it for free.

Dispatching when you sit and wait 20 minutes and talk to your counter part and he starts laughing cause he knows there was no way he would have caught anywhere near the delay you took waiting for him. Same scenario different dispatcher you leave the same point on time. You pass you counter part on an approach he catches a couple of minutes you stay on the advertised. Every Saturday for 5 months last winter, depending on who was working the desk. Still goes on today why don't you have that signal pulled in and a route lined up for me? Answer the radio? Double track main nothing going on closest train is 15 miles away. Grind to a stop.

Railjunkie wrote: ↑Tue Dec 28, 2021 9:55 am Nah doubt it, pay them more they would still find a way to prong Amtrak. A few reasons off the top of my head.

They do not like to slow their stuff down they will say too much fuel to get them back up to speed burn up to many brake shoes, dynamic brake grids slowing them down.

Maintaining the physical plant, I get it lots of money involved here. You have to WANT to spend it on your physical plant. NOT put it in your shareholders pockets. One or two Amtrak trains a day paying full rate will not make that much difference. Funny every year around Xmas temporary speeds magically disappear so "Santa's" sleigh can get across the RR. Those UPS trains $$$, the rest of the year MEH

Dispatching, it has gotten much worse over the years. The new kids cant or are not allowed to dispatch. I do not believe they even make trips over the territories they are qualified on any longer. The old timers understood time and distance knew the section of railroad they were dispatching (which was much smaller) and kept stuff moving with ease.

Precision scheduled railroading or as I like to call it Pretty sh!tty railroading. Its a money grab plain and simple.

Ok, take two. I posted a reply to Railjunkie's message earlier today parsing his message using all the correct HTML codes. Looked fine in Preview but when I hit Submit everything I typed disappeared. Lets try this again the old fashion way until I figure out what's wrong. Was there a software change recently?

"Maintaining the physical plant, I get it lots of money involved here. You have to WANT to spend it on your physical plant. NOT put it in your shareholders pockets."

Of course you don't want to spend money to maintain or even expand capacity. Having someone else to do that is much easier even if your railroad is already tied up in knots. I suspect this is what we're seeing in the Amtrak -vs- NS/CSXT gulf coast argument. Getting Amtrak/government to fund and or gold plate the line is the way to go. There are LOTS of lines in this country that never see an Amtrak train but are at capacity or in grid locked/melt down mode. What we're seeing is mostly a direct result of PSR which is slowly killing the industry. Tear up tracks, sidings and yard and wonder why nothing can move. If you manage to run off enough business (PSR) the problem will solve it's self over time.

This whole thing reminds me of Amtrak's problems with the Sunset Limited and the UP. Years ago the UP told Amtrak that the reason that train got delayed so often was due to the fact it didn't run daily. They said their dispatchers would forget which day the train ran causing delay! Really? Amtrak at the time didn't have the equipment to run the train daily and I suspect the UP knew this. Fast forward a few years and Amtrak goes back to the UP and says we now have enough equipment to run it daily. The UP counters that a HUGE amount of money is now needed so that it can run daily forgetting the earlier argument. This being a line where the SP ran two daily trains until the early 60's that was mostly single track with ABS signals, spring and hand thrown switches and operators handing up train orders. Today that same line is mostly double track and all CTC. Utterly Pathetic.

"Dispatching, it has gotten much worse over the years."

There are several reasons for this.

1) Dispatching decisions on how to run a railroad no longer come from the dispatchers chair but from the top. If the top management wants to screw Amtrak or even another railroads trackage rights train then that exactly what the dispatchers are told to do. On the other hand if a railroad tells it's dispatchers to treat Amtrak well then that's what will happen. In my 21 years with BNSF it was always drilled into us that Amtrak was not to be delayed. I remember a Town Hall meeting with Matt Rose where he said BNSF was out to get every penny of incentive that Amtrak had to offer. I doubt that has changed in the four years since I retired.

2) Yes there are a lot of new dispatchers out there. The railroads went on a hiring spree back in the late 70's (me included) to replace all the WWII people who were retiring. Now that wave is retiring and a new wave is being hired. Most of these new dispatchers are either off the street or former ATC (military/civilian). They're sent through "choo choo U" where they get a course in rules and instruction on the dispatching software. After that they're sent out on the floor to train with an old head or at least one of the better dispatchers. Some of them make it and some washout. Strangely enough the ATC guys seem to have a harder time of it than the kids off the street. Go figure.

3) Long territories are a problem. In Jacksonville, Atlanta and Fort Worth the ATDA frequently files job study requests due to overload. In Omaha it's different as the UP has been successful in keeping the ATDA out of Harriman Center. I've heard way too many horror stories about overloaded jobs in that center. Now in order to "help" the dispatchers with the work load the companies have been rolling out "Route Planning" or "predictive" software to help the dispatchers. The problem is this software is either poorly written or written by someone who has little knowledge of just what a dispatcher does. Here in Fort Worth BNSF trialed the program on several desks but suspended it just prior to "peak season" due to all the delays it was causing. One of the chiefs I worked with on the southwest division said if he had his way it wouldn't come back. There are just too many variables for any computer program to take into account.

4) Road trips. Dispatchers still get road trips at least on BNSF. In my 21 years there I got four road trips each lasting a week with airfare, hotels and meals paid for. Two were on the Nebraska division centered in Lincoln and two were on the Southwest division centered in Belen. On one of my Nebraska trips I rode the head-end of A6 Lincoln to Creston. The Amtrak engineer told me BNSF did the best at running Amtrak trains. Sadly I didn't get around to riding A3/A4 over Raton Pass. A friend of mine who works in Jacksonville tells me they do get road trips. I currently don't know anyone working at Atlanta or Omaha to verify road trips.

"Precision scheduled railroading or as I like to call it Pretty sh!tty railroading. Its a money grab plain and simple."

Another term I've heard is "Pretty StUPid Railroading" which pretty much describes a certain western railroad that has gone whole hog into it. What's happening is what I call "Asset Stripping". This is where you strip out anything of value while running the company into the ground leaving the government/tax payers to clean up the mess. It's a little harder to do in the railroad industry do to "interference" by the FRA (safety you know) but it's still being done. I believe this is now taught in US business schools.

Uh, the concept is to strip out everying *not* of value. And that's definitely taught in business schools.

The problem is that different people will view something's value depending on where they sit...

Most people don't double the size of their dining room or add a second oven simply because they host Thanksgiving or Christmas for the entire family... it's no different with physical plant.

The cost of inspecting and maintaining 20 miles of double track that only sees that second track used once or twice a week (maybe less?) might be seen as having little to no value from a cost standpoint. If you're the one impacted by delays because it's been ripped out, you're going to see value...

Balancing that out has been a perpetual problem for any company that's physical plant heavy.

The concept is stripping out things of value and selling them. If removing a track gives the railroad more ROW that they can lease to fiber optics or other utilities lets make some money! If a yard can be downsized to sell prime real estate for development lets make some money! If multiple dispatch centers in older expensive buildings can be consolidated into a new modern site lets save some money!

Things of lesser value are harder to sell/lease. In those cases it is more of a comparison of cost to keep vs benefit of having. Maintaining a large fleet of engines or cars is a major expense. There is a benefit of having a larger fleet (more spares, more flexibility if engines are in the right place) but the cost must be balanced. As you said, doubling capacity for temporary conditions can exceed the level of being cost effective.

west point wrote: ↑Tue Dec 28, 2021 11:58 pm Gentlemen. I really hope I am wrong, but it may be in a week to 2 weeks that we will see many train cancellations due to Omicrons' extreme transmissibility. We may be lucky to see twice weekly service. Hopefully if that does occur Amtrak can double up train lengths for at least some trains????

Well, did not anticipate the New Year's Eve cancellations that appear to be coming. So far CNO and Builder. Maybe others?

EDIT; Add Cal Z, Meteor, and night owl (66-67)--- Cancelled.

Friday - Zephyr, Builder, CONO, Meteor,

All weekend: Regional 66/65, and a couple of other Regional and Acela each day this weekend.

COVID cases/sick callouts at crew bases.

This weekend is going to be chaos traveling for many as airlines around the world have also had to cancel thousands of flights.

Not good at all. Please stay safe everyone. Be extremely cautious of NYE gatherings.

Not just Amtrak and the airlines but the local commuter rail and transit as well. MTA Maryland sent word about it, affecting service everwhere.

Be careful out there, folks. Looks like New Year's is going to be another indoor affair.