Remote Control - The cutting-edge of new technology!?

Rumor is we are scrapping them at Galesburg as well. Cant move enough cars is an understatement.Oh and your supposed to protect the point as well, kinda hard when your no where near it
On BNSF you must if in a location of remotes get qualified, as well as pass your hostler test. So now you are able to be forced to those boards. I bid for the hostler xboard and love it. Greatest job in the yard!
Remotes suck while hanging on a lumber rack as your cruising along in control ( ha control funny word) every time you try to get in a better position so your arms dont fall off ( cause you have to hang your ass so far back cause the belt pack is like being pregnant with twin whales!)you hit your status button" BNSF 6211 A OUT!" and thats what goes across the yard channel about 25 times. Oh yeah hit your reset button or youll get an emergency application. Great pieces of junk! We have a conventional job that does a pull out and gets its stuff ready before a remote job can get one train togther.
Oh and btw if you do go engineer under UTU contracts you can never ,NEVER underlined in bold with a blood signature, go back to the yard and run remotes. You have to go off your conductor seniority date adn if you cant hold anything on the road or locals your SOL.Things may be different elsewhere but this is the BNSF way ( funny if remotes are so good why did we add conventional jobs to get cars more "velocity")

You're incorrect route_rock! The remotes can work, they must work, they will work! The carriers have decided this to be carved in stone. We "gutter-snipes" know the real-deal, so sad the hierarchy doesn't.

JG is right. The decision has been made by the egomaniacs, err, management above us that has a clear view of the big picture. They do work, darn it! They went to school to show us in the trenches how it's done.

Silly me I forgot that They also go and tell us how to ride frieght cars. Give me alternative handeling ( if I ever go back to the ground) cause I am riding those tanks the way I see its safe. Not their hang off hte side and swing like a pendulum. Oh and they were starting to get pissy about riding up high on hoppers. Well whatever you come back and ride one the way you say we should mr manager I know I know I will need to report for company retraining soon. Hmm maybe if I get a tat of the railroads logo on my forehead I will get htem to believe I am a true team player

route_rock wrote:Silly me I forgot that They also go and tell us how to ride frieght cars. Give me alternative handeling ( if I ever go back to the ground) cause I am riding those tanks the way I see its safe. Not their hang off hte side and swing like a pendulum. Oh and they were starting to get pissy about riding up high on hoppers. Well whatever you come back and ride one the way you say we should mr manager I know I know I will need to report for company retraining soon. Hmm maybe if I get a tat of the railroads logo on my forehead I will get htem to believe I am a true team player

Speaking of tank cars, I would have been fired many times had I have been caught riding those puppies using the side (middle of the car) ladder. Seems much safer to me than the single, vertical grab-iron on the end. Thankfully, the most dangerous cars to mount/ride are long gone (almost). Those old flat-cars were impossible to negotiate!

jg greenwood wrote:Thankfully, the most dangerous cars to mount/ride are long gone (almost). Those old flat-cars were impossible to negotiate!

Still plenty of TTX flats around though and they're no bargain either!

How about riding in the enclosure on a hopper? Another no-no that I violate each and every time! Do they expect me to hang from the ladder for a long shove move? Is that supposed to be safer? Right.

thebigc wrote:

jg greenwood wrote:Thankfully, the most dangerous cars to mount/ride are long gone (almost). Those old flat-cars were impossible to negotiate!

Still plenty of TTX flats around though and they're no bargain either!

How about riding in the enclosure on a hopper? Another no-no that I violate each and every time! Do they expect me to hang from the ladder for a long shove move? Is that supposed to be safer? Right.

Roger that on the enclosure BigC. No doubt that some office poag dreamed up that rule!

The ones who dream up those rules sure don't have to abide by them every day! They don't want you on the sides near close clearance, but you can't ride here, there, or anywhere else that makes sense.

As for the covered hoppers, it's much safer when you have something to stand on and something to hold. I can maybe understand the rule as applied to those cars with only the center sill and various other beams, but many of the cars have a full-width "floor". Standing there and having the end rail in front of you in case of slack action is just as safe as riding a caboose or "shoving platform".

Aji-tater wrote:The ones who dream up those rules sure don't have to abide by them every day! They don't want you on the sides near close clearance, but you can't ride here, there, or anywhere else that makes sense.

As for the covered hoppers, it's much safer when you have something to stand on and something to hold. I can maybe understand the rule as applied to those cars with only the center sill and various other beams, but many of the cars have a full-width "floor". Standing there and having the end rail in front of you in case of slack action is just as safe as riding a caboose or "shoving platform".

Exactly Mr. Aji-tater! Why in this world anyone would dream up a rule that prohibits riding in the safest possible place is beyond me. Perhaps our inability to visualize the "big picture" again?

At the risk of sounding like a stuffy old timer, I have to think at least some of the problem is the influx of non-railroaders into the various management positions. Now I'll grant that outsiders are a good thing in some ways especially changing the "we've always done it that way" mentality and railroads probably have benefitted from fresh outlooks in many ways.

However, the flip side is that when your people calling the shots and making the rules came up through the ranks, they had a better idea of what was involved in various situations. It's all fine and dandy to say don't ride the side of a car in close clearance, that has been a good rule for years. But if you can't ride deck anymore, you can't ride inside a covered hopper end even if it has a full floor, what's left? Standing on the crossover board, hanging on with one arm while the other hand is keying your radio mike, and you hope when the slack runs out you can still hang on.

Or you can stop the movement and walk past the bridge or close clearance, making sure to stop the movement before you get off because that's a giant no-no these days. But now you can't walk between the rails, and maybe there's a ditch on one side and a live main track on the other so how is that any safer than being on the car?

The experienced managers were less apt to make rules making it impossible to do the work. And I know weeds tests and surprise checks have been around for over 100 years but some railroads apparently delight in trying to find ways to force employees into some minor rule transgression so they can make a big deal out of it. Hey - you want the job done? Tell me what you want, then go away and let me do it.