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.