In the March MR Jim Hediger answered a question about crew change procedures. He mentions the 100 mile union work-day rule. A hundred miles seems very short, maybe its era specific. Truckers have a 10 hour driving limit before they have to rest for 8 hours before driving again. The number of miles don’t count, just driving time.
Does someone have more information about this rule?
Thanks,
What I heard from a railroad supervisor was that it was a hold over from the days of steam when shoveling coal for 100 miles was a days worth of work.
Here’s the rub…It can take 12 hours to go 100 miles! You see you have meets,you can be held at a crossing diamond,slow orders,slow trains ahead of yours etc…
Your actual train speed may average 22 mph or less!
I recall one time we took a cut of loaded hoppers to a rail/barge transloader and it took 8 hours to make the 40 mile round trip and all we have to do was drop the loads and pick up the empties.
You see we was held at Limeville waiting for a clear inbound track for 4 hours…You see we wasn’t very high on the pecking order for inbound tracks as they ran several trains around us during that 4 hours…
Truckers have a 10 hour driving limit before they have to rest for 8 hours before driving again. The number of miles don’t count, just driving time.
Those are the OLD hours of service rules, in January of 2004, the rules were changed. The old HOS rules allowed for 10 hours of driving, within 15 hours on duty, followed by a minimum of 8 hours off duty. These rules also allowed a driver to stretch his 15 hours by logging off duty time, so if a driver started at 12:00 midnight, 15 hours would be 3:00 pm, if he(or She) logged 3 hours(as an example) off duty, during the day, they would be allowed to work until 6:00pm. I myself had used this loophole to work many days that would stretch as much as 19-20 hours, legally, from the time that I went on duty.
In January of 2004, the HOS rules for Truck Drivers(Federal Interstate Rules) were changed to 11 hours behind the wheel, but reduced the The begin-end time to 14 hours, rather than 15 overall for the day, and closed the off duty stretch the day loophole, now if a driver starts at 12:00, they have to be logged off duty by 2:00pm, even if they take, say an hour long lunch break, they still have to be done driving, by 2:00pm. A driver would still be allowed to work past 14 hours, say loading/unloading, or truck repairs, but they would need to have the 10 hour minimum off duty time, before returning to work.
The old rules also limited a drivers HOS to either 60 hours/ 7 days or 70hours/ 8 days, period. The new rules still have the same 60/7 or 70/8 limits, but allow a driver to reset their 60 or 70 hour clock after having 34 unbroken hours off duty, this equals the 10 hour minimum, plus one full day off duty. The reason for the changes were to try and keep drivers to a more cons
The 100 mile rule was a holdover from the earliest days of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, a time when most steam locomotives had a maximum range of approximately 100 miles before needing mechanical attention and over-the-road start-to-stop speed seldom exceeded 10mph. Note that, in that 100 miles, that locomotive might need to stop for water a half-dozen times and either coal up or wood up several times as well.
If you had told an engineman of that era that a multiple-unit consist of high-horsepower locomotives (under control of a single engineer) might run from the Port of Long Beach to New Jersey with nothing but crew changes and a few refueling stops, and that a mainline crew on a transcon could expect to run Tucson-El Paso in a single shift, he would have been sure that the stuff in your pipe WASN’T tobacco!
Chuck
This was indeed a holdover from even earlier days of steam. Division points were set up around 100-120 miles apart because the early engines required inspection and maintenance servicing after that long a run! When the Unions came in they originally contracted that a run between two division points was the standard for a day’s work/pay. This was eventually taken as the standard equivalent for locals and finally included yard work. Then the Government legislated this equivalent into what became the “hours of Service” Law. John
Until 1907, many crew districts were much longer than 100 miles. 160 to 200 mile districts were quite common especially on western roads. Some districts were much shorter. The length of the district was determined by whatever the railway thought it ought to be. The passage of the Federal Hours of Service Law in 1907, which limited on-duty time of enginemen and trainmen to 16 hours, and the passage of the Adamson Act in 1916, which codified the eight-hour standard workday for railway workers engaged in interstate commerce, resulted in union agreements that established the 100-mile run as the equivalent of a day’s pay. That, and only that, created the more-or-less standard 100-mile crew district. Many crew districts that were longer than 100 miles had to be shortened, and as a result many long-time crew change terminals were at that time abandoned and relocated.
It’s become conventional wisdom now that the 100-mile district was an outcome of the technical limits of the steam locomotive. While the steam locomotive did have its limits, different locomotives on different roads in different services had wildly divergent servicing requirements. The 100-mile day is a legal and social decision, not really a technical one. Had the public decided, for example, that a 32-hour day was just and proper, then we’d have 200-mile districts and the railroads would have figured out how to m
Thanks to everyone for the information.
THERE IS NO 100 MILE RULE. NADA, DOESN"T EXIST.
100 miles was a basic day’s pay in the labor contracts. It wasn’t a rule, that is, a requirement. it wasn’t a requirement. All it was was a measure of when they made over a basic day’s wages.
If you study real railroads you will find the crew changes ranged from 75 to about 150 miles apart. The railroaders were paid on a sliding scale where anything less then 100 miles and 8 hours was a basic day’s pay. anything over 8 hours and 100 miles was paid on a sliding scale depending on the time and mileage.
So there is nothing that prevents a crew from operating 200 miles (very common for passenger crew pools) its just the railroad pays them 2 days’s pay for every trip.
The time a crew can work is set by the Federal Hours of Service law (HOS) It says a crew can only work 16 hours (up to about 1974) then it changed to 12 hours max after that. If a crew works less than the maximum hours they only need 8 hours rest before they can be called back to service. If a crew works the full HOS they require 10 hours rest.
Train crews, signal maintainers, train order and control operators and dispatchers are covered by the HOS. If there is more than one shift on duty at a location (applies to operators and and dispatchers) the HOS is 9 hours). The HOS is an absolute maximum and has NOTHING to do with how a crew is paid or how far a crew can operate.
Dave wrote:
So there is nothing that prevents a crew from operating 200 miles (very common for passenger crew pools) its just the railroad pays them 2 days’s pay for every trip.
Dave,There is a lot of things that would stop a crew from going 200 miles-even passenger train crews.
HOS begins when you sign the book and you may need to wait before you can even start your run.
I been called for 1:30AM and we didn’t depart until 3:00AM.So,we was good for 10 1/2 hours however,we faced a red block for another 30 minutes before we left the yard.Now we are good for 10 hours…Arrived at Limeville and spent another IIRC 1 1/2 hours facing a red while the DS cleared up a flock of trains off the Northern division plus 2 coming off the single track Cincinnati Division.
Anyway,by the time we reach Queensgate we had 30 minutes to spare and that’s roughly IIRC 122 miles from Russell.
Railroading is anything but,smooth sailing…I 'll guarantee you that you will face a host of Red blocks that will include long waits in the middle of nowhere.
We use to take turns taking catnaps if we had a long wait.
Yeah and if you were scheduled to run 5 miles and derailed coming out of the departure track that would prevent you from running 5 miles.
The point is that there is NOTHING in any rule book that prevents a crew district from being more than 100 miles.
The run from N Platte to Omaha or Marysville is over 250 miles and literally more than a hundred of trains and crews make the run each day in less than 12 hours.
Dave wrote:
The run from N Platte to Omaha or Marysville is over 250 miles and literally more than a hundred of trains and crews make the run each day in less than 12 hours.
Those must be extremely lucky railroaders or they have a triple track main…
That’s quite a feat to move so many trains in 12 hours…
Not luck. The majority of modern crew districts on western railroads are in the 150-200 mile range and the vast majority of crews make it in under 12 hours.
Part of the route (North Platte to Gibbon) is triple track now. Even before the third track they were running those expanded districts.
Does anyone (besides Dave) know what the current basic day is in this day of Gevos and the like? It’s 130 miles. As Dave said, it’s not a maximum number that can be worked but a minimum for pay purposes. One of the pools out of my home terminal only works 109 miles, but pays 130 miles. The other two pools work 197 miles and 161/186 miles depending on route taken.
Jeff
Well,That track does have a nice average speed of 25mph for all trains…One of the fastest in the industry.
You wouldn’t see that speed just a few years ago and I am not talking about the steam era either…
Jeff,Again smooth sailing is not the norm for railroaders.If it was crews wouldn’t be going dead miles away from the terminal nor rail shippers be complaining about how slow railroads are.
Here’s the weekly performace chart for the railroads.
http://www.railroadpm.org/Performance%20Reports/NS.aspx
Note how the average speed varies from road to road.
Just a caution, that number reflects the SYSTEM train speed, not necessarily how fast the average train travels between terminals (the system speed might be 25 mph but on a particular segment between terminals the average train speed may be 40 or 50 mph). There is some variations on what the different railroads include in their measures, and what delays are included in the train speed (when does the clock start, when does it stop). Over the last decade or so the eestern roads have been consistently higher than the eastern roads, primarily because of the distance between terminals is higher in the west. These performance numbers are less useful when comparing railroad to railroad and are best to compare an individual railroad’s trend over years.
Dave,Those are very accurate numbers for the mention railroads.The average speed is for all trains regardless of divisions…
All they are saying is your freight car will be averaging XX miles per hour over our system.Note the killer terminal dwell time.Short sections of high speed track means nothing to a shipper(Does it even impress them? Probably not)…Its the average speed and terminal dwell time that counts.
That average speed includes delays cause by meets,track work,slow orders,speed restrictions through interlocking plants,over powered switches,through towns and cities,grades,enroute switching etc.
This is why it can take 12 hours to go 100 or less miles.Of course if all goes smooth you can make your run in good time.
I know, some of the model railroaders in my area calculate those numbers for a class one railroad.
It really doesn’t even say that because it doesn’t count terminal dwell when the cars are NOT on a train. So If a car runs on a train 50 miles in an hour, spends 40 hours in a terminal, then spends an hour on a second train going 50 miles, the train speed is 50 mph and the transit time is 42 hours. If the train takes 2 hours to go the 50 miles, spend 25 hours in the terminal and then takes 2 hours to go the next 50 miles, the train speed it 25 miles an hour and the transit time is 29 hours.
The AAR train speed numbers are really only useful to compare trends over time. The speed itself isn’t as important. If railroad A has consistent speeds over 3 or 4 years, railroad B has steadily declining speeds and railroad C has increasing speeds, then you can make some general assumptions that service is steady on railroad A, declining on RR B and improving on RR C.
Dave,They don’t count terminal dwell time with in transist speed*.*A car standing still doesn’t count.
The shippers perfer to count the days their load actually moves from point A to point B.
Again,those happy speeds you are leaning on doesn’t count with the big picture the shippers look at.
Dave,50 miles in 2 hours by rail would be record breaking.
It takes NS 35-40 minutes at track speed (35) between Bucyrus and Marion and that’s only 17 miles by rail…I have time Westbound trains after the crew calls the signal above RT.4 in Marion.
hi,
may be i am hijacking a thread; did railroads had a policy about getting their men and steamers back home the same day?
Was it 50 miles down and 50 miles up or a “night” away from home?
Paul