I watched the Texas Eagle stop in Austin tonight and Amtrak did a crew change. Only one person got out of the engine and only one person got in. The conductor of course is in the cars - but is there only the engineer in the locomotive?
dd
That is correct. As long as the run is normally less than 6 hours long. The engineer CAN work 12 hours but usually is done in 6 or less. Most if not all AMTK trains are crewed that way.
that’s gotta get boring after a while…12 hours talking to yourself…
Amtrak trains only have a single engineer up front?
Considering that you only have a single person to view and comply with signal indications, read and comply with slow orders, read and comply with MofW flagging and work orders, communicate with the Train Dispatcher, communicate with your trains conductor all the while moving a nominal 1000 ton vehicle at track speeds is anything but boring. The fact is for one man to comply with the plethora mandatory directives that are required in operating trains in todays rail enviornments is neve wracking in the extreme.
May hat is off to the single man Amtrak engineer, they are performing a job which no man should have to do and shouldering responsibilities that no other transportation operator, except the truck and bus drivers, are expected to shoulder.
Does that mean Amtrak trains have to stop when copying written orders? Otherwise who else is looking out?
Some of the European members can add more but I can’t remember ever seeing two folks in the cab of a passenger train there. They run a lot faster than Amtrak.
Wow, I never knew that some Amtrak trains were going around with only a single engineer.
I believe all Via trains have two engineers on board… is that true?
Yes that is true Via Rail Canada trains run with two engineers in the
cab. They also have no Conductor in the body of the train the rules
related duties of the Conductor are now carried out by the headend crew.
A service manager now handles the Conductors work on the tailend
(ie tickets,doors, etc)
Terry,
Yeah,
I rode that segment of Amtrak with an engineer that I am sure you know Mark. It actually worked out well. When he retired, he came to work for us.
Yeah,
But its still fun to watch him get riled up when someone tells him how great those Genesis engines are
That sux sort of. Only if u don’t want to have some “you time”. But I actually though that some Amtrak crews had an asst. engineer too. I guess not huh?? [?]
When the FRA allowed AMTK to go with one enginer they immediately busted a lot of run thrus to do it. For example the Empire Builder used to get two engineers in Shelby who ran to Spokane. The new run was a single engineer from Shelby to Whitefish and then a new single engineer from Whitefi***o Spokane. So you ask, "What is the difference, it still takes two engineers to run from Shelby to Spokane?’ That is true but each engineer has 12 hours they can work in a snow storm or when BNSF has a train broken in two on single track. AMTK saves a lot of money in dog catches when they now have 24 hours of crew time available in stead or 12 hours for the entire segment as before.
Saving money but at what price?
The Lord forbid that a “single engineer” collapses from an ailment or is hit by some moron throwing objects. In all of the times I’ve ridden Amtrak, I’ve always felt more comfortable knowing that there were two men in the cab of that huge behemoth called a locomotive!
If the engineer dies or is otherwise incapacitated, the alerter will stop the train with a penalty brake application. Time between required alerter resets varies with speed.
Sleeping engineers have been know to reflexively reset the alerter, however.
Wow, sort of like sleep walking-- or i guess in this case sleep resetting.
Yeah, just like an alarm clock.
I got in the habbit of setting my alarm for 6:30 in the morning, and would always hit the “snooze” a few times before I actually woke up.
Well it got to the point where I would just hit the snooze button, and not even remember doing it or hearing the alarm, the next thing I know it would be 7:15.
It was a strange feeling.
Nice that there is an alerter, but I’ve never been in favour of one man crews in any case.