I love the media. Heck, I love politicians too. You throw in insurance agencies, and you have my second, third, and fourth favorite professions.
Why? Well, when I first became an attorney, Americans considered the legal profession the most pernicious and distrusting of all the professions. Since then, I have seen the above three professions knock attorneys into the fourth from the bottom. Way to go news media, politicians, and insurance agents! Keep up the good work.
Now, if you accountants would just get the lead out and pull a few more Enrons and World Coms, we attorneys will soar to 5th. Another 2-300 spots, we might actually be at the mean mark.
Gabe
P.S. I am sure Greyhounds didn’t mean any disrespect to particular media figures and neither do I. After all, Mark has spent a considerable amount of time in Fourth Estate. If he is the stereotype of an immoral stupid person, we need more immoral stupid people.
If you leave it in a low enough gear, the gears should provide enough resistance to keep the train from moving too fast should it start rolling down a hill without the crew in it–kind of like a simi on a hill. Where is the clutch on a locomotive anyway?
The story makes it appear that is what happened. When Dave Barry retired, I thought there would not be any good humor columns anymore. Appearently there is one.
the funniest part about this whole thing is that they were afraid somebody would jump in and take off with it. i would have loved to see someone try, especially the one gas station attendant they kept “interviewing” that said they (the crew) should have put it into gear and jumped off…SDPD is worried about somebody like THAT stealing a train?! my other question was, how the heck does a group of police officers go from looking for transients along the ROW to being in the cab of an engine that they have no reason for entering. i just dont understand people sometimes.
Yeah, this was pretty humorous last night on the yokel TV channels and in the Onion today. One thing that is common to journalists is a general lack of knowledge about anything they are reporting on. You see examples of that every day in the paper and on the tube. Cops have to deal with a lot of stuff and also can lack basic knowledge in many areas, just as anybody in society would. There’s lots of stuff that each one of us would be clueless about, but usually we know that and try to find somebody who does know what is going on.
Listening to scanners, you can hear frequent reports from crews that they are X hours from dying on hours; I think that is pretty common communication of important information to dispatchers. When they do die on the clock, the dispatcher is immediately aware of it and can call the dog catcher for help.
What is interesting about this situation is that this train had to come south on a difficult line for a freight, what with all of the Coaster and Amtrak traffic that has to be dealt with. They tied down on a long double-track stretch north of the San Diego River, which had to be frustrating, because they might have been able to make the yard south of downtown in maybe 30 minutes if they could have gotten through the single-track bridge over the river just north of Old Town.
As noted by a number of posters, you can see tied-down trains idling all over the place, I guess especially in UP territory. A week ago Friday, I counted five westbounds sitting in San Gorgonio Pass along I-10 spaced out pretty evenly. I guess UP does stand for Usually Parked as somebody mentioned in another thread.
Are they allowed to do that is the BNSF does not supply a relief crew[?][?]
Getting Relief Crews to Dog Lawed trains requires having a crew available to use in relief service. Having crews available to call during this time of year can be a problem, with management desires to minimize employee head count and then the normal Summer vacations and mark offs and missed calls… While it is desired to have a Relief Crew in place to take over a train at the time the original crew goes on the Hours of Service Law, it does not always occur.
From the GCOR,
Rule: 15.12
Relief of Engineer or Conductor During Trip
When a conductor, engineer, or both are relieved before a trip is finished, they must deliver all track warrants, track bulletins, and instructions to the relieving conductor or engineer.
If they cannot personally deliver the track warrants or track bulletins to the relieving crew, the conductor will leave them at a location designated by the train dispatcher.
Comparison of Information
The relieving conductor and engineer must compare track warrants, track bulletins, instructions, and pertinent information with each other and with the train dispatcher before proceeding.
Possibly it was the location of the train and the contents that got the police attention. Never having been to San Diego, I am not sure what Bay Park is…is it a park next to the ocean, where possible personal injury could occur to some trespassing kid. Is Bay Park an industrial area where a car full of hazardous materials could be used in a 9/11 or London style attack, or is Bay Park a residential neighborhood where residents could very possbly be upset by idling locos. I am suprised that California law would allow the locomotives to idle without a crew, they have such strict laws about pollution that possibly the police were investigating that aspect. That all being said- idle hands are the devils workshop and journalists without the knowledge of how transportation works can be a bad thing. Maybe it is time to put my journalism degree and my knowledge of trains and transportation to work…do any of these TV stations have an opening for a transportation beat reporter. Give me a call.
Bay Park is a portion of San Diego adjacent to Mission Bay, the smaller of the two bays in south San Diego. This portion of the line is double tracked, and runs adjacent to Morena Blvd, which is lined by mainly small businesses, a few car dealerships, and maybe a few houses toward the north end of the street. the area is known for transient camps along the ROW in the bushes and in the nearby river outlet, which is apparently what the police were looking for when they spotted the train. in my opinion not really a place where anybody would be in danger, the bay is on the other side of I-5, which is on the west side of the tracks (anybody trying to cross from that direction would probably be hurt or dead before they even got close). as for residents getting upset, i doubt that would be the case, most of the residences lie away and/or uphill from the tracks, and most of the people who complain about the noise of the trains live downtown anyway. all-in-all slow news day added on top of the police being (in my opinion) a little more precautionary than they needed to be, as is shown by the fact that the story is now dead here.
There was an article in the newspaper yesterday about how the South Coast Air Quality Management Board did not like the fact that the California Air Resources Board had negotiated a voluntary agreement with BNSF & UP to reduce air pollution. CARB said that the agreement is voluntary because states cannot regulate interstate sources of pollution (trains, aircraft, ships).
Sounds like a normal event blown way out of proportion. The headline almost makes one think the train was left continuing to eat up the miles without anyone on board!
The residents of nearby Bay Park, hiped up about the London bombings ,were the originators of the call to the police.Yes the local media was really blowing it out of proportion. one comentator kept saying BNSF, I wanted to call and ask him if he knew what BNSF stood for.My wife got tired of me saying WHAT A BUNCH OF CRAP!So you get to hear it, and yes I’m shouting.