A post on the Crew Transportation thread about having scheduled time off prompts a question. I realize that railroads by nature are unscheduled beasts, but I thought CN or CP was trying to give their crews predictable schedules at least to some extent. For anyone out there who has ever had anything to do with crew scheduling, how hard would it be to give at least some portion of a RR’s crews a predictable work schedule? What problems would it cause? Wouldn’t some RR’s efforts to become “scheduled RR’s” make such an effort somewhat more practical? Thanks for your responses.
Carriers do have a level of crew scheduling…it is called Assigned Crews.
Crews that are assigned to operate specific trains. Normally this is done on ‘Premiere Trains’ as these are the trains that most normally are operated ‘On Time’ or better. For Scheduling to work, the trains that the assigned crews operated must consistently operate in a relatively narrow time frame. If the crews are Late coming from their Home Terminal, they won’t get to the away-from-home terminal in time to get rest to catch the assignments return train. Additionally, when there is varying volume on the Assigned Trains, it is possible for the train to be annulled because of a lack of traffic, when this occurs, the crew must be deadheaded, either to the away-from-home terminal to protect the ‘return train’, or home if it was the ‘return train’ that was annulled.
Some ‘Assignments’ are only Assigned from the Home Terminal. The crew catches the Assignment train from their home terminal and the goes into the ‘Pool’ at the away from home terminal.
Other ‘Assignments’ are assigned from the Home Terminal and Away-form-home Terminal, however, if the ‘Return Train’ has already been operated from the away-from-home terminal, they then are called on the first available train after the crew is rested.
The variety of assignments is as varied as the local labor contracts that are in place on the various carriers and the various districts within each carrier. Each local area has their own ideas of what is right and proper and how to assign the work.
what railroad does this and where?
The only thing close to scheduled trains i remember was in the 80s. I knew a few Conrail guy who worked Toledo to Chicago on Mail trains and they had the same crew most of the time. Also i remember they could almost count on when they would get called. The catch is these guys had lots of whiskers most had 30 plus years of service.
CSX - Systemwide - in accordance with multiplicity of crew agreements that they operate under…B&O, C
The CN here in NW Indiana (ex GTW) swaps crews on a number of trains. Do you know of other railroads which do this? Also, there are certain crews which run all the way from Battle Creek to Chicago, some which are based out of Sarnia (usually swap trains).
It would seem this would be a desireable method. You are pretty much based out of your terminal and return daily. Anyone know about it?
ed
The Iowa Interstate does this with their daily thru train. Most everything else runs as turns. Any irregular one way train, like a unit grain train, the crew cabs back to their home terminal.
For my own personal preference, I’m one who would not like that arrangement of swapping trains and returning home everyday. That may sound funny, but when you are working on your rest or close to it you seem to get better rest away from home. Especially if your sleep time is going to be when the rest of the world is awake. Less distractions in the motel, at least for me.
Of course, I too don’t like it when you start spending 12 hours at home and 24 hours in the motel plus 10 to 12 hours on duty each way for trip after trip.
Jeff
The CP Portage,WI to St Paul interdivisional freight pool has crews with home terminals at both ends. The St Paul based crews get aprox 55% of the trains, Portage gets the rest.
To change crews enroute it would have to be at St Paul crew swapping with a Portage (or vice versa) to make it work. Some days you’ll find crews from either terminal on most of the trains, so swap enroute would be iffy at best.
CP and the Brotherhoods have gone thru two studies to try to get some sort of scheduling system and have crews spend more time on trains than in cabs. So far no solution that suits all. The crews would rather keep the system as is rather than swap enroute simply because when they get home it is usually for 40-48hrs, they just don’t know when that will be. The swap enroute means you’ll be working/on call almost every day with usually no big blocks of time off.
At terminals such as Enderlin,ND, which has shorter runs (137mi to Glenwood/139mi to Harvey) they have tried a system where each pool turn has an assigned day off per week. I don’t know the outcome of that experiment.
We did have this in form of I.D.runs from Portsmouth,Ohio to Bluefield,WVa.
Ports. crews got the sa
Mack:
Thanks for the illustration. What is the mileage for Portsmouth - Bluefield? About 250 miles or so? How is the pay determined for those I.D. runs? Based on mileage, or hourly? Since you are running thru a crew change point, is the pay scale double?
I know 218 runs on a pretty tight schedule here in NW Indiana, it is by Valpo at 6am almost every morning.
Are these I.D. runs considered preferred and based on high seniority?
ed
the reality is the trains are not on a schedual. not the same time every day , schedual to us is like time table days start at this time you new 6 months in advance what you be working or if yu be off, any of this stuff your comming up with is dream land
There are a few railroads that run their crews on schedules . . . they run unit trains of cattle. [:D]
Class I railroads attempt to run a ‘Scheduled Railroad’ and most Intermodal, Merchandise and Auto trains to have schedules that are operated at least 5 days a week if not 7 days a week. Where the problems in keeping these schedules come in are such things as power availability, Signifigant customers offering loads later than the normal cut off times, mechanical difficulties in switching, inspecting and assembling the train, crew rest issues, portions of the line being curfewed for track work…throw on top of all that the issues of having the train navigate hundreds, if not thousands of miles of road between origin and destination and one believes that there is no schedule. There Is.
The other thing about freight transportation, is that scheduled train may operate in advance of the schedule, as well as being late on the schedule. Passenger trains, if they were to operate in advance of schedule would have many unhappy customers that got left behind at intermediate stations.
like i said your dreaming the railroad ( and i asked) is not to have the train early because it will mess up its connection, if its late the connection suffers, but they tell you this train is to leave at 2am and why we are doing a brake test at 5am and setting bad orders out is anyones guess, when the train arrived and got tied down at 10pm and we are on held away. there is no scheduel they just want you to think so
You don’t have to answer for the delays…I do!
On CN (GTW District) things have gotten better for spareboard employees .
I have every Sunday off and everyother Monday off . You bid on your days off every 28 days .
Sometimes you can turn on a train and if there is no train to turn on you go to the hotel and get your rest . Sometimes you can be out of the hotel in 8 hours , sometimes your there up to 24 hours .
I have to agree with Wabash on this one…there is nothing even resembling a schedule where I work…Amtrak maybe…train line ups are so erratic they can be off 12-24 hours…this is all we have when trying to determine when we are going to work…I don’t know how many times I have looked at a line up that said I was going to work the next afternoon & as soon as my head hits the pillow the phone rings…“schedules??? we ain’t got no stinkin’ schedules!” [swg]
I have to agree with Jeff on this one our lives would be so much simpler if we swapped trains at the mid point I know the CNdoes this and a friend of mine who works for them out MEMPHIS tENN LOVES IT HE IS HOME NEARLY EVERY NIGHT AND HAS A LIFE lARRY
this is probably the single biggest issue in regards to safety & railroading, at least where I work…[UP Ft Worth] the carrier could do a lot better job when it comes to crew members knowing when they are going to work.there is nothing worse than waking up as you are going across a major railroad xing & realizing you aren’t blowing the horn…it can be absolutley brutal to have to go to work tired & then run for 12 hours without a nap…I’m suprised the railroads don’t issue amphetamines to their employees…[just kidding]this fatigue problem costs too much money to fix…they could come up with a better crew management system, but the carriers aren’t interested in anything that won’t return a handsome profit…problem is, accidents/derailments/fatalities ARE expensive & I can’t for the life of me figure out wht they don’t see this…I just don’t see the big picture…or maybe the picture has fallen off the wall.
Every crew district has it’s own unique set of operating/scheduling parameters. Traffic flows vary. You can have a predictable level of general freight merchandise traffic. Bulk commodity traffic is much less predictable, coal, ore, grain and other such bulk commodity trains operate in thier own ‘world’ as dictated by either the shipper or consignee or both. Throw on top of the operation of trains the incidents that can delay them in their operation and the incidents that can shut down a sub-division for 4-6-8-12 hours account mechanical failures or man failure incidents. Throw in major maintenance of way activities on one or more sub-divisions in the route of long distance trains and all of a sudden the ability to predictably schedule all crew starts/finishes is far from a consistant reality, but while it is not a reality…it is still a goal.