Read on another form that CSX is considering moving all dispatch back to Jacksonville by September ? So the next time there is another weather emergency will that shut down the whole CSX ?
Understand that VRE wanted the RF&P line dispatch moved to Baltimore ? Once that was done their OTP improved. ?
Weather Emergencies have never shut down the Jacksonville Dispatch Center.
Weather Emergencies do shut down the A line, S line, PD&PA as will as the NO&M in the anticipated ‘strike area’ as the signal department employees have been instructed to remove crossing gates to prevent them from becoming part of the flying debris that happens in areas with hurricane force winds as well as other storm preparations.
The cause of VRE (and other passenger operations) poor performance was a prior Vice President of Operations who had the philosophy of CSX first, all others be damned. He retained this philosophy right up until he had a ‘meeting with Jesus’ in the form of all the political functionaries that support Amtrak, VRE, MARC, MBTA and Tri-Rail - once those positions were explained to him IN PERSON with no weasel room - all passenger performances improved drastically. Shortly after the ‘come to Jesus’ meeting, this individual was given his walking papers, primarily for putting CSX in the embarassing position of having to attend the ‘come to Jesus’ meeing in the first place.
Having worked at both Jacksonville and Baltimore there was effectively no difference in how the division’s dispatchers were managed - Senior Division management rarely set foot in the Dispatch Center in either location.
It is not a matt
It’s a done deal from what I can see!
Have there been any interuptions to communications or are there back up (diverse routed) circuits for radio and CTC data that provide for circuit outages due to cable cuts or fiber cuts etc. The design I engineered for our data center provided two routes for the circuits and we survived the Hinsdale Central Office fire which interupted one of the two main paths between the data ctr and our HQ. I have experienced many Telephone Company CO outages that “Can’t Happen” The Lombard CO had a flood and on another occasion lost all its power due to a battery bus fault. Many cable cuts. Diversity is as the Mastercard ad states “Priceless” I know they design the centers to be hardened facilities but sometimes it not wise to put all your eggs in one basket.
In the past - when weather threatened management solicited volunteers to go to Indianapolis where a ‘on line’ back up system was kept. When the Jacksonville Office was decentralized, it was my understanding that each of the decentralized offices had sufficient computer power and communications abilities to run the entire system if it became necessary.
The CSX business computer systems are in a hardened facility in Jacksonville that is separtate from the Dispatch Center. At one time these systems were backed up by additional hardware and communcations in Baltimore - I don’t know if this is still the case.
No matter how much power and back up CSX has the weak links end up being the local power companies as well as communications companies for the territory the company o
Do they shut down the RR before they remove the gates, and re-install them before re-start?
BALT======== realize Jacksonville is hardened to withstand almost anything. However the weak link is dispatcher personell. What happens when relief / next trick dispatchers are prevented from going to work ? HOS will soon cause dispatchers on duty to go dead on the law ? l
I know the A, S, and NO&M lines; what is the PD&PA line?
PD & PA is the line from Jacksonville, through Pensacola to Flomaton, AL where it connects to the line from Montgomery to Mobile.
The shut down is coordinated so that the only trains running when crossing protection has been disabled are Work Trains that will have appropriate ‘stop & flag’ orders when operating to ready the lines for normal operations.
They put up the dispatchers in hotels close to the center. Believe it or not, the railroads do pay attention to the weather and make plans accordingly.
BNSF and UP have pretty much proven for many, many years now that a centralized dispatching office does not pose any significant drawbacks as far as operations. Now Omaha and Fort Worth aren’t in a low-lying area in a hurricane zone, but I’d figure CSX Jacksonville has planned for that.
Granted, one would also have assumed that the Fukushima Nuke plant was hardend against tsunamis, but they left the backup generators just above sea level, so…
[?] Wonder how big of a severance check he got , as big as EHH??
Perhaps @BaltACD or someone else has some insight into the comm backup. As I understand it CSX is converting most terrestrial radio comm to satellite, so presumably they have multiple satellite access paths in case one fails, gets hit by space junk, etc.
This former reliability engineer recognizes that 'TWO’ of everything (if possible) is goodness; sometimes even more redundancy is required.
Unfortunately, redundancy costs money - adding a redundant T1 line is going to cost the same $1500 a month (or whatever they’re going for these days) as the original.
I would suppose that any user that doesn’t require a specific path will rely on the 'Net to provide their redundancy. A tracert from a given computer to a given distant computer may well show different paths on different day, or even on different attempts.
OTOH, a “hot standby” path (ie, another satellite that can be accessed on a moment’s notice) might work - but all the remote sites would have to be re-tuned and re-aimed to the new satellite for that to work. Might better go to TT&TO in the interim…
My understanding is that CSX has had multiple T1 lines linking all the nodes of their network together since Day 1 of CADS in its original iteration. $1500 a month is chump change in comparison with System down time.
In my 27 year association with CADS, the system has only been down one time. That was on account of a computer virus or some other type malady that busied up the communications lines between the CSX Main Frame and the linked CADS computers to the point that the CADS computers would crash. The CADS computers crashed repeatedly for about 12 hours unti
secure from EMP attack? prob not!
Is anything?
Vacuum Tubes…virtually impervious.
Virtually nonexistant.
I was mostly being facetious - in reality, it would be reams of EC-1’s…