The weather in the Chicago and midwest area has been disruptive this week with numerous storms and tornados.
The CSX priority intermodal trains have been running 3 to 5 hours late this week. I understand how weather affects transportation (airlines, railroads, trucks - five tractor trailers tipped over on I65 due to high winds).
My question is why these trains will continue to run late after the weather event. These trains are not necessarily dependent on interline exchange but are often point to point trains. Are these trains held due to lack of power (from inbound delays), crews, or are the primary shippers *UPS comes to mind having their own issues and requesting the trains being held until trailers are delivered to the terminal.
Hope this makes sense. Note - I 10 is running about 4 hours lateâŚjust cleared Fostoria.
Not fully conversant on current CSX operating strategies.
The hardest thing I ever observed over my 51+ year career with CSX and its predecessors is recovering from congestion, no matter the cause of the congestion. Operations are like a multi-part machine - as long as all parts are working in concert with each other - like most machines it can accept minor variations to the work flow; however, if there is a serious or catastrophic interruption to one or more segments of the operation, everything get thrown out of time and the machine tends to get overstressed at its weakest point - to a certain extent it is like a Orchestra where each musician has been given a different piece of sheet music to play - Chopin, Bach, Fleetwood Mac, Bruce Springsteen, Taylor Swift, and maybe even Milli Vanilli. You can imagine the cacophony that results. Even the best Orchestra Maestro will have to work hard and make the right moves to get all the instruments playing the proper music in the proper time with the necessary emphasis and verve.
I was the ATM at Bay View one night - the Baltimore Terminal Drag (a job that shuttled freight among the four primary yards in Baltimore (Bayview, Mt. Clare, Curtis Bay and Locust Point) went on the Hours of Service one the lead at the Bayview Yard Office, blocking the West end of the yard and the Westward access to the Main tracks. It took a couple of hours to free up a crew to end up yarding the Drag. For whatever the reasons, the entire terminal seemed to implode with that one hiccup, especially Bayview - we were out of room. Yards have finite capacities - exceed them at your risk. To switch freight, you have to have someplace to switch it to. At the point in time this was taking place, Bayview was the gateway yard to Penn Mary where there was interchange with the Canton Railroad, support for import auto loading at Dundalk Marine Terminal, support for the Baltimore GM Assembly plant, and supporting Bethlehem Steel at Sparrows Point - which would accept empties for steel loading and also ship out the occasional iron ore train. Operations between Bayview, Penn Mary and Grays Yard at Sparrows Point was in fact its own single track railroad operating under the jurisdiction of the Yardmasters at Bayview and Penn Mary. Grays only had a Yard Clerk who communicated with the Patapsco & Back River RR (Beth Steelâs railroad) at Sparrows Point.
The area imploded to the extent that interchanges received from the Canton and P&BR could not be switched at Penn Mary and Grays and had to be taken across the terminal to Mt. Clare to be classified and the Bayview area cars brought back to Bayview for delivery to the local industries. This congestion continued four about four months - Management cancelled vacations and rest days for Terminal Management until the traffic flows worked themselves out and volumes returned to normal.
Remember - Amtrak owns and dispatches the former PRR trackage through Baltimore. Amtrak threw ConRail off their property for through train movement. ConRail is only allowed to access they Bayview Yard in Baltimore from the Port Road coming from Havre de Grace to Bayview (which is NS these days).
Back in the days when I was an ATM in Baltimore Terminal, there was a lot of interchange traffic between PC and B&O with the movement of food stuffs from Distribution Centers near Harrisburg to Warehouses for A&P at Halethorpe and Giant Food at Jessup. Each of these operation were on the order of 60 cars a day with each of the warehouses getting multiple switches per day. Kept the interchanges busy and kept the yard crews at Halethorpe and Jessup busy. Halethorpe was a industrial park that was built on the acreage that was used for the B&Oâs 1927 Fair of the Iron Horse. I had three crews per day six days a week that started from a trailer office on site. In addition to A&P there were 15 to 20 other customers handling 2 and 3 cars per day. Nominally the 1st and 2nd trick yard engines did the customer switching. The third trick engine would accumulate all the âoutboundâ into a train and take it into Mt. Clare Yard where it would get switched and then pick up all the Halethorpe traffic from Mt. Clare and take it back to Halethorpe - each of these moves were approximately 100 cars each way each day.
Jessup was another industrial park area - in addition to the Giant Food warehouse, General Electric had its Appliance Park East and there was also an vehicle transloading operation. Dedicate road trains moved the traffic into and out of Jessup with âRoad Switchersâ handling the industrial work and spotting the vehicle ramp. Jessup was required to have a GE locomotive to service GE (crews hated them). Total traffic into and out of Jessup was on the order of two hundred cars each way.
Then came Staggers - and carriers could not be required to short haul themselves and Harrisburg/Baltimore-Jessup food stuffs traffic went to trucks. A&P folded as a major grocery chain. Virtually all the customers at Halethorpe are gone - it gets a car or two a week to one customer. GE closed Appliance Park East at Jessup. Giant still gets rail service, but only a fraction of what it got âin the dayâ and it is owned by Belgian grocery conglomerate. The vehicle transloading facility has expanded and handles well over 100 rail cars per day.
CSX is still having difficulties with priorities, particularly I10. today it was thru Fostoria at 255pm EDTâŚabout 3 hours later than normal. Yesterday at 1:21pm and Sunday was 205pm. Usually thru around noon.
One would think a âUPS trainâ would be running on a tight schedule.
Csx is doing plenty of trackwork and MOW.(playing catch up) Then you want to run 3 mile long trains. Then something happens. It just keeps adding up. Why send everything the âFostoriaâ way? They can go straight or use the NW connection at Deshler. North Baltimore is called North Bottleneck for a reason.
stay safe
Joe
I find the Deshler and Fostoria web cams and scanners fascinating to monitor. Fortunate that I work from home and can access one or both.
Regarding CSX running trains on schedulesâŚI believe there are schedules for most if not all of the regular trainsâŚas does NS. I can pretty much guess which train is passing based on the time. These trains are usually ânot to the minuteâ but pretty accurately ran, except when things happen. Joe indicated there is considerable MOW work now. I can attest to that from scanner chatter. This week there are at least 2 work zones on CSX in the Fostoria area. not sure what they are doing but each train must ask for clearance thru the zones. More scanner chatter.
I am mildly surprised by the lack of performance of I010 which is running 2-3 hours late thru Fostoria. These UPS trains are usually high priority.
EVERY train on CSX has a schedule - the Manifest networkâs schedules get tweeked on a weekly basis to take into consideration the various MofW curfews taking place at specific locations on the network each week.
Bulk commodity trains have a âroll your ownâ type of schedule from Origin to Destination. Even the Local Freight/Road Switchers have schedules as to their on duty times and the locations they are scheduled to work.
At least when I was working - CSX endeavored to schedule their network in the following manner.
Amtrakâs and Commuter schedules were plotted.
Premium Customer requirements are plotted
General Merchandise Customer requirements are plotted.
Schedules generated from steps 1, 2 & 3 will identify âwindowsâ where Local Freights/Road Switchers can be operated with maximum track time available.
Like everything else - each day is a new challenge for a wide variety of reasons. The unforeseen happens everywhere all day every day.