if i read your letter aloud, i would pass out… there is only 1 period in your comments, at the end… next time, could you toss in some periods, commas, maybe an ellipsis (…), so i can tell where one thought ends and another begins? not seeing any place to stop, it reads like a runaway…
Thank you Gentlemen, you all have been most helpful! My next question to you guy’s is TIME! What does track and time mean? Is there a master clock at dispatch that everyone goes by? Are engineers and conductors still required to have a calibrated time piece with them? Is there such a thing as railroad time? What happens when your dispatch is in Florida and your train is in Chicago, is there not a hour different’s?
TIM A
Tim,
#1. I assume you mean track time. Track time is really a self explanatory term. It means the time you as a train, mofw gang, hi-rail or whatever has on a stretch of track. Is that what you mean?
#2. By a master clock, there is a clock for each time zone governed by that dispatch center and dispatchers go by local time. Sometimes, in areas near time zone changes, one area may be in the dispatch time zone and the community in another. This is covered by timetable rule.
#3. Train crew still must have a watch calibrated to the local time. The rules have changed over the years from “railroad approved” to “reliable” watches. When I first started, we were required to have a pocket watch that was not stem set. Usually these were Hamilton or Waltham and they said “railroad approved”. They had white faces with black numbers with not only the five-minute numerals, but also minute listed. They were in white or yellow gold cases. Today, a genuine railroad Hamilton in good condition will sell in excess of $600. I have my grandfather’s Hamilton. There was even a railroad jeweler whose job it was to maintain the watches in good working order. If I remember correctly, there was an allowable variance of less than a minute, but I don’t remember the time period. From there we went to wrist watches, the battery powered with only a few makers of “railroad approved”. From there, more watch makers joined the market. My current watch a battery Seiko showing as “railroad approved”. Incidently, myh grandfather’s Hamilton runs as well as the Seiko. We were all required to purchase and maintain our own watches at the railroad jeweler.
#4. What you know now as Easter, Central, Mountain and Pacific time zones were created by the railroads as a standard for calculating train meets and scheduling. Before that was established, time was a hodge-podge of different times, sometimes earlier, sometimes later than the neighboring community. This was tremendously confusing and led to calami
Tim, to add to gdc post about time, currently on the port, our watch is allowed a 30 second variance, we have a function in our computer data base that is supposed to be tied into the national observatory’s atomic clock. Our watches have to have arabic numerals, with military time on an inner or outer rim of the face. We dont have the old watch cards, and we are allowed to carry pocket watches, as long as they meet the above requirements, and we are tested about once a month. Any officer here can request to see your watch, and if it isnt correct, you are subject to be removed from service. I wear a Sharp Quartz with military time in red numbers inside the arabic number ring. I also carry a old Ingersol “Yankee” pocket watch my dad got from his dad when gramps immigrated to the US. He bought it for a $1.50 in 1915. Its back pops off, and inside the label states to send it to ingerson and son, NY.NY along with a dime for adjustment. It states it is rr approved. It was appraised for $499.00 at a collectors shop a year ago. Have yet to get a good answer why a rr that works under rtc, with a top speed limit of 20mph, restricted speed, needs watches that accurate, but I just work here…I dont know if class 1s still schedule meets by time. But still, having a good timepiece helps.
Stay Frosty.
Ed
Hi! I had a few questions about what exactly the dispatchers do. So do the trains have to send them information about what is in the train, what company, and stuff? if so would it be a difficult task to add things to this checklist for them to see before they allow a train to depart? such as what is the length of the train. I was wondering just how much they know about the trains. do they know much more than the company and train ID?
any answers would be helpful thank you!!
Information on consists is pretty much all automated now. The dispatcher will need to know about any special handling (ie, high/wide, possibly hazmat) but beyond that, he/she doesn’t care.
What the dispatcher does need to know is the length of the train and whether it can make it over the road. The power desk will presumably assign enough power to accomplish that.
One could think of the dispatcher’s duties as a sort of game - arranging the traffic so it moves in the most efficient manner possible. The variables are many. Events can lead to congestion, which ties up a lot. Some trains have priority over others (contracts, etc) so will get priority handling, while others languish in sidings or never leave a terminal.
The dispatcher’s computer aided dispatch system (CAD) helps by double checking for conflicting movements and the like.
There’s much more to it, but there’s a start.
Railroads have multiple interlocking data systems to facilitate their operation as a transportation company that move customers freight from origin plant to destination plant. Every car has its own identity - Car Initial and Car Number. Car Initials that end in X are private (non-railroad) owned cars. Data systems keep track of the thousands of cars that a carrier has on its line at any time. Yard personnel get ‘work orders’ for the actions crews need to take placing, pulling and/or respotting cars within each industry. Yard crews may service one or more customers and bring the results of their work back into the ‘serving yard’. At the serving yard, personnel will then have other yard crews organize the results of the ‘Industry’ crews and form trains/blocks of cars based upon the destination/consignee of the cars. When track(s) of car(s) have been assembled for movement they are ‘booked’ into the carriers ‘Car & Train Computer System’. Yard Supervision communicates with Division Supervision that they have a train to run for a specific scheduled train, extra section of a scheduled train or a extra train. The computer, when queried, will then provide all the necessary information about the train - Loads, Empties, Tonnage, Length, Clearance Restrictions, HAZMAT. Supervision will then apply loc
Wow … 20 Year thread resurection
I miss Ed around here.
Thank you so much for all of that information it will be very helpful! I was wondering one thing. what format is the length in? feet? amount of cars?
I’m not sure of the current practice but I have some older ETT’s that list siding length by number of 40-foot cars.
CSX state length in FEET. The length of each car is calculated from the length field in the UMLER (Universal Machine Language Equipment Register) that cars in Interchage Service MUST be registered and most of a carriers non-interchange cars are also registered. There are a number of Car Service Rules the carriers must comply with about which cars can be Interchanged between carriers without restrictions.
In addition to the train length displayed on the Train Documents for a train, some Defect Detectors will announce a train length over the road radio channel along with the Defect Report for the train, Defect Detectors will also announce the number of axles that were inspected for the train - a number which should agree with the axle count on the Train Documents. Length announced by Defect Detectors can be at varience from the length shown on the Train Documents depending on whether the slack is bunched or stretched when passing over the Defect Detector.
I think by 1980 almost all ETTs, and still today, give siding capacity in feet. Some at one time gave both car and footage capacity.
I recall seeing one in later years stated the car capacity was in 50 ft car length.
Jeff
Car Length measurement was common in the days before computer generated Train Documentation. Back in those days there was no ‘easy’ way to determine the length of each car and there were fewer car types and lengths.
My Father and I both worked the same yard in Baltimore - 30-40 years apart. He would regale me with stories of all the room the yard had to handle its traffic load - the era of 36 foot, 40 foot and the rare 50 foot cars. When I worked the yard the predominate cars were 89 foot auto racks and high cube box cars intermixed with 60 foot boxes and 53 foot gons - rare was a 40 or 50 foot car; needless to say my perception of the yard was the it was band box small and had too much traffic for its track space.
Siding length specified in Employee Timetables is ‘measured’ between Clearance Points. When push comes to shove - it is possible get a little extra ‘length’ by bunching the slack and using all the track space between the signals that govern the siding.
Tha ABSOLUTE LAST THING you want to hear a Train Dispatcher utter “What do you mean you don’t fit!”
tnagle192034:
This thread is from over 20 years ago and seeing it brough back vivid memories of old posters, such as Anonymous, the late edbysard and his late wife Mookie!
Concerning an interesting tidbit that I personally saw as a kid probably 60-65 years ago in Colton, Calif., reference your inquiry, tnagle192034, was a very wide move, obviously arranged by towermen (3) and dispatchers (2). There were two main tracks, six track altogether. A gigantic cylinder was on Main 2, and it was moved onto a well-used sidetrack that had manual crossovers on each side of the main street in town. Another train came on Main 1, and passed without incident. Then the big cylinder was moved back onto Main 2, and its train took off! Imagine how exciting that all was for a young kid! Your post inquiry triggered that memory. Hope you found it as exciting as I did decades ago!
edblysard & mookie were not husband and wife. Ed was a trainman in Houston. mookie was railfan from middle America. Both are missed.
Clearance moves have specific ‘wires’ that govern their movement across the railroad from the shipments origin to its destination. That wire and its restrictions are required reading for everyone, train crew, yard personnel and Train Dispatchers that are involved in the movement. The higher and wider, the more restrictions the shipment will have. Those restrictions will include what specific track the shipment must occupy at specific location because of fixed geographical objects or man made obstructions. There may be restrictions where
There are a number of online webcam and most of those will have corresponding scanners. It is very interesting as a railfan to watch these webcams and also listen in to the interaction between crews, dispatchers, and MOW crews. Also the defect detectors will chirp in info also.
Very good entertainment.
ed
Indeed. Both are definitely missed. As I recall, though, Mookie’s husband was named Ed, too.
Tonight we put fitting into a siding to the test. Coming into our away from home terminal, instead of going down to the depot the dispatcher wanted us to go into the siding and change out there. We were 8200 feet long and, from experience, there’s 8600 feet in the siding between the signals.
Even though I new we would fit, PTC makes it hard to get in the clear when clearance is tight. I was down to 1 mph trying to get in. I hit my counter when we entered the siding, but as it turned out it was off. I buzzed up the dispatcher to ask him to let me know when his screen showed us clear. He said we had just cleared. The counter showed we had gone a bit over 7500 feet when we got stopped.
Jeff