East bound and down

Trains Magazine General Discussion
1

Can someone help explain a train movement for me?

We went over the river and through the woods to Grandmother’s house for Easter. It’s a 3 hour drive to Aberdeen S.D., that gets me out of Dodge for a couple of days. The drive is OK. The last 66 miles parallels the BNSF (formerly Milwaukee Road transcon) from Summit, S.D. to Aberdeen, S.D.

For the first 46 miles, I saw zero trains. I stopped at Groton for gas, and noticed a mixed, eastbound freight stopped on the siding. Naturally, I had to check it out. It had two 8800 series Warbonnetts on the head end! Right after I finished filling up, the train headed east again.

For the next 20 miles into Aberdeen, I saw zero trains.

Can someone explain the train in the hole at Groton? If it was waiting for a westbound, I would have seen it. If it was waiting for an eastbound, it got tired of waiting, and headed east on its own. If it was in the hole waiting on a westbound, wouldn’t it have been cleared to go east as soon as the westbound cleared the east switch into the siding?

2

Maybe it was in the siding waiting for a new crew to arrive. Would the local crew districts make this a possibility?

3
  • The crew change point is probably Aberdeen, 20 miles west of Groton. Maybe they worked the ethanol plant (VERY large) and then died on the clock and a new crew came from Aberdeen.
4

That makes some sense, I guess. The crew change point is Aberdeen. If a crew was pushing their limit on hours, wouldn’t the crew be changed before heading the 20 miles east to Groton?

Related question: Does the eastbound waiting in the siding get the go-ahead as soon as the tail end of a westbound clears the switchpoint?

5

Just a guess, but maybe the crew hit Aberdeen with time to spare, so they sent them on to Groton to work and save the next crew time. Maybe the next crew already had a poopload of stops past Groton, so they didn’t want to risk the relief crew running out of time before the next crew change point.

6

Dead train in a siding? Let me count the reasons!

Oops…too many reasons have overflowed the memory buffer!