Info from working engineers
What would be wrong with using a simulator for recertification? I hold almost every license the FAA issues. My training and follow-up training in a simulator was more effective than in the airplane.
What are RFE jobs?
What is or was the REDI Center?
Many organizations outsource the initial and the follow-up training (re-certification). My company, as an example, sent its pilots to Flight Safety for training. Could CSX follow a similar procedure, i.e. outsource the training and re-training of its engineers?
I was not a company pilot; but I was close to our aviation department. My team audited it. Discovered among other things that one of the pilots had failed his re-certification ride, which the chief pilot covered up. Executive management was not happy with the outcome.
My brother, who’s an ex-Air Force pilot, told me in many cases it’s harder in the simulator than it is in the real aircraft!
Why? What he calls the “intangeables” just aren’t there, like the physical feedback, “the feel,” you’d get from flying the real aircraft, at least not in his day.
With simulator technology what it is today maybe they’ve figured out how to put that in too!
The REDI Center was CSX’s training facility for all crafts. New hire employees or employees changing crafts would receive their intitial craft training on the do’s and don’ts of the craft before going into the field for further hands on OJT from employees experienced in the craft.
Simulators are for today’s ‘kids’ who have been rasied playing computer games. Those who excell with video games take well to simulators.
Simulators, no matter how good, don’t provide the ‘seat of the pants’ feeling that the real thing does. There is nothing quite like 20K tons of a train’s slack action running in on the engines in simulators. There may be a video representation of it, but there isn’t the KICK IN THE BACK of the real thing.
Simulators can set up conditions that would cause derailments and ‘test’ the operators on their procedures to handle the conditions without having to call out the Wreck Train or off track equipment to clean up the mess.
Simulators have their place - as a training tool, not as a substitute for the real thing.
RFE here means ‘road foreman of engines’. What this entailed on CSX, and the problems inherent in eliminating the position, have been discussed in recent posts/threads referencing the term.
As a pilot simulators can cover procedures that are very dangerous in an airplane. Delta found that with their Convair 880 fatal training accidents. But remember final training is always in the actual airplane type supervised by an experienced pilot. Of course the initiation of a new aircraft type really has its problems with most new check airmen having so much flight time and landings in empty aircraft sometimes with ballast .
Simulators just don’t have the same feel as the real thing. Not just the occasional “kick in the pants,” but just the feel of movement. It seems like the “scenery” passing by out the “window” doesn’t match the speed indicated on the simulator’s speedometer. It’s like it’s moving slower than it would in real life.
Scenery is another missing detail, although they’ve done better on ours over the years. Of course they have the really important details, like crossings, signals and signs, etc. What’s missing is buildings and trees. As I said, they are getting better. The last time I was on one, they’ve started putting in those details, even if the placement of some is “wrong.” It may seem trivial, but on the simulator, you can see signals way before you could in real life. Either the placement of buildings or the trees, especially the overgrowth of trees, blocks the view.
Simulators have there place, but nothing beats the real world.
I like Doug Riddell’s story of how he was in the simulator and it kept saying he got a knuckle at a certain mile post. The instructor said the simulator (and the track chart used to program it) showed there was a sag there. Doug pointed out the track chart was for an abandoned pre-merger (SCL) parallel line and the one still in use had no sag there.
Jeff
The Simulator design engineers need to get together with the iRacing people https://www.iracing.com/ . They have laser surveying race tracks all over the World and have the actions and responses accurate for a wide variety of racing cars. The actions are ‘real’ enough that Professional Drivers use the system when getting ready to compete at a track they ha
I am just curious as to the reasoning [other than the financial one] for a railroad management doing away with what would amount to first-line supervison by a designated Road Foreman of Engines?
Before my retirement, I had a position in a Safety Management position with a Truck line. One of my jobs was to check ride with drivers, and critique their driving habits. It was critical to make sure that driver abilities matched up to their ‘records’, and assured that they ‘knew what they were doing’; before being turned out to drive our equipment.
It seems that there would be a parallel in the railroad engineer fields, or also conductor job function. A trained observer can learn a lot from just observing, and riding with someone who is doing a job.
It would seem that a qualified RFE would be able to observe, and critique another engineer over a track segment? The qualified observer is not there to specifically provide a punitive review of an individual; unless there are specific reasons to suspect that the observed is not doing their job as they have been trained?
I understand that in some cases, over-zealous individuals, have turned their jobs into positions that have earned them derisive monikers like: ‘wead weasel’, etc. To become more punitive than instructional, and somewhat more in the vein of a ‘hall monitor’.
Why would a railroad do away with what would seem to be a critical function like the RFE?
-
Those getting rid of the positions don’t understand what they do.
-
$$$$$
I would’ve thought you would have the RFEs take on the TM’s duties and then let go the TMs. In days of yore. one could read in the Pocket List of Railroad officials where one person in the backwater terminals of some railroads held both jobs.
Jeff
The RfE’s have actual years of experience and most of the class one TMs have a degree in logistics. I guess thats the new way of doing things. I think we need a stronger tougher FRA.
RSS
To the millenials way of thinking - experience is just a drag on progress. Millenials don’t believe in history and thereby replicate the failures of the past.
Those who don’t learn from history are bound to repeat it.
Millenials were still in grade school (or not even born) when this train of thought started.
There is a lot of crossing between the RFE and TM crafts (with my company at least). If you hire as a RFE, there are only so many jobs avaliable (And fewer with each increased pay band), so many naturally go into the TM side of things. I’ve had my recert rides done by the local TM (that used to be a RFE). Not a huge deal, really. The way RFE would be shifted around, most of them hardly knew their territory anyhow.
Or a degree in English Literature.
Jeff
I’ve known managers that had years in the field that were completely useless as managers. And managers that came fresh out of college with a non-railroad degree that were awesome managers.
Generalizations and all that.
The Peter Principle Personified…
Of course, there’s always the percussive sublimation (kicked upstairs) and the lateral arabesque (sounds like a promotion, but isn’t…)
The skills required to be an effective supervisor/manager are different than the skills to be a top performer in one’s field. The classical example is the organization that promotes its top sales person to sales manager, only to see her fail as a manager.
…see here we go, this forum is such a jewel of wisdom/vocabulary expansion…the two terms above equals to Peter Principle…i will TRY to remember them as they are jewels to repeat … BUT… have a LITTE “ole timers” problem …it takes two days and then when i am driving somewhere and NOT related to the loss of memory …WALA… it comes to me … what i could not remember the day B4…i am positive, NO ONE ON THIS FORUM suffers the same…on another note: managers who are inexperienced are sometimes the best…comes to mind the ditty: it’s not your aptitude, but your attitude that determines your altitude …and too, there is the idea of a “praticipatory managment” verses “dictatoral”…i.e. in the National Guard as a ranking NCO, I “led” but when it came to explosives (was in Combat Engineers), i always let my subordinates tell me what we needed to do. They knew far more than I. My duty was to (hopefully) make the correct call between two different opinions that were offered. Hey, we are ALL in this together, and by the way WHO knows it all. It really astounds me when managers seem so par