How many railroads would have posted freight train schedules in an employee timetable during the 1970’s? I just received 3 Milwaukee Road ETT’s for the joint Montana/Washington Divisions dated 1976,77,and 78.The 1976 ETT #1 has freight train scheduled times for each station on each subdivision for trains # 200 and 201 plus most of the branchlines as well.How rare and unusual is that? 1 in a million?
Have a good one.
Bill B
Very common on the railroads in the era of Timetable and Train Order dispatching. It works well when train frequency is low, crew districts were short and crews could be on duty for 16 hours straight. It disappeared when things changed. Just because there is a schedule for train #200 doesn’t mean that it will run at that time or at all, or that a train running on that schedule will really be train #200. It was a method for moving trains based on Class and Direction. For a detailed explaination of how it works, look for a copy of the book “The Right of Trains” by Peter Josserand. It is considered the “Bible” for Dispatching trains using TT&TO.
Bill B: Not rare at all.
I can’t recall this practice lasting beyond about 1986 on any Western U.S. railroad (beats me about the east) as TWC and DTC were implemented as Methods of Operation. The last railroad I saw using it was Alaska Railroad though UP had it as late as 1983 on some secondary main lines such as the Spokane International and Montana Subdivision.
T&TO an efficient method of running a railroad when communications are poor or non-existent and train frequency is light, as beaulieu points out. Also, if labor contracts required operators between the train and the dispatcher, TWC and DTC were usually not feasible. Once radio communications were extended, and contracts amended to eliminate operators rights, then TWC and DTC could happen.
Often the schedule ran in only one direction on a subdivision and all opposing trains were extras.
By the way, Peter Josserand was a Western Pacific chief dispatcher and a rail enthusiast, too. He actually only updated the book; the original edition greatly predated him.
S. Hadid
During the early and mid-1970s the Frisco Railway River Subdivision ran a 2nd class southbound freight each evening from St. Louis to Memphis, Tenn. Six nights a week along a portion of this railroad, between Ste. Genevieve and Crystal City, MO, the Missouri-Illinois Railroad would send northbound train no. 466 to run against this schedule. The Frisco’s southbound 2nd class schedule always had right over the M.I.'s northbound train, a mixed merchandise which the Frisco authorized to operate as an extra.
Just about every evening M.I. 466 had so many cars that it couldn’t fit into any siding, so it had to be built, air tested, and be rolling out of Ste. Genevieve no later than 9:30pm in order to reach Crystal City and be in the clear before the Frisco’s superior train would arrive. With four “Christines” on the point (Alco road switchers re-engined with E.M.D. prime movers) and as many as a hundred cars in tow, 466 usually made it with time to spare.
During those years the River Subdivision was single track, automatic block signal system territory.
TT&TO running…I had almost forgotten what it was like to operate under those rules. Certainly much different than today’s railroading…one had to really keep their wits about them, for there was no one to do their thinking for them, no one to just call on the radio for help.
No radios…no dynamic brakes…lineside HBD indicators…dispatcher’s phones every 5 miles…‘flimsies’ being handed up at train-order stations by terrified clerks…AB brake valves on the cars…24RL or 6BL automatic brake valves on the locomotive…flagmen…torpedoes…5-man crews…
No phone, no lights, no motorcars, not a single luxury…like Robinson Caruso–as primative as can be.
So what role would Gilligan fill on a freight train?[swg]
Why do you think they keep me in the yard? [;)]
While the schedules were listed it was just for the information of the employees. ALL freight trains out west ran as EXTRA trains and as such had NO timetable authority. No meets were made under the timetable schedule as all meets were set by train order in that period.
Carl = Gilligan: Does Not Compute.[:)]
In the Timetable and Train Order era of Operations, the published 2nd and 3rd class schedules in employee timetables were nothing more that tools for the Train Dispatcher to use in the movement of trains. A particular ‘timetable schedule’ could be used on any of the trains that had to operate over a subdivision depending upon when the trains arrived on a subdivision. One day an Intermodal train could have the schedule of timetable train No. 91, the next day it could be an ore train, the following day Train 91 could be a merchandise train. The Train Dispatcher would use the Timetable schedules as well as ‘Right Over’, ‘Wait’, ‘Meet’ and ‘Run ahead’ orders to orchastrate the operation of all the trains on the subdivision. First Class schedules, when published, normally adheared to existing Passenger Train Schedules and were the one ‘rock’ around which the rest of the subdivision operated.
Methinks he is in Amish Paradise.[{(-_-)}]
I have some old 1974-1979 MILW timetables, of territory I currently run on, and they show freight train schedules as well. Also has Amtrak (NRPC) and commuter schedules, on the subs they ran on.
On the SP, at least until 1975 when I left, the practice on the LA Divn was to run the 2 overnight trains, no 375 and no 373 W/B and 372 and 374 as first class trains. The frt trains on the Valley were no 801-807 W/B and E/B were extras. On the Coast the numbers started at
829 and went to 835 W/B and and corresponding numbers for E/B. Although the Coast trains had symbols (no 832 was the SMV for Santa Maria Valley was the perishable, GGM was a mainifest) the numbers really just gave the dispatcher something to call the trains on train orders. For example, if a Valley MUG (Eugene Mty) train was expect to be ready to go after 1201AM and before 601AM it would be cleared at LA Yard as a section of no 801.
E. Hunter Harrison continually insists that he has the Canadian National Railways operating as a scheduled railway up here in Canada. Yet when I open my timetable all I see are passenger train schedules. And with all the slow orders on subs such as the Kingston Sub, even the VIAs are having a hard time keeping to their schedules. Can you say, Constantly Delayed!
http://www.cn.ca/about/investors/pdf/18_21.pdf
Clique of One.
Wheel chock
SP had freight trains running on Second or Third Class schedules from … well, about from the beginning of the universe, until … circa 1980?
I suspect our Montana hogger is referring to the narrow case of the Milwaukee Road, not all western railroads.
S. Hadid