Read the Story about this picture http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=309844&nseq=5. This is not my picture. The Remark about this picture is below this picture. How could somebody forget about a Train??? (Somethings not right there).
At least the siding was long enough for the pictured freight to clear the main. My question? Was there enough room for it to clear the grade crossing, or were there three miles of irate drivers stuck in the snow while the railroad did its elephant dance?
Rather glad I wasn’t there!
Chuck
Note that in the caption, the dispatcher actually says “I didn’t know he was there” not “I forgot he was there”. It could be the previous trick’s dispatcher put the train there and didn’t properly put it on the sheet, so the guy who got the call about the ‘other train’ had nothing indicating to him that there was another train there. From the earliest days of telegraph dispatching, things were required to be carefully recorded on paper so that the next guy taking over after you could look at your sheet and quickly know where every train was and where it was heading.
Could be an electrical malfunction in the signalling / block occupancy equipment failed to show a train on that track too I guess.
If the siding is within the yard limits, anything can be parked there at any time without dispatch authority to occupy the track.
Jay and list —
It’s not a question of yard limits; that designation only applies to main track, anyway. The fact is that many sidings aren’t wired for the dispatcher to detect whether they’re occupied or not. If we’re talking CTC territory, it’s common for the dispatcher to control each siding switch, but between those two control points, everything is invisible to him/her. As I’m not familiar with the territory, I’d point out we could also be talking track warrant control territory, in which case the dispatcher doesn’t detect anything, even on the main track.
It should be noted that in this case, there’s no evidence the dispatcher violated any rules, nor put anybody at risk. The siding is almost certainly treated as other than main track, meaning rules mostly similar to yard limit rule apply: the train crew must proceed prepared to stop short of any sort of obstruction, including another train. I think one of the previous explanations is probably correct: the previous shift’s dispatcher failed to communicate the presence of the train during turnover. But that’s purely conjecture.
Best,
The caption doesn’t have enough information to tell us much of anything or to reach any conclusions that are not informed by speculation.
Some general guidelines:
- If a track is bonded (i.e., controlled), and there is a train parked in it, it will show as a “track light” on the dispatcher’s console. Some sidings are bonded, some are not.
- When the train enters a nonbonded siding in CTC territory, the train ID jumps with it and lives above the blank siding even though the siding doesn’t have an occupancy showing on the console. The dispatcher can manually remove that ID. Because the siding is noncontrolled this is not a rules or FRA violation. In some cases the siding is such a regular parking lot for trains for long periods that it makes sense to delete the ID because if there is an ID on the screen, there is also an ID on the trainsheet, and that becomes resident clutter. Different dispatching offices have different practices on whether or not to clean up the screen and the trainsheet, which can vary by location.
- We don’t know from the caption where the yard limits sign is. If the siding is within yard limits and is not controlled the dispatcher might not have authority over it.
- Some yards have hard boundaries between terminal trainmaster authority and dispatcher authority. Some have soft boundaries. When the boundary is soft the terminal trainmaster and the dispatcher coordinate about what is going on so that neither is caught by surprise: the dispatcher does not think he has an open landing spot for a train approaching the yard, and the terminal trainmaster does not think he has a parking spot that he can use forever. Where it breaks down is when the two do not communicate completely or coherently, and that is not unusual in the press of moving and switching trains.
RWM
I put no value in what a foamer says or the caption says in these pictures as it probley more in line of his wishes than the truth. I know for a fact in a picture on here of a GP 60 and a Dash 9 in trail, the 60 did not have air conditioning and it was a 95+ day. the caption was is this what the NS is doing with its people in that they wont let the air-condition unit in the lead if it was me i turn the unit… the truth is they turned the units because the dash 9 had a problem and the 60 had to lead. But because of his words most thought it was gospil. So as far as the caption goes I dont believe it.
Captions don’t tell everything. Especially in situations like that----
I agree with Andy, and wabash.
It could go both way’s.
Justin
Just because it ain’t a railroad employee putting up the caption doesn’t mean it ain’t real. We don’t know who all the guy talked to to find out the details, what he heard over a scanner, etc. You could email and ask him if you have doubts. I still remember the time in the 90s up Erie, PA, where I heard a train crew laughing about a dispatcher completely losing a train! IIRC, it wound up in some siding somewhere, but that was too long ago to remember the details. For all I know, it could have set up similarly to how this event did. Miscommunications happen quite a bit. Expect to see stuff like this from time to time.
Back in September 2008 when I was up in Fostoria, Ohio, there was a westbound CSX freight coming into town that got stopped by a red signal before it reached the former C&O crossing. To the west at the NS crossing, I could see he had a clear signal and couldn’t figure out why he was stopping since the operator at F Tower normally was lining trains straight through town that day. About a minute after the train stopped with the engineer dimming the headlight, I heard him calling the tower on my scanner and asking the operator what was up with the stop signal. The operator replied back that he hadn’t even seen him there and promptly lined him through town.
Kevin
Happens more than you would expect.
On Computer Aided Dispatching systems Train ID tags get affixed to the original track circuit that a train occupies when entering signaled territory. As the train operates across the territory the Train ID advances with the advancing track circuits.
If a train enters a non-signaled track, under some circumstances the Train ID can become disassociated from the train. If the Dispatcher does not stay on top of his territory, it is possible for him lose sight of having a train on his territory without a proper Train ID.
Additionally, under some circumstance of signal trouble, the signal system can lose the Train ID…again if the Dispatcher is not on top of his territory it is possible for him to ‘lose’ the train.
Dispatchers are paid to be ‘on top of their territory’ and occasions for them to ‘lose’ a train and for it to remain ‘lost’ in their minds is exceedingly rare.