When a single track local line is having its track replaced or upgraded, how do railroads ensure customers on that line keep getting their cars during construction? Assume for the sake of argument that their are no other routes to these customers and a train normally makes the local run once or twice a day on this line.
Is construction halted each day so that trains can make the run, or are customers just forced to do without the railroad for that time period?
Ah…The age old dilemma. We gotta run trains. We gotta fix the track or you can’t run trains.
Every case is unique. Depending on what needs to be done, how much money is avaialble to do it and how important the line is, you can end up with many possible ways to do things.
Most common is to give the track gang a window where trains are held out. This usually needs to be 6-8 hours for the gangs to be very productive and get things done and get out of the way sooner.
The big roads have shut down entire subdivisions for extended periods of time and shoved several different gangs into the area to get a lot done in a very short time. “Jamboree”, “Blitz”, etc
All of this takes a lot of coordination with the operating people who then have to assure the customers (shippers, Amtrak, commuters, etc) that their needs are being met in spite of these interruptions. With good comminucation, things can be worked out to everyone’s satisfaction, just so long as the track is back in service when people said it would be. Otherwise, look out.
On a one or two train per day line there may not be any conflict. If there is will probably give MofW an 8 hour window. No big deal. This is done every day.
Mac
M of W work in high traffic lines is a big deal, not so much for the customers that inhabit the lines but the through traffic that passes over the line.
There is a great deal of pre-planing and M of W preparation work that go into setting up a ‘Curfew Plan’, Curfew Plans take into consideration such things as Passenger Traffic, Intermodal and Auto Train traffic as well as general merchandise and bulk commodity traffic. On Class I’s, to the extents possible, traffic will be routed off the line that will undergo a maintenance curfew. Revised operating plans will be implemented to account for the traffic that must be operated over the line undergoing maintenance, with train schedules altered to conincide with the hours that the track will be out of service. Considering the highly mechanized nature of production track work these days, it can take upwards of two hours to get all the machines on the track and operating and their designed tasks, by the same token, it can also take up to two hours to get all the machienry to complete their tasks and get out of the track. Maintencene curfews will generally be no shorter that 8 hours per day, 5 days in the week (and the week man not be M-F), it can also be 10 hour per day for 4 days. Depending on the required traffic that cannot be rerouted, some curfew work may also be done at night.
Continuing to meet service committments and working on the track are not an easy task to tackle and succeed at.
here in the Cascade Sub of The Oregon Division its the same, 6 to 8 hour windows in the daytime are used when needed, except for Amtrak, which sometimes gets thru here around 11:00 am, that is if the dang thing is ever on time!!! then they will let them thru, the only time they wont is if a weld is cooling and needs ground down then Amtrak waits!!!
Several years ago there was a major campaign[BLITZ] on the BNSF’s [former Frisco] Thayer Sub and it was shut down for about a month. There were BNSF trains coming into Memphis from just about every direction you could imagine off of detours due to that MOW operation. TRAINS ccarried an article on what the BNSF crew faced as they did a major upgrade blitz on the Thayer Sub…
Sam
They don’t sometimes. Here on the CSX they bused people from Richmond to Rocky Mount for several months last summer, combining trains 79/89 & 80/90 north of Richmond each day and running separate trains south of Rocky Mout to the respective destinantions. It was a mess and drove patronage way down. They are doing it again this spring, but for shorter periods., I now that they did it for a week two weeks ago… and at a NCDOT meeting last weekend, it was discussed that it would be on and off again.
Last summer they ran 91/92 earlier, but they often got caught in the mess, too. The Metior and the A/T generally are not effected as they are through this area at night.
They don’t sometimes. Here on the CSX they bused people from Richmond to Rocky Mount for several months last summer, combining trains 79/89 & 80/90 north of Richmond each day and running separate trains south of Rocky Mout to the respective destinantions. It was a mess and drove patronage way down. They are doing it again this spring, but for shorter periods., I now that they did it for a week two weeks ago… and at a NCDOT meeting last weekend, it was discussed that it would be on and off again.
Last summer they ran 91/92 earlier, but they often got caught in the mess, too. The Meteor and the A/T generally are not effected as they are through this area at night.
It’s called working under traffic. Railroaders do it all the time. It teaches communication skills and works really well if all sides buy - in. The downside is when the extra gangs sit in the hole all day because somebody didn’t buy-in to the cooperative effort. Those people don’t last too long in today’s environment.[swg][swg][swg]
There are also shoofly tracks around a short section such as a new bridge project. This is what the EJ&E did in Lake Zurich, the run around track was put in, in less than a day, not interupting traffic.
Then the old line was severed. They were adding a bridge over a street extension where neither was before. They built the bridge in place on the ground and then dug out from under it.
What happens is that the railroads will announce a MOW upgrade of a certain line and will advise that any traffic moving through that area will experience delays of a certain amount of hours. There is a lot of downside to customers as we tend to quote business with a certain amount of transit. If the customer buys our service, they are looking to move inventory either to a distribution center or customer with that transit in mind. Then when a MOW upgrade comes about, it screws up the quoted transit and the customer is adversely affected because they were expecting five day transit when in fact the transit becomes seven days, for example. That plays badly in a supply chain and can affect the projected sales of that customer’s freight. I have been on the railroad side and now on the IMC side and can clearly see both sides of the issue and can say it is a delicate balancing act.
I respectfully disagree. Getting a window is a big deal. Dispatchers are much more concerned about getting trains across their territory than they are concerned about maintenance. I don’t care whether it’s a relatively slow line like the Feather River Canyon or a busy line like North Platte to Gibbon. They don’t like giving us any time to get our work done. It’s a constant battle and much more often than not MoW comes out the loser. We are the redheaded stepchild of the railroad.
Pigfarmer,
Agree that you are the redheaded stepchild. The question was a one or two train a day line. In that context, time to do the work is not a big deal. On a busy line coordination is a big deal but the work gets done.
Mac