No one took away your right to post. You just don’t like it when people don’t totally agree with your opinions.
The part where SFbrkman ordered him to not post again until he had complied as instructed, seemed a bit strident to me.
I have no problem with having 2 crew members (excluding the short lines) on longer length trains or on Class 1 runs that will go more than just 2 or 3 hours. However, I still think its best that the 2 crew members are interchangable. The two should be qualified as both engineers and conductors. That means one person no longer has to be at the controls all the time on the long runs. It would be similar to a pilot and co-pilot situation on the airlines with an engineer and a co-engineer. I believe it would be safer and easier on the crew.
I agree that greyhounds should get in touch with the indicated person… and be referred ‘up the food chain’ if the official sees direct merit in the possibility. Buffett in particular is known for following wise advice from whatever source if it is shown to make sense to him; the only difficulty is in gatekeeping, or making a weird impression.
That said, I think continued discussion of the idea is worthwhile; it certainly doesn’t have either yes-but obstinacy or the forum-specific kind of dead-horse beating that would call for legitimate ‘please stop’.
When did Hyperloop become a vactrain proposal? It has very little in common with pneumatic-tube telphers, and indeed its cost would increase dramatically and safety decrease still more so if anyone were fool enough to try to operate it that way. To the extent there is a ‘partial vacuum’ it is relatively small in terms of effect on the tube or required external pumping or sealing; it comes substantially from the (ram-assisted at speed) air intake being fed to the bearing pads. I don’t think it particularly practical to attempt high speeds by evacuating the tube to ‘just’ the pressure that gives proper pad action, although part of the snake oil implicitly assumes such a thing.
OK, let me clear something up.
I did take this concept to the BNSF in 2008. I wasn’t dealing with the Dodge City trainmaster. I was dealing with Nidhi Ranebenur. She was in the Ft. Worth headquarters and was their “Manager Sales - Temperature Controlled Intermodal.”
We had a good, workable concept and a good, workable plan. What we didn’t have was the money to make it go. I learned that the most important early sale is to the financial people. They’re looking for good investments and if you can sell them they’ll back you with the money you need. Otherwise, all you’ve got is a good idea going nowhere.
And no investment banker I know would commit more than a few dollars to you until you had a firm commitment to be able to run the service effectively… something requiring most likely written communication from people with the requisite authority at BN.
Oh, for sure.
You’d have to get conditional monetary backing to show the BNSF that you’re serious. Then you’d have to get the BNSF make a conditional commitment to the service based on the financial backing. Then you’d have to pull it all together.
Ain’t gonna’ be easy.
Especially in a shucking PSR beta-avoiding analytic framework, and likely with the perceived opportunity cost of so much of the (essentially stranded) capital needed to make the trick work right at necessary scale from the beginning.
But I agree with you that it should be done, and the opportunity is knocking.
Yeah, but PSR mentality brings a battering ram.
When capital is put at risk that risk needs to be managed. I don’t see much risk of stranded capital here. But I always favor having the ability to bail out if things hit the fan.
Right now is a good time to try this. There are surplus locomotives available along with surplus intermodal cars. Crews are on furlough. Any containers acquired for the service can easily be repurposed if necessary to hauling fruits and vegetables. There is little risk of stranding much capital.
As to the start up scale, that’s why one person crews are needed. That will reduce the required scale of the start up (makes shorter trains economical to operate) and reduce the risk.
Except it is the opposite of what the class-1s want to do with present thinking. One of our “hotter” IM trains now goes into another yard, and scoops up a couple thousand feet of slop freight on the hind end. That way they can save a crew.
It all depends on the vetting, training and supervision. Always has.
“On this Day in History on June 22, 1918 the “Great Circus Train Wreck” occured near Hammond, Indiana on the Michigan Central Railroad (NYC) when a train engineer fell asleep and rear ends a Circus Train killing 86 people and injuring another 127 in one of the worst train accidents in U.S. History.”
Definitely a two-person crew in that era!
The fireman on the engine who ran pass the flagman was brand new, nervous, and was totally occupied in hand shoveling coal. I don’t remember but it could have been his first over-the-road run. His story was he was so busy shoveling he hardly ever looked at the enginer. He didn’t even know there was a train ahead until the flagman on the ground threw a fusee into the engine cab as it past him. After thinking about that, he finally looked ahead and quickly jumped just before they hit the circus train.
It turned out the engineer had a serious Kidney infection and was taking an over-the-counter narcotic medicine which put him to sleep. The commotion of the fusee and the shout of the fireman finally arosed the engineer who hit emergency but it was too late.
The death count was so high because the circus cars that their members were traveling in were quite all old wooden cars that were telescoped or crumpled up like cardboard.
This was WW1 and all of the RR’s were forced to use inexperienced personel, made worse by the government trying to run every thing. In WW II, the RR’s ran the trains and things went much smoother–the government had learned its lesson in WW1.
No, I’ve never run an intermodal train, I only solicited business for them…and I’m not anti-union, but I am for COMMON sense. As for the safety issue and blocked crossings, that’s what overpasses and underpasses are for. Also, there are far to many road/rail crossings in most cities that you can safely close some down. As for as the small towns with one, two or three crossings, they shouldn’t exist at grade, either elevate the road over the tracks or underneath. Perhaps they need to start using Titanium or develop other alloys that are stronger for certain parts, like the couplers. Of course, you could always go the fixed consist route for something like intermodal, and run them like Australia, if you don’t have enough loads, leave the spots empty.
If I was the unions I’d be looking at it this way and offering this proposal: you want one man crews, fine, but you have to limit train lengths to 10k feet and have no more than 5 trains assigned to a roving conductor. Would that be anathema to PSR and train starts, yes, but the increase
Who is paying for the road crossing removals? I’m all for it - but someone has to pony up.
I wasn’t even looking at it from a union persepctive - just the work perspective. Many people think that IM trains are hop on/hop off. But many intermodal yards have small pad tracks (and sometimes with access xings that need to be cut). So the train has to make doubles and cuts to leave (they don’t always load up jsut one pad track, sometimes you get half of one pad and half of another), then have multiple set-offs to yard. You need a 2nd man, and/or crew, unless you are going to bring in more yard utilities, but that’s anti-PSR, too. And that’s not even getting into intermodal trains also handling slop freight.
Outside the box and common sense? That’s not PSR. It’s about running the plan.
I’m sensing a theme here. And I don’t think we are all that different in our thoughts about it.
All fine and good but there is nothing significant about the difference between a 10,000 foot train and15,000 feet. Once you make a concession to one-crew trains <10,000’ the rails will soon get them for any length. If you think that is OK., then say so up front.
Blaming the USRA for the crash is ludicrous. There were shortages of crews in both wars. The USRA was formed because the private rails were experiencing a total fail in movements in WWI.
Exactly. Give these companies an inch, and they will take the whole universe.
One thing to remember about railroads - if something was done once with all the tea leaves an ducks properly manipulated as well as the cats having been herded ONCE - railroads then think that should be the standard procedure WITHOUT all the assistance that it took to pull it off the one time.
The difference was in WWII the RR controlled the movements of the trains themselves.
What seems ludicrous is bringing up a 102 year old train crash to say something won’t work in today’s world. Some shortlines do have cross trained operating crew members so they apparently are satisfied with the results. That’s where I got the idea.
Blaming the USRA for the crash is ludicrous. There were shortages of crews in both wars. The USRA was formed because the private rails were experiencing a total fail in movements in WWI.
[/quote]