[V][V][V][8] I was at Haley tower tonight & watched Dispatch in Jacksonville FL at it’s finest. A CSX freight had just finished running their power around their train & was ready to head SB towards Evansville. They were on the old NYC Indy Sub & under Indy Dispatch. The needed permission from Jacksonville to proceed SB. The problem was that the engine was so close to a crossing that by (rule book) a crew member was required to be on the ground to protect the crossing & flag traffic across the tracks. It was 21 degrees & windy in Terre Haute tonight. Jacksonville kept him there for over an hour. Finally the engineer got Jacksonville to answer & told him that he had been waiting for over an hr. The Dispatcher (who was probably wearing a t-shirt, shorts & sandals) informed him that he had to wait for (2) Chicago - Evansville SB trains to pass. I thought that the person in the engine was going to lose it. (No trains passed during the hr that the SB train waited)
The Dispatcher then gave him & green light & then a minute later he took it down. When I left, the crew had called the cab that was parked at Haley Tower to bring the conductor to the rear of the train for a backup move, so they wouldn’t have to protect the crossing.
train crews are also supost to know the terriroty… if they knew they where going to be stoped for a while…the engineer should have stoped back away from the crossing to keep it from being activated and the need to flag it in the first place…
csx engineer
Err… wouldn’t that be the Indianapolis dispatcher then, not Jacksonville?
My shortline RR runs over a few miles of CSXT main line, where we have to get signals from the Jacksonville (BC) dispatcher, and although they are usually pretty good about getting us through, we have had our share of hour-plus waits simply because the dispatcher had more important things to do.
Wrong about the dispatcher wearings sandals/shorts/Tshirt as the weather up there has been in the 40s. As none of also see the overall pix who knows the reason the SB train was being held except the dispatcher who probably had good reason to hold it. [:o)]
Because of the damage along the gulf coast this was one of those rerouted trains comming up from St. Louis. He ran his power around on the St. Louis to Indy line that is controled by dispatch in Indy, he was heading South to Evansville which is Jacksonville Dispatch (Conrail vs CSX). Anyway he was cold & mad. Espically after he was given a green & then had it taken away. (He was already moving & was now blocking an intersection)