I have copies of old NYC advertising touting that the trains get through bad weather and have been thinking about why that seems not to be true in the Northeast today. Roger Cohen had an interesting piece in the New York Times on Sunday about how cutbacks in preparedness budgets were the real cause of the recent airport snow paralysis in Europe. Is there a a parallel?
Mike
A question. What year was the advertisment? NYC had lots of track workers until about 1950(?) to clear switches and the use of steam locos up to that time may have enabled more trains to get thru.
A look at the NEC delays and cancellations the past 2 days indicate a pattern of spotty operation. Not knowing the type motors poweriing the cancelled Regional trains makes one wonder. If AEM-7 DCs were shorting out (ground faulting) maybe AMTRAK did not use them because they may have been prone to fail with ingestion of snow into the DC traction motors? Some delayed ACELAs (AC traction motors) seemed to arrive just behind Regional trains either at PHL, WASH, NYP, or BOS?. That however may have been due only to straight lining the routes?
Also AMTRAK cancelled all Newport News & a couple of Richmond - WASH trains that are normally powered by one P-40DC or P-42DC. Those cancellations would have freeded up some locos. Could it be that only one DC traction motor power loco being slated for the cancelled trains been one factor on their cancellation?. Another item does anyone know if 2 AEM-7s were powering Regional trains? Does anyone know if trains south of WASH had an extra loco? All or some of these items could have affected operations?
The ads were late 1940’s, I believe.
There could have been an element of “the weather be danged” in there, too. With any luck, most of the trains would get through with minimal delays.
The mechanical aspect does deserve a certain amount of consideration.
Then again, if people can’t get to the stations, who’s gonna ride?
It seems we get on this topic at least once every winter. Times have changed greatly, the number of trains as well as the number of people working for the railroad. The pride of dependency is gone, so there is no drive; too many railraoders don’t know what it used to be like and why. Yeah, there are modern electonic technologies that allow for remote control operations, direct talk to any train via radio, gps to tell you where the train is, But there isn’t the urgency to “get the mail” or “get the train” through at all costs anymore. Airlines don’t fly, merchandise trucks don’t plow. Internet carries along. Legal eagles have taught railroad management that by not running a train the railroad can’t be blamed for and sued for delays or injuries; stay in the roundhouse, they can’t corner you there! Since they don’t run a train, nothing can go wrong. I was musing about this very topic today after learning that both the LIRR and MNRR cancelled all trains! What did they do as recently as the Blizzard of '69? The BIlizzard of '47? And every and any blizzard before that? They ran because they had the men and equipment, the pride of being railroads and railroaders, a sense of community and service, the given needs of the community, so they could and did run as best they could. A track gang of five to ten guys every five or so miles of ROW, more at interlockings and on multiple tracked lines, kept an eye to the sky, an ear to the rails, and a shovel to the snow…and often managers were right out there with them. Because they were all there and working.
I think one of the big issues for the NEC was the fear of the catenary being damaged/broken due to the high winds and flying objects. You don’t like to leave passengers stranded with no heat and only emergency lighting. In the “good old days” there would generally be spare freight locomotives that could rescue disabled passenger trains.
No problem or fear with the cat for the most part, blowing drifting snow is the main culprit and a few signal problems on the Corridor, too. Downfall accumulations are over 30 inches in several areas and the drifting goes up from there. Plus as fast as it is cleaned out, it drifts right back in again.
I know what I said above, too, but there really isn’t one simple answer but many years of changes that have made it so.
In the 40’s the employment of the properties that constitute today’s CSX were approximately 200,000 people…today it is less than 30,000. In days gone by you had MofW Section forces headquartered about every 10 to 15 miles on main line routes. Each Section gang would be about 10 to 15 men to take care of all track needs in their territory…inspection, repair and snow clearing. In times of winter storms, several men would be detailed to each interlocking to assist the Signal Maintainer who only had responsibility for a single interlocking in keeping that interlocking functioning as needed for the operation of trains. The other section men would be placed on Locals/Road Switchers and/or yard engines to clean out the switches necessary for these industry serving jobs to provided service to the customer. Nearly all these people lived within walking distance of their headquarters locations, so they were not at the mercy of the governmental road clearing operations to be able to report for duty.
In today’s world, most track work is performed by highly mechanized System production gangs that perform their required duties (rail laying, tie & surfacing, undercutting etc.) and move on to the next location requiring their service, all the while leaving Division forces of 4 to 10 men to perform all the necessary inspection and maintenance duties on a 100 mile or more sub-division. In some locations Switch Heaters are used to keep the switches operating…sometimes the heaters work as intended…sometimes they don’t and considering when they don’t you have a devil of a time getting the responsible party to the scene to get both the heaters operating and the switches functioning.
The only thing that will defeat severe Winter weather on the railroads is manpower…and today the carriers don’t have in their employment su
Um…Evil thought from the peanut gallery:
Just once, I’d love to see the financial, corporate accounting and officebound operati pressed into service right up to the hours of service for days on end cleaning snow and working out in the real world…
Just once (in my best Joe Piscapo [:-,]), let them deal with the consequences of some of those manpower budgetary decisions and cry in their cold coffee.
Interesting thoughts, Mudchicken…and at one time in some places, it was very possible that that would happen. Anybody on any extraboard of any craft could be callled in to sweep and shovel snow and light switch heaters. I wonder if CBS’s Undercover Boss could find a railroad manager today who could be sent down into the ranks to even get an interview never mind attempt to qualify for any job anyplace…
As a 1st level Supervisor in a picket line situation (our carrier was being picketed by a competing carriers craft employees and our craft employees were honoring the picket line) I had the opportunity to attempt to introduce some GOB (General Office Building) types to the real world of day in, day out railroading…for the week of the job action they could not comprehend what the job was and how it ended up affecting their normal positions. Sad commentary on their understanding of how the company worked. Then again maybe I could not explain it adequately, however, since they all out ranked me by several levels on the Org Chart, how much explaining should I have had to do?
As to non-operating personnel handling a train, I recall that back in the sixties, one of the unions was striking the IC, and when the Pannyma (that’s what it was called by the railroad men) came into McComb the morning that the strike went into effect, supervisory personnel boarded after the crews that had brought the train from Canton detrained, and took the train on in to New Orleans (100 miles). As they came into the city, the train was not turned on the wye, but headed into the station, for the men did not trust themselves to stop just short of the bumper at the end of the track when the train was being backed in.
I would give a lot of credit to the supervisory personnel who were willing to admit to their limitations in such a situation. It should also be remembered that the skill set that makes someone a good engineer, conductor, etc. is NOT the same skill set that makes a person a good road foreman, trainmaster, or higher level of management.
one item I forgo was back in the older days the RRs had a lot of spare equipment that only was to be used during holiday rush periods. If a normal turn was not going to make an originating station the RR in question would break out some RR’s spare cars so at least the train would be some what close to on time departure. I remember riding one of those trains that had other RR’s equipment including a dinning car with steward of PRR and not SOU RR + PRR coaches, RPO, baggage, & sleepers. Locos were GP-7s with boilers instead of normal Fs.
The only thing that holds winter weather at bay on the railroad is MANPOWER…in mass quantities. Quantities that today’s railroads don’t possess.
Knowing the railroad. Knowing the people. Knowing limits. So. NS dumps some stacks into the Susquehanna on Rockville Bridge and Amtrak annuls their Pennsylvanian at Harrisburg while NS reroutes traffic around the Bridge. Why couldn’t the passenger train back up a few miles and do the same instead of busing over the mountains in the snow? Who knows what?
Back up a few miles? How are you going to reroute the amtrak, henry? I’d love to know. And there was no snow from the last storm once you got west of the susquehanna. Wind? yes. Snow? No.
[Additional consideration is that Amtrak does not have excess equipment. If they tie the equipment of the Pennsylvanian up for 6 to 8 or more hours attempting a detour it most likely won’t be in position for it’s next run. I suspect the companion set of equipment got stopped at Pittsburgh and returned to Chicago and the set that was stopped at Harrisburg got returned to New York and would be in position for the trip on the following day.
When the Auto Train get seriously delayed 4-5-6 hours, it takes two weeks of ‘on time’ running to get that set of equipment back On Time…running late it gets turned as quickly as possible, unloaded, serviced and reloaded…Amtrak does not have the equipment to insert to make up for a seriously late set of equipment.
**
In order to do that, they’d need an NS pilot qualified on the detour route. And, you’d have to have a detour route that worked.
The first problem might be finding a rested NS pilot. If NS was detouring, they’d likely bottomed out the extra board pretty quickly.
The detour route w
NS gets into Enola on the west or south bank of the Susquehanna from a point east of Harrisburg and not from Rockville Bridge on the west. Enola traffic wesbound does not go through Harrisburg Amtrak station although some traffic does. Rockville has wyes on each end of the bridge for directing traffic in and out and around Enola and Harrisburg but Enola is also fed from the east and south. Thus it is possible to have backed out of Harrisburg (I really don’t know how far) then gone west via Enola to ALtoona and west.
Zug, I’m not a railroader like you but it doesn’t mean us non railroaders know nothing.