They had an entire weekend of barely any Metra complications to deal with for operations of a unit Coal train from Oak Creek Power Plant to the Northfolk Southern in Chicago=. They could and should have operated the train during the weekend, only two-three days since its arrival to the location. But instead, the Union Pacific decided that it’s a good idea to wait until Tuesday night (11:00 PM) for this train to leave Oak Creek…five days after its arrival. A sitting train isn’t making money, and is more than likely losing cash. They also really need to solve their crew problems as well, since I’ve also heard a few Metra cancellations due to a “Manpower Shortage”. It might also be the reason as to why this unit coal train, which had NS 1071 on it, had to operate at midnight.
You have a way too simplified view of train operations. There are many factors that go into when a train gets run - and one of the largest is when the customer wants the train.
Or are we just mad that the CNJ engine ran at night?
Not mad that the CNJ ran at night, but how long does it take for a coal train to get unloaded, as well as having to wait to get unloaded. It shouldn’t take fice days to unload a train…let alone wait for the I’d assume NS would want the train to move as fast as possible so they could get more Sub-Bituminous.
Guess it wasn’t needed for the time being or something…
I wish everything in life was this cut and dried. Maybe, the train came in ahead of schedule. Maybe Oak Creek had a problem at the plant and couln’t move things. Maybe there was problems on the track. Maybe NS had problems and didn’t want the train back yet. Maybe there’s 1000 other reasons.
To blame something you don’t understand on “Morons in Omaha” makes about as much sense as blaming it on “Werewolves in London”.
Dang, Murph, now your making me miss the late Warren Zevon again.
Mr. M. Siding is correct about the blame. Perfect.
A theory…the “blamer” was practicing spinning skills for an application to write politcal partys’ talking points and candidate’s stump speeches.
He’s making me miss the late Henry Hull!
I’ve seen trains sit for days waiting until the plant wanted them. Railroads exist to serve the customer. And if they don’t want the train until next Friday, well then, you park it until next Friday.
The train is UP’s, not NS’s, until the UP gives it back.
And weekends tend to get busy everywhere on the railroad. Heaven knows Proviso (where the delivery to NS would be made) doesn’t always run smoothly. And the route these particular trains take to get to the main line into town from the Wisconsin side of things is, out of necessity, pretty disruptive to yard operations (things may improve when the new construction is done). As I said, weekends in the yard are rough–the slow days are usually Tuesday and Wednesday. There aren’t any places to which they could move the train closer to the yard before they could take it without tying up a fairly busy main line somewhere.
And speaking of the line between Oak Creek and Chicago, it’s got some construction issues of its own. I understand the north end of Proviso is in the process of being revamped (I have no further info on the project or its progress). The bypass around O’Hare has just been rebuilt, but there may be issues with removal of old structures or grades at the south end (last I checked, the old bridge wasn’t completely gone). And don’t forget the ongoing bridge-replacement work at Shermer Road.
Please…feel free to ask why before calling hard-working people “morons”. The ones I worked with or listened to most assuredly were not.
NS and the other US Class 1’s have experienced a significant downturn in coal traffic. My guess is that coal hopper car supply is not a current issue. If the mines were in a big crunch for empties to fill orders, then empties might be moved more expeditously. Otherwise, what’s the rush.
And we can’t forget SIT (storage in transit)…
But isn’t there a larger question about the Class I’s focus on higher-volume unit trains? Doesn’t this create a chicken-and-egg question regarding the economic non-viability of smaller (or even single carload) operations? Did the single boxcar become uneconomic to service, or did the RR’s make it so by changing operations to focus on the high-volume traffic?
Case in point: Some weeks ago, an old passenger car (PPCX 800601) was to be moved by UP from Redwood City to Oakland, CA – a trip that is about 60 track miles, (south to San Jose, and then north to Oakland, since the old Dumbarton Railroad Bridge is long out of service.
So how did UP move it? North from Redwood City to South San Francisco (San Jose is south of RC), where it sat for a day or two. Then down (past Redwood City) to San Jose, where it had to wait to be attached to a train going further south to Watsonville, then (finally) north on another train – through San Jose – to Newark, CA (halfway between San Jose and Oakland), so that the next day it could be put in a train to Roseville (some 100 miles northeast of Oakland) via the Altamont Pass, wheree the following day it was put on a train for Oakland to be given to Amtrak (which then ended up carrying it on the Zephyr through Roseville again – but that is another story!) Total Redwood City to Oakland trip: some 500 miles and 4 - 5 days?
I’m sure UP had it operational reasons. They may have decided that this is the best way for them to run their railroad, but that doesn’t mean it is the only way.
Common sense isn’t all that common on the railroad. Let me give you an example. We had a carload of tie plates that was five miles east of us. My foreman asked the M.Y.O. to move the car to our location since we were in desperate need of said car. Unfortunately we were not only located on a different subdivision, but a different division. Long story short, in order to move the car five miles to the west the car ended up traveling about 800 miles–About 400 miles west of us and then back to us. You can’t make this stuff up.
No. It doesn’t create a checken-and-egg question. Loose car railroading has always been slow, produced erratic transit times, and expensive to operate (poor equipment utilization,many intermediate switching operations, and freight damage.)
When railroading developed the loose car system was the only feasible way to move most freight and it did beat the next available option (animal team and wagon) hands down. The inherit vice is the need to aggregate units of sale (the carload) into units of production (the trainload). It’s not uncommon for the carload to require repeated such aggregations (and disaggregations) to reach its final destination. This equates to slow, unreliable, and expensive. It’s not something the railroads did intentionally. It’s an inherent limitation of a loose car/single car system.
In 180 years or so of railroading no one in the world has been able to “fix” the carload system. The Indian Railways once banned carload shipments (around 1990) after their system congealed under the massive, and unavoidable, inefficiencies of loose car railroading.
The Swiss may have come close to a “fix”. But
Keep in mind the easy move for the passenger car may have meant that traffic on that line would have been held up, the movement of the old car may have required restricted speed, or a backup move to place it, the whole thing may simply take too much time or involved holding up too much traffic.
Running the car out and then back on a directional move may in fact, have been more efficient from a time/crew/held up traffic point of view.
The original post in this thread is a good example of why professional railroaders often don’t think much of “railfans”, particularly the fans who think they “know it all” and that professional railroaders are “morons.”
It would have been a legitimate question had the poster simply inquired “why” this train moved when it did. That would have been an intelligent question, which would have resulted in an intelligent discussion of the factors which may affect train movments, and which ones are and are not in a railroad’s control. And, as the responses to the original post showed, there are lots of good reasons why the train might not have moved when the poster thought it “should” have moved. But, no, the poster just assumed that he “knew it all”. He “knew” when the train should have moved and “knew” that the people running the railroad were “morons” because they did not move the train the way he thinks it should have been moved.
A large number of people in rail management today are railfans. But they have no tolerance whatever for the smug, “know it all” attitude of “railfans” outside the industry who tell them they are “morons” but have no understanding whatever as to what it takes to actually operate a railroad, turn a profit and satisfy the needs of real customers.
Based on this note, this appears to have been a movement of a single car (probably a private passsenger car). I’m not intimately familiar with UP’s train operations in the Bay area. But I can pretty much guarantee that they
“+1” to both of Falcon48’s posts above. The second is a very good summary with analogy of the principles and challenges of single-car railroading. To the same effect (but longer), see also Mark Hemphill’s articles/ essays on this in the early 2000’s issues of Trains, and the 2 articles on yards by Edwin "Chip’ Kraft circa 2004.
- Paul North.
Are the trains with containers and/or trailers all unit trains in the same way coal trains are? Are we saying carload railroading is gone the way of LCL did 50 years ago to UPS (who, BTW, manage to make a lot of money on it), etc.? Is the focus on cost cutting killing the revenue stream?
No, Many intermodal trains make setoffs and pickups along their routes.