Does anyone know where the physical location and each present dispatcher limits of the Conrail now NS line from Harrisburg to Pittsburg? I know CSX is decentralizing their dispatch but have no idea if this line is somewhere near HorseShoe for NS (maybe Harrisburg or Altoona?). Also what parts of this line are now RCL controlled?
Dispatching office for the Pittsburgh Division is in the division offices in Greentree PA (just outside Pittsburgh, same as when it was Conrail.) The division posts are at Duncannon, PA and CP-86, OH (between Cleveland and Alliance) The Pittlsburgh east dispatcher has from Alto to Pitt. The Pittsburgh west dispatcher has from Pitt to CP-86. The Altoona dispatcher has from Duncannon to Alto.
Most interesting - the Altoona Dispatcher has what used to be most of the Middle Division of the PRR, and the Pittsburgh East DS has what was the Pittsburgh Division.
More importantly - is NS the only U.S. Class I that hasn’t centralized its dispatching into a single location ? Or had it, for the former Southern and N&W lines before the ConRail acquisition, but this is a fragment left over from CR that hasn’t been consolidated intot he central office yet ?
Also - in the Original Post’s 2nd question - Does ‘RCL’ mean ‘Radio Code Line’ for the signal communications ?
Thanks in advance for any information.
Conrail had a nice dispatching center in Harrisburg, PA which took care of the middle division. Do not know if NS is using it or not.
Yes, NS is using it. The old Conrail bldg now houses NS’s Harrisburg Div, including the dispatcher’s office which includes the ex-PRR, LV, RDG, EL and CNJ lines east of Duncannon - including the Buffalo Line and Southern Tier. Up until earlier this year, it was also NS’s Northern Region HQ.
NS’s train dispatching is decentralized and always has been. There is a dispatch office on each of the 11 divisions.
Thanks for that response, Don.
It would be interesting and worthwhile to learn why NS did not ‘follow the crowd’ into centralizing a few years ago, what NS thinks of that decision today, and what benefits and ‘downsides’ have been seen from that. Certainly the operational and financial performances and industry standing don’t appear to have suffered much.
- Paul North.
Because ‘RCL’ is often the abbreviation or acronym for ‘Remote-Control Locomotive’ - I doubt that’s what was meant, but just to clarify the question.
- PDN.
Actually I was wondering if Radio Code Line (RCL) is installed?. No pole lines are seen in any current pictures of the HorseShoe area. I was wondering before I go to HorseShoe if Radio Code line is in use or if NS uses burried cable for their signal lines.
Oltmann: Thanks so much for the inforomation of the dispach areas. It will help when I go there.
Another question: Does NS have any locations that are a back up for any dispatch centers in case of an outage at the primary dispatch location? I have heard that on AMTRAK’s NEC there is a provision for some one to go to each interlocking cabin and operate that interlocking in case of a failure of the main dispatch center. Any one know if this is the case?
With the advent of laptop computers it would seem that RRs could have a standby dispatch location. Look at the problems CSX had each time Jacksonville went down. Those problems seemed to cause CSX to start decentralizing.
Cleve. Line has Rochester to CP86, Pitt. West has from Alliance west on the Ft. Wayne line
I don’t think so. Conrail, and PC before it, was big on buried cable for code line. They even had a special cable plow mounted on a flat car to install it. The back-up to the cable was a telephone land line and later, a cell phone line. The Pittsburgh line is also used by AT&T for fiber-optic ROW. I believe that the deal to allow the use of the ROW allowed Conrail one fiber’s worth of bandwidth, but I don’t know if this is used for code line or not.
Sort of. NS is in the process of converting the various dispatching systems onto a single platform that would allow any dispatching desk to be operated from any dispatching office. This system is currently on 3 divisions. I believe the home-grown Conrail system that is in use on Harrisburg, Pittsburgh and Dearborn divisions has this same capability. The backup for code line failure is paper, I think.
NS NEVER follows he crowd (even when the crowd is right!) The decentralized dispatching fits well with NS’s long-term, overall philosophy of decentralized operations. The heart and soul of operations on NS is in the division offices. There really is no centralized operations center like Conrail’s Blue Room that decides which trains to run and which to annul, etc. That is left to each division. It has it’s pros and cons, but it is the culture.
There’s also ATT FOL along the Reading Line - at least from Allentown towards Reading - and that’s also my understanding of the arrangement. That goes back a long time though, so I can’t provide a citation or reference.
Yesterday afternoon I ran across an interesting AREMA seminar paper by the CSX C&S folks on why they had so much trouble with their RCL in 2000, and the ‘fixes’ that were implemented - the short answer appears to be that ‘tropospheric ducting’ flooded their system (I suspect that the amateur radio ‘hams’ and other radio aficionados here are quite familiar with that phenonmenon). The technical parts are way over my head - so don’t expect me to answer any questions on this - but here’s the link and some excerpts for those of you who may be curious - note that the ‘PDF’ file is 27 pages, approx. 275 KB in size:
Don, thanks again for the insight. There’s that word again - ‘culture’. I’m still thinking there’s material for a ‘management study’ type article here, by someone who’s technically qualified to write it (not me, though) - unless one of that nature. At my first glance, this appears to result in a structure that is not conducive to ‘micro-management’, and fosters growth and independent thinking by the various subordinates and outlying offices - not a bad thing at all these days, in my view.
Not to disagree too much - or beat the horse
You know, I don’t remember ever seeing pole lines in that area, ever since I started going there in the 1960s. I could be wrong about that, but I do have a fair number of photos, books, and magazines that show the area pretty often from post-WW II to date. In any event, ConRail’s removal of the 4th track (and other track changes) in the mid-1980s would have necessitated reconfiguration of most of the interlockings, and that would have provided a good opportunity to change that portion of the signal system as well - likely to either buried line or FOL, as Don notes above, since I believe that the RCL wasn’t widely used then (I could be wrong on that, too). But finding out roughly when the pole line was taken down would be an interesting clue, I think - that may have occurred even during the PRR era.
- Paul North.
TCS (CTC to you non-Conrail folk) wasn’t installed until the late 1970s, so no code line before then at all. Track was cab signaled, so no pole line for wayside signals needed, either. I’d bet Conrail buried cable for the TCS project. AT&T fiber optic came later.
Well, it seems that there are 2 parts to this now, and its a little more complicated:
- At the Horse Shoe Curve itself, back in the day the pole line apparently took a ‘short-cut’ down across the Burgoon Run / Glen White Run valley and past the old gift shop/ visitor’s center, as shown in the 2 photos that are linked below. So that’s why it doesn’t show up very often in the photos at the Curve area itself:
a. This photo is dated 03/13/1974, taken from in the upper curve - EDIT: “McGinley’s Curve” - to the wes
Is it still advantageous for a dispatcher to be fully familiar with all the physcial characteristics (grades, curves, etc.) of the line he controls? I am not sure just how the knowledge was acquired in the days when the DS lived and worked at a location right on his division, but it seems that it may be more difficult to learn a line that is several hundred miles removed from where you work.
The agent-operator who was in Wesson, Miss. when I lived there (1962-65) made dispatcher on the Louisiana Division and had to move to Vicksburg (which was about 44 miles from the nearest La. Division point, Jackson). That was not bad for him, but when the IC decided to run all the railroad from Chicago, he came back South before long for he did not like Chicago.
Johnny
Two more tidbits of info regarding the pole line and signal comms:
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Dan Cupper, in his mid-1990s book on the history of Horseshoe Curve, says that ConRail relocated and buried some of the pole line in that vicinity in 1992 to improve the views from the visitor’s center and viewing area then under construction.
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The controlled signals and interlockings in this area were mostly under local tower manual control until about 1996, so the simple pole line may have been enough for those communications needs. By then, the AT&T Fiber Optic Line was likely installed, and so it may be that the signal system is this area was ‘cut over’ directly to that FOL instead of to a track/ rail carrier circuit, buried code line, and/ or RCL, etc. There may not have been an actual need for a more sophisticated or capable C&S system than the pole line, until AR To
The conversion of the Pittsburgh line to TCS in the late 1970s/early 80s excluded the Alto to C portion of the RR.