One man crews: Spread the enthusiasm

Trains Magazine General Discussion
1

While reading the feature in th August issue, a few thoughts occurred to me.

While in many instances this makes no sense whatsoever, there are some applications where it can work.

And lets not fool ourselves, where ever implementation is prescribed, the prime motivation is money. It’s a money grab where already well compensated executives and “contribute nothing to the productive work flow” stockholders wish to continue their assault upon the middle class by creating yet another opportunity to skim profit off the top, and keep it for themselves.

Opposition, unsurprisingly, is strongest among the trade right where jobs will be lost. Some of the non-economic arguments they offer in opposition are valid as well, but the people whose pockets this savings will come out of obviously see this for what the final effect on them will be.

So, in effort to find a happy median, why not use “market incentives” as an inducement? An engineer who is having to do his shift alone will unquestionably have additional responsibilities and duties, and he should be deserving of a reward for his additional efforts.

Why not create a payrate dedicated to the position. Call it a “master engineer” or whatever you will, but assign say a 20% premium to his pay rate for services performed solo.

I believe doing so would offer two advantages currently lacking. #1, it would stimulate an ambition for many that are currently opposed to the idea, to seize opportunity. And #2, It would put in perspective for the above mentioned beneficiaries, that continung to squeeze the livelihood out of the middle class, comes at a cost for all, and might even cause them to reconsider (since this way not all of the fruit is going to end up in their basket.

Thoughts?

2

“XYZ Detector, MP 123, Track 2, Hot Journal Axle 477, Inspect, Detector Out”

“XYZ Detector, MP 123, Track 1, Dragging Equipment Axle 514, Inspect, Detector Out”

3

Yet if this is all about the bottomline, paying one guy 120% pay, is still cheaper than paying 2 guys each 100% pay. Of course shareholders/execs would prefer to pay 20% pay to one guy.

I’ve worked enough in industry jobs where when everything went well, the 1, 2, 3 or whatever guys on duty had next to nothing to do, but when something went wrong, with no notice whatsoever, all those guys were despearately needed to keep things from going from bad to worse or put things back together again.

The comparison to how freights in Europe are run seems a bit lacking: if the entire train is 0.3 miles long, it may work with one guy up in the engine. But when the train is 1 mile long, it’s a different ball game. And in their eagerness to save some pennies on another crew person, railroads don’t seem to care what the cost of that mainline being blocked by a dead train, with no traffic at all going through, will amount to.

4

Two ways to look at it.

Yes, by all means let’s sell someone else’s job down the river. It’s become the American Way after all.

Let’s compensate the last man standing.

The BLET has an agreement in place on the BNSF (and others) to receive an additional 2 hours straight pay for working alone if the conductor’s position is eliminated. (This agreement predates the recent attempt to go to one man crews on much of the BNSF.) Depending on how you look at it, the BLET has agreed to go to one person crews or is just getting compensation for it’s craft should the trainmen’s position be eliminated and the engineer has to work alone. All I’ve seen so far is that the BLET would like to keep 2 person crews.

(It should be noted that in almost all cases on the unionized major carrers, the trainmen’s contract is held by SMART/UTU, the engineers contract by the BLET. BNSF engineers agreeing to working alone doesn’t mean they can automatically remove the conductors.)

Jeff

5

As long as a train doesn’t require ‘manual labor’ - a one man crew can get the job done.

What requires manual labor - Copying a mandatory directive, inspecting a train account Defect Detector activation, inspecting train account undesired emergency application of the brakes, inspecting all HAZMAT when a train has emergency brake application (desired or undesired), setting hand brakes on train when it is stopped on mountain grades to permit recharging of the brake system and 102 other operating realities that will happen from time to time and will always happen in the middle of nowhere at O dark 30 in the worst possible weather for the season. A stopped train is a ‘line blockage’ for however long the train is stopped.

Remember - for every train that is highlighted as a crew being paid a day or more wages for working 3 or 4 hours - there is most likely another that went on the Hours of Service 50 miles short of desination and another half dozen that just managed to make destination as their hours of service time expired, and the rest made destination having been on duty 8 to 11 hours.

As has been stated in another post - when things move ‘as expected’ - there is very little for individuals to do - when things don’t move ‘as expected’ there is more to be done than those on scene are able to accomplish.

6

And lets not forget that this only works if the train is put together and ready to go ahead of time…how does one man double up two or three tracks in a yard and perform an air test?
Of course, you have a “utility man” to do that, but then your back to paying two guys…and as Balt points out, any problem on the road will either require the engineer to stop, and tie down the train, walk a lot, and general use up any time savings imagined, or a utility man will have to come out and fix the problem, which takes you right back to the payroll issue.
And the safety issue…yes, I know two guys don’t always prevent accidents, but the fact is you only hear about the times it doesn’t work, and you never hear about the thousands of times it did work just as intended.
One man may be willing to take a chance and skirt around a rule, but the odds are much less that two guys will, no one wants word getting back to the other guys you not safe or are a rule breaker, and yes, we do have internal reputations within our crafts, and if you are known as a guy who takes chances, it gets around.

  • Ed
7

We often have to work with two person crews - the engineer and the conductor back on the train with the passengers - and it’s royal pain. Just one more person makes life that much easier. Of course, most of our folks are volunteers, so the cost thing is minimal, but…

The fire service is facing similar challenges. As has been noted, if all is going well (ie, no fires), then the crews sitting around waiting for the bells to go off are a huge cost with no payback. When there is an incident, however, oftimes all the folks available aren’t enough. The politicians don’t get this - all they see is firefighters lounging around (they actually are usually training or going over equipment, but no matter). So they look to cut the fire department.

8

What about the fatugue factor and how is and engineer supposed to watch for signals, run the train and copy a train order at the same time? He does not have two heads and six arms. It is better to have two men checking each other. In a yard a one man crew is fine, but not on the road. It is inherently dangerous even when PTC is fully implemented. Read this NTSB accident report and tell me if one man crews are a good idea.

http://ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/RAR1502.pdf

9

That report might be taken as evidence that no-man crews - a la John Kneiling - are the safest ones. Even with two men on the offending train: neither noticed that a signal light was burned out, hence didn’t take appropriate action; and, each one misinterpreted the dim headlight on the rear of the train ahead in 2 different ways ! If this had been made up, it wouldn’t be believable. (And of course, the NTSB wants PTC again.) Fatigue was not mentioned as a factor, nor was functional overload of either of the crew members.

[emphasis added - PDN]

"National Transportation Safety Board. 2015. Collision Involving Three BNSF Railway Trains near Amarillo, Texas, September 25, 2013. Publication Type NTSB/RAR-15/02. Washington, DC.

Abstract:

10

[(-D] Three hours later . . . after each engineer has struggled something like 120 to 129 cars back, on the ballast shoulder or between the two stopped trains - and hopefully no bridge without a walkway - and then returned, will the actual cause of the stop be known.

Unless each train is going in the opposite direction of the other, and the respective engineers are able to stop their trains with the locomotives near the other train’s reported defective car, so that each can inspect the other’s train. Then see how they’ll be able to fix it - or even just set-out the defective car ?

Only when there’s a separate cost account set up and honestly reported and administered for “Delays due to lack of a 2nd crew member” will the claimed savings be trustworthy.

When the value and hourly costs of the one-man crew locomotives, cars, lading, lost revenue from the track being blocked and unusable while the situation is remedied (“opportunity cost”, often in the range of $3,000 to $10,000 per hour), only then will the “penny wise, pound foolish” illusion of labor cost savings from this become apparent.

  • Paul North.
11

Seems like the same type logic could be used to justify one pilot in the cockpit of a jet airliner. “This is your captain speaking. If you pay close attention, you’ll see me walking back to the restroom. For your safety, I have put our 747 on autopilot. I shouldn’t have had the fish”.

12

Don’t forget - Defect Detectors only report their findings after the last car of the train has cleared the detector circuits - it is a ver

13

It sounds like the argument against one-man crews is based on two reasons:

  1. Contingencies arise that call for extra labor that exceeds the ability of one person.

  2. Two heads are better than one for assuring safe operation.

Obviously item #1 alone is not sufficient to make one-man crews non-cost-effective. So item #2 is offered to tip the balance economically to make one-man crews non-cost-effective.
That raises the question of the economic value of having a second person in terms of added safety. Has this item #2 been statistically evaluated and presented as objective fact by either labor or management?

14

Four recent NTSB reports would suggest the multi-person crews have failed to accomplish either objective in term

15

When one person is trying to correct problems that require two people, and the entire railroad is constipated as a result, I’m sure U.P.S. will be most patient and understanding. Perfectly acceptable for their multimillion dollar shipments to be delayed for lack of a few hours of hourly pay. And how much are they paying the person who made the decision?

Tom

16

Well if the railroads would lose money with one-man crews instead of two-man crews, why would they want to lose money?
I think they are heading for one-man crews and eventually one-man-remote crews. All of the wayside problems will be handled by a sort of roving “geek squad” comprised of technical support crews in trucks and off road vehicles.

17

I read the “One Man Crews” article in the August “Trains”, and certainly the big 'roads trot out some convincing arguments for the idea, why it’ll be OK and won’t cause any problems and such, but something was bothering me, like I’d heard something similar before. Maybe it was that iron-throated “Ahem!” in the back of my mind.

Then I remembered. The “Titanic.” The lack of lifeboats.

You see, back around the turn of the 20th Century shipping line magnates had convinced themselves that with the advances in ship design and construction lifeboats for all would never be needed. Oh, they had some convincing arguments:

“These new ships can easily ride out storms that would have overwhemed older ships.”

“They have watertight compartments. Nothing’s likely to damage more than two of them at any point of the hull.”

“We have wireless now. A ship in trouble can call for help, all the boats will be needed for will be to transfer passengers from one ship to another. We don’t need ‘boats for all’ to do that.”

“Boats for all might even be dangerous. All that extra top-weight could make the ship unstable.”

“All the above being said, they’re just not worth the money.”

Needless to say all those self-delusional arguments went right out the window on the morning of April 15, 1912. Shipping companys, and let me say NO ship carried enough boats for all in those days, couldn’t get extra lifeboats on board fast enough. If they didn’t, no one would sail with them, and then they’d REALLY have a money problem to worry about!

This is why “Titanic” junkies like myself love the old girl so much. Even a century after her sinking, she still has so much to teach us.

In my humble opinion, we’re heading for a digital “Titanic” one of the

18

European freight trains can be 835-1524 meters long (0.51-0.95 miles). Perhaps one cause of many of our problems is excessive length (pulled draw bars, longer distance to stop, slower aceleration, need to lengthen sidings, easier to maintain schedules, etc.). Single-man crews with greater density of train running might be the answer.

19

[:-,] OK - it’ll be 5 hours then . . . [:-^] And I ‘get’ your last point, too - that’

20

Think volume and number of cars.

Assume you need to move 200 cars.

Take the European train model…say 100 cars.

American train, 200 cars…

So you want to pay two engineers, each at a higher hourly rate, to move your 200 cars in two separate 100 car trains, with the associated risk, track time and occupancy, fuel cost and locomotive hours, or one engineer and one conductor at a lower hourly rate to move the 200 cars at once.

Compare the volume of cars running on American rails versus the volume of cars on Europe’s rails.