This afternoon, clear weather before the snow, I noticed 2 freights (one primarily covered hoppers and the other a unit coal train) stopped on the center track of the UP West line for at least 100 minutes. This was on the section between the east edge of West Chicago and just west of downtown Wheaton. Is that common? If so, it seems fairly inefficient.
Carl will probably know. I’m guessing they were ducking scoots.
Chicago has been a mess for the last 2 months. The weather, along with a spike in traffic, has backed up trains for miles. While the weather was better the last half of February, it will take months to get things back to “normal”.
Carl will know, but it is Saturday and Metra only runs trains every two hours. The scoots run on the two outer tracks; these two freights were on the center track, although EB freights can also run on the EB track 1.
Could be any number of scenarios. The one I wish it were would be a cutover of signals and placement in service of the College crossovers, but we’ve waited so long for that one that I doubt that we could be so lucky.
Sounds like you had a train between Sunset and Winfield Roads, and another one by the bridges in Wheaton. Odds are there would be yet another freight sitting at Finley Road in Lombard. Sometimes they will hold a shorter train between Grace (the control point) and Addison Road.
The grain train (if in fact that’s what it was) was probably headed off-line. It could be waiting for the IHB dispatcher to allow him onto his railroad. The same with the coal train, though it wouldn’t be using IHB (might be waiting for CSX in the city). It would be helpful to know what kind of coal train…if it was headed to Wisconsin (WEPX, CWEX, WPSX, or EDGX cars), it might be just waiting for a train of empties to get off 30 Main in Yard 9, so it can use it to head north. Yard congestion would be a good possibility if these were manifest trains, but they aren’t. Same thing if the grain train (or frac sand, or whatever) were headed north: there is only one track (30 Main) that can be used efficiently to route these trains to and from Wisconsin. If it’s occupied, you wait on hump shoves and Goodness-only-knows what else to get out of the way at one end or the other.
Crews dead on the law? Always possible, but they wouldn’t put other trains behind the dead one.
So no…Carl only has possibilities and speculation, no actual knowledge.
Mess is sugar coating the condition of the Chicago Terminal area is in and it is affecting all carriers that have operations in, to or through the Chicago area. It was a mess before the weather hit, and has gotten much worse with the effects of the weather.
Thanks, Carl.
I live just west of Sunset Rd, and have seen a train parked east of Sunset (between Sunset and Winfield) every afternoon for at least a week or so. So it is more prevalent than just today.
We have (has of last night) 3 trains tied down on line (between control points requiring them to “single track” about 10 miles, another 3 or 4 tied down in terminals or in sidings. Some have been there a few days. Most of these are going north towards the twin cities. I don’t run east, but know they have had trains tied down out around Grand Mound, and even a few last week out around Belle Plaine (both in Iowa) because Chicago couldn’t take them. Weather has everything fouled up.
Actually an hour and half of waiting really isn’t all that unusual out on line, for a variety of reasons. A few years ago, before the economy slowed and the coal business dropped off, it wasn’t unusual to get in line out around Logan, IA, just short of Missouri Valley, and wait for priority trains to meet or pass. The priority trains were going/coming from the single track Blair Subdivision. I remember leaving Boone one morning, the westbound Z was leaving Clinton 200 miles behind us. The eastbound Z was showing out of North Platte coming at us. We saw them both at Logan, sitting for over 5 hours waiting for both.
Jeff
Records I have been able to see indicate that the Chicago area began going into the dumper around the end of October 2013 and it has gotten progressively worse up to today and into tomorrow.
Remember, just because the carriers get congested - the customers keep on shipping. Somehow, someway you have to move the traffic you have with the resources you have available. Getting additional resources (manpower, locomotive power, terminal facilities and line of road facilities) are not available in the short term). You have to do what you can with what you have and hopefully make every resource you allocate COUNT.
What I think I am seeing with my carrier is a level of operating management that has been promoted to higher levels of operating responsibility than their experience and accomplishments support, consequently they are ill prepared to deal with the problems that are Chicago today. I am certain every carrier operating in and around Chicago has their own tales of woe.
Is it just UP that has its traffic screwed up, or is it all of the Class 1’s in the Chicago area?
Ira
All of the comments from the professionals are cogent and much appreciated.
I will use terms here that may not be correct, so apologies in advance. Purely as speculation, it does seem rather inefficient in decent weather to send trains out on the mainline and run them at a speed of X mph on a line that is largely bi-directional double-tracked with CTC, (centrally dispatched from Omaha) only to have them sit stationary for delays of even 90 minutes. Couldn’t the lack of space at terminals, etc. be anticipated by the dispatchers (BaltACD seems to be hinting at this)? The scale and setting are not parallel, but it seems somewhat analogous to airlines dispatching flights (in good weather at both ends) and then watching them chronically fly in holding patterns for an hour or more. Couldn’t this be “smoothed” by a good computer program?
When I was a yardmaster ever so briefly, my mentor done tole me that problems in the yard could be solved by departing your trains on time. Whatever happens, boils down to that. Back then, it was power problems that were holding us back–I remember getting yard power to help shove some road trains out in hopes that once they got going they could make it. This was right before our big (for the time) order of 50 SD40-2s, which certainly helped.
So much has to be taken into consideration: rested crews, weather problems, weather problems for fresh crews, signal problems, weather problems for signal crews. I’m not going to go out there and tell the railroad that they should do anything differently in the short run, and I’m pretty sure that long-range plans will help alleviate some of the choke points. Proviso is probably grateful for the third main track around the yard, and having two tracks connecting to the IHB at Provo Junction–those weren’t there last year.
Meantime, I wish I could get my ATCS working for this line. It would be interesting to watch track occupancy, if nothing else. I think Al’s Hobby Shop in Elmhurst should install seating in front of their monitor (as if they had room!).
There has been a huge winter storm every week for the last two months. When it gets cold, they have to run shorter trains, which means more trains, they have air problems, the switches freeze over, snow covered and closed roads mean the railroads can’t get crews to trains and between terminals. A lot of the problems with the eastern carriers being affected by storms back up onto the UP.
The whole system slows down. The customers respond by injecting more cars into the flow and causing more congestion, and even further slowing the network.
Just because the carriers have their issues - customers keep adding their freight to the mix and they also ramp up complaints because they aren’t getting delivries of product in the time frame they desire.
Every train that gets held short of it’s destination keeps the power and crew from that train getting to the destination, the power to be turned on a outbound train and the crew to get their 12 hours + limbo time rest before they can turn on a outbound train. Getting the held train into the destination terminal will then require one (or more) recrews putting additional stress on the crew base. If a inbound train that gets held has 3 units - that is 3 unit that aren’t immediately available to dispatch a outbound train. Holding out 10 trains and you are talking 20-30 or more units. Multiply this by multiple terminals that feed the major congestion point and the congestion begins to consume a carrier. My carrier is again using locomotives from leasing organizations - no doubt to make up for the number of locomotives that are tied up in being held out of destination terminals.
While locomotive power and manpower may be ‘right sized’ for normal operations, when congestion hits (even when handling normal volumes) those resources get stressed beyond their abilities. Motive power can be leased - manpower must be hired and trained before it can be used - a much longer period of time.
The ‘art’ of running a fluid high volume railroad is the same ‘art’ that professional jugglers perform in front of audiences - consider each of the jugglers hands as a terminal of finite capacity - consider the objects being juggled as trains that use all of the terminal capacity. What happens to the juggled object between hands is the train dispatching function. When everything is working properly,
Let’s not have another Colorado Midland situation on hand. At least, without one central agency dictated everything, we are not in danger of destroying a road because it cannot handle all the traffic that is forced upon it.
It is evident that more road crews are needed during bad weather. How much slack is provided by the extra boards?
None! The algorithyms that the bean counters use for determining proper staffing levels have little to no allowance for extraordinary conditions; and even if they did there are no furloughed employees just waiting to come back to work. To increase T&E employment, hiring and training have to increase - the current conductors have to be trained and qualified as engineers and new hires have to be trained and qualified to replace the conductors that are going to engineer training.
But…but…but…the budget! The budget!! The Budget!!!
If you are managing a melt down by the budget - you deserve to be shown the door - yesterday!
The answers are yes, no and maybe.
Yes, if everything works smoothly, and everything that was supposed to depart a terminal or yard gets out on time.
Dispatchers don’t control the yards, only the tracks that get you there.
Yardmasters control what comes in and goes out of yards.
Yardmasters, dispatchers and corridor managers all get together on a conference call sometime in the early hours, and make a plan to yard and depart trains, coordinate movements or yard to yard transfers, road trains of general traffic, and unit trains.
It is a give and take system of sorts, basically this much out means that much can come in.
There are established regular movements and departures of course, and on occasion a extra or two gets tossed in the mix.
A dispatcher will run a train up to a established point, then announce it to the yardmaster, who will make the decision that it can come on in, or tell the dispatcher to hold it at a control point awaiting a clear receiving track.
A lot of