How many dispatch centers would a large railroad like CSX have?
What are the requirements to become a dispatcher, e.g. education, experience, technical skills, physical attributes, etc.?
Currently CSX
Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, Cincinnati, Florence, Indianapolis, Jacksonville and Selkirk
What will be left after EHH is open to question. Huntington office was closed in 2016 with jobs aportioned to the remaining centers. Approximately 15 qualified disptachers ended up on the street after all is said and done. While a number of Dispatchers have been hired from outside the railroad, most worked for the railroad in any number of crafts Clerical, Signals, Mechanical, MofW, Train & Engine for a sufficient period of time to understand what is involved in operating at railroad. All Dispatchers with ‘short time’ seniority in each office are not comfortable that they will continue to be Dispatchers.
All candidates for Dispatcher Training are given a battery of tests as well as a inteview process. The specific characteristics that are looked for is sound decision making under pressure as well as a demonstrated ability to follow the carriers rules.
On the other hand, I believe BNSF and UP each have exactly one.
As I recall, a number of the CSX dispatch offices are leftovers from Conrail. Balt can certainly say with certainty, but I think most of the “original” CSX lines are dispatched from JAX.
Plus Nashville
Out of sight - out of mind
Understood. Speaking of out of sight out of mind, CSX has a dispatching office in Canada. I think it is only one desk, located in Wallaceburg, Ontario.
BNSF and UP have shared satellite facilities at Spring, TX (SP) and San Bernardino, CA.(ATSF) along with the centralized motherships at Omaha and Ft. Worth…
Like decentralized better (more in-touch with local reality), but the control freaks do not.
Sorta. The UP and BNSF have one major one (Omaha and Ft Worth respectively) plus they have several smaller satellite offices that are joint or co-located offices (Spring, TX, Kansas City, San Bernadino) plus some terminal offices with only one or two dispatchers (on the UP Proviso and N Platte).
Depends on the railroad. Generally a college degree, attention to detail, ability to maintain focus. Experience is a plus. Military service is a plus. Nurses make good dispatchers.
Used to be that dispatchers came up thru the clerical ranks, now most are hired off the street or from non-clerical crafts.
UP’s dispatchers are management, other railroads are all or mostly union.
How much redundancy is built into the system(s). For example, if the Fort Worth facility (BNSF) lost power for an extended period, would the satellite offices have sufficient capability to take up the slack?
Presumably all or most dispatching today is computerized. If the primary computer fails, are the activities being mirrored real time on back-up computers so that the dispatchers can continue to function?
Experienced both - Dispatching is something only Dispatchers understand. Local managements don’t see the corporate big picture, they only think they do.
Centralized you, with a great deal of effort, get ‘the whole team’ pulling in the same direction. You get a common rules interpertation and application.
De-centrailzed you have ‘separate railroads’ goverened by a common rule book that is interperted differently on each ‘railroad’. Additionally, when problems develop at at division change point, there develops a us vs. them mentality when ‘negotiations’ take place over a telephone - that may or may not be answered in a timely manner thus generating more frustrations between the parties, rather than walking to the other division’s management and developing a solution face to face, and in may cases the situation got resolved at the Dispatcher level without having to go to the division level.
In both systems today, you develop a great deal of factual data that seems to be wasted on the corporation as a whole that does appear to utilize it.
The one way centralized is out of touch is when weather becomes a factor - it is difficult to understand a foot of snow when it was 78 and sunny when you came to work. Those from winter struck area can comprehend the problems, those whose life experiences are all from the South can’t.
Don’t worry about losing power. I don’t have first hand knowledge of the BNSF center but UP’s center at Omaha has big standby generators, along with power feeds from two different circuits (OPPD electric utility). The center is built in the old UP freighthouse, and is a building in a building and designed to withstand severe storms (tornados). We didn’t find out about the computer system (or I forgot the info) but it would make sense that there is a parallel system running at all times.
Kurt Hayek
On CSX, each center has backup generator systems that are able to run the full facility, heat, light, computers etc. At my location there were two generators (tested weekly) and each generator has a 1800 gallon fuel supply. Each de-centralized location had it’s own computer system capable of running the entire CSX Dispatching network. In normal operations, the Jacksonville computer, runs the entire system, the same as when Dispatchers were centralized.
Within the office itself, there were several ‘disaster recovery’ desks. Those desks could be activated in minutes when an existing Dispatchers desk experienced computer or communications trouble. Note - each Dispatchers desk requires 3 computers to function properly. One to acces
Sounds like one central dispatch office is the way to go. That way everyone is on the same page so to speak and there’s less regional interpretation and rivalry.
Are these computers able to deal with extraordinary problems such as how to deal with recalcitrant mules in a boxcar?[:)]
For the most part, Class 1 carriers stopped handling livestock before Staggers was enacted. There are a number of Feeding and Watering restrictions involved in handling livestock on the railroad.
Thanks for the insights regarding dispatching.
Slightly off topic, but this might be of interest to the original poster.
Mention has been made of BNSF’s San Bernardino, CA dispatcher facility, that has both BNSF and UP dispatches that work out of that office. UP’s main DS facility is in Omaha, NE (with many, many dispatches). But, a security matter and a plus for UP is that BOTH San Bernardino and Omaha jointly dispatch some lines. Say San Bernardino has no relief for a dispatcher. A switch (on the CTC arrangement) is manipulated, and suddenly Omaha is dispatching the line. Eight hours later the regular UP San Bernardino dispatcher shows up as scheduled and the switch is manipulated again, and suddenly San Bernardino’s CTC screen is in control again. Niffy system!
Balt: Did NS and CSX ever combine dispatching at Atlanta to mitigate the Howell junction problems among others ?
No! NS has never centrailized their Dispatching.