And in spite of all precautions a railroad may take to prevent a total system failure that philosophy is hard to beat. Redubndancy, and the ability to take over dispatching from a center that has “gone down” is the key to keeping things moving. Placing all dispatchers in Jacksonville, Omaha, or Fort Worth may seem to placate the bean counters but can lead to total failure in some circumstances. If things go down in city X, city y may be able to take up the slack and keep the railroad fluid. It’s the same line of reasoning computer specialists have off-site backups.
Sounds good in theory. In practice, if a Dispatcher is not qualified on a territory he can create situations that can take weeks to untangle. Just because one is qualified on territory A doesn’t mean they know anything about operating territory Z.
In my dealings with NS, they have had failures at their office that handles VRE commuters from Alexandria to Manassas and they were dead in the water until those issues were fixed. I don’t know what other territory that office controls, but their comments were that everything they controlled was stopped.
Today, no matter the industry, if the computer fails the activity comes to a stop. In most organizations there is neither the manpower or procedures available to do things ‘the old way’, especially since most of todays employees have no idea what ‘the old way’ was or how it worked.
It was making the rounds that one Director viewed a dispatcher’s job as only an “entry level” to managment.
As to another comment about “common interpretation and application of rules”. Maybe in the dispatcher’s office, but not out in the field. You can still get multiple interpretations and applications. Enough that on some rules they actually issue how to apply the rule. When in doubt, call the rules department. Even then, though some managers have taken umbrage if you call direct instead of running the question up the chain of command.
Jeff
[quote user=“BaltACD”]
Norm48327
BaltACD
No! NS has never centrailized their Dispatching.And in spite of all precautions a railroad may take to prevent a total system failure that philosophy is hard to beat. Redubndancy, and the ability to take over dispatching from a center that has “gone down” is the key to keeping things moving. Placing all dispatchers in Jacksonville, Omaha, or Fort Worth may seem to placate the bean counters but can lead to total failure in some circumstances. If things go down in city X, city y may be able to take up the slack and keep the railroad fluid. It’s the same line of reasoning computer specialists have off-site backups.
Sounds good in theory. In practice, if a Dispatcher is not qualified on a territory he can create situations that can take weeks to untangle. Just because one is qualified on territory A doesn’t mean they know anything about operating territory Z.
In my dealings with NS, they have had failures at their office that handles VRE commuters from Alexandria to Manassas and they were dead in the water until those issues were fixed. I don’t know what other territory that office controls, but their comments were that everything they controlled was stopped.
Today, no matter the industry, if the computer fails the activity comes to a stop. In most organizations there is neither the manpower or procedures available to do things ‘the old way’, especially since most of todays employees have no idea what ‘the old way’ was
I have to imagine there are plenty of UPS’s (uninteruptible power supplies - batteries) involved, as well.
I worked in a computer center that had a two hour (at full load) battery backup, and many of the servers, computers, routers, etc, had UPS’s on top of that. Never mind the generator…
No. Satelitte offices only have a handful of desks, so you can’t have 70 dispatchers working in an office with 4 desks.
Most railroads have some sort of back up system where they can replicate the main dispatching system at a different location.
Depends on the nature of the fail, but generally yes, but its not a 100% mirror. You have the data but not necessarily the “plan”. Its like you sitting behind me while I am playing poker. You can see all of my cards, but that doesn’t mean if I gave you my hand in the middle of the game your next move would be the same as my next move. Its also not a matter of just flipping on switch, there are communications, radios, phone lines, Emergency lines, weather and messaging systems, the dispatching system, etc. It generally takes several hours to swap over to the new computers and its a big deal, plus swapping back is an even bigger deal, since the inactive system won’t have the history when you swap back.
The Cincinnati Railroad Club had a tour of Amtrak’s Dispatch Facility in Chicago back in February which I participated in. This was shortly after a power failure disabled their office. We learned that they control (dispatch) the Chicago Union Station and associated track, New Orleans Union Station and its about 4 miles of track, and their Michigan track. Yes, they had redundant sources of power, duplicated computers, etc. but the failure was in the power transfer switch. Every reliabilitys engineers nemisis. Fortunatly, they were able to get restarted in about an hour and a half. Disrupted the morning Chicago commute as the computers control all of the switches and signals.
Like your home computer, Its great when it works but when it fails, you learn how dependent you have become on it.
When the company I worked for built a new data center, I recommended that we procure diverse routed communication circuits from the phone company between it and our locaton where we processed the bill printing and our HQ. Not long after we were operational, our local telephone company had a fire in the Hinsdale Central Office (CO) which one of the two routes traversed. Local hospital lost all their phones as well as the village and CO service area for almost three days. I’ll always remember my manager (who lived in Hinsdale) telling me, “You didn’t have to burn the CO down to prove your point”. We lost other circuits and were affected by the multiday outage but were not financially harmed, as would have been the case if we had not done a what if planning. As the expression goes S%*t happens.
CPR (before Hunter) had the dispatchers for most of Canada in downtown Calgary, but also had a “business continuation facility” out in the far southwestern suburbs. No idea if it covered all the desks or just the main lines. I think they switched to using it as the primary office about once a year to confirm the process. That cost money, so I don’t know what happens these days.
Centralized dispatching is good for the managers, but leaves a disconnect between the dispatchers and their territory, and also with the crews. While they are of course frequently communicating on the radio, that is public and recorded. Sometimes it is useful to have a more informal discussion.
John
The UP, after dispatching operations had been set up in Omaha, set up satellite operations in some of the problem areas on its system, notably Chicago (the office was actually in Proviso), Houston, and LA. I know that the offices in one of the non-Chicago places (I’m thinking Houston) actually had desks for both UP and BNSF in the same room.
I’m not sure if they’re still distinct, or have moved back to Omaha. I’ve heard calls to the “Chicago Terminal Dispatcher”, but that doesn’t reall give a location.
Someone correct me if my info is outdated:
I belive BNSF Has a policy where dispatcher are given a (Week or more) to visit their territory and ride with the trains they dispatch.
That is what personal cell phones and ‘break rooms’ are for.
For whatever it’s worth, most of what you wrote about centralized verses de-centralized is dead-on for multiple location lumber yard chains.
To what extent would the duties of a railroad dispatcher be similar to those of an air traffic controller?
Most air traffic controllers rotate duties every two hours or so, i.e. tower to ground to approach to departure, etc. Would this be true for railroad dispatchers?
How long does a dispatcher spend before a screen before he or she gets a break?
Have many women joined the ranks of the dispatchers?
Very similar in many ways. Basic concept is similar, but dispatchers are more constrained (if trains change elevation relative to the rail its a bad thing).
Train dispatchers are covered by hours of service, they can work 9 in 24. Shifts are scheduled at 8 hours. They work the same desk all shift. They can take a short break to go to the bathroom, get something to eat or catch a smoke. Most I have known eat at their desks.
Over time more women have hired on as dispatchers. On one railroad last 4 or 5 years of dispatch classes averaged 25-30% women. As with all railroad jobs, the 24x7, 365 nature of the job is not necessarily attractive to women raising a family.
Air traffic controllers have the ability to change the playing field - Train Dispatchers don’t. The trains are the size they are and the track facilities are what they are - it is up to the Dispatcher to manipulate the trains and tracks in such a manner as to achieve the goals the company has set. Those goals can change on a daily basis and sometimes more than one in a tour of duty.
Former ATC’s sometimes have trouble with the concept that the playing field doesn’t change.
With the tools of the CADS system a territory can be set up to run for several hours (if nothing unexpected happens). CADS will let signals and meets be set up many miles in advance of the operating trains. When the railroad is set up the Dispatcher can take his breaks. The one thing that can crumple this house of cars is the Emergency Radio channel activating with a train reporting trouble.
When a lined signal is ‘taken down’ the CADS system will run a timer for that specific signal before a route can be changed and the signal religned. Some time outs can be as short as two minute others as long as 12-15 minutes. If you can make logical sense out of these timings, you are better than I and I only tried for 26 years.
Teething problems with UTCS… They’ve been pretty rare.
NS has 10 dispatching offices - one per division. Let me see if I can remeber…
Atlanta - Georgia
Birmingham - Alabama
Greenville - Piedmont
Harrisburg - Harrisburg
Pittsburgh - Pittsburgh
Dearborn - Dearborn
Decatur - Illinois
Bellevue - Lake
Knoxville - Central
Roanoke - Virginia
The dispatching system is GE’s UTCS. All divisions run on the same server and there is a hot backup as well as a disaster recovery server. Any desk on the network can dispatch any territory and there is a disaster recovery location (one for the whole network) so that, should a dispatch center have a long term issue, the division can be dispatched remotely.
A GE Harris product. The UP bought it years ago, GE could never get it to work right and UP ended up not using it. GE worked on it some more and sold it to the NS. Last I heard the NS is still having some of the same issues as the UP did. UP went to US&S/Ansaldo and they worked on their version for a decade or so, ran into some of the same problems, UP is now working on it in house based on the Ansaldo code.
Most of the planners work well on single track, but have issues on multiple track, too many options for routing. The larger the railroad, the more you have to break down the railroad into smaller territories because planning a huge area takes too long (replans have to be able to be done in less than a couple minutes). That creates problems because territory A can plan to put a train approaching a boundary from territory B into a siding, while territory B can plan to put the train approaching from territory A into a siding. That creates a conflict that the two territories have to resolve. But when they resolve it, one or both territories have to replan, which can change the boundary conditions, which creates a new conflict, which causes a replan, which creates a new boundary conflict, which creates a new replan, etc, etc. They have resolved some of this but its still a work in progress.
I have driven I-40 between Neerdles, CA and Albuquerque many times with my scanner turned to the various frequencies BNSF uses when dispatching the transcon. There is a different channel for - Belen to Gallup; Gallup to Winslow; Winslow to Seligman; Seligman to Needles. The DS’s appear to coordinate this Two track, 562 mile, CTC railroad very well with sometimes more than 100 trains per day (including Amtrak #'s 3 and 4). And I was surprised at the personal and polite communication that many DS’s had with the crews, like " BNSF 6548 west, Mr. Jones you will be held at CP East Grants for Amtrak #4 to crossover to Main 1. You will then have the signal to proceed on Main 2." This is a hypothetical I created to illustrate what I heard sometimes. I have also ridden #3 and #4 in the dome lounge with my scanner on and heard the DS’s attempts to expedite #3 & #4 through the many freight trains. Perhaps others have more personal knowlege about BNSF’s system dispatching but what I observed was, to me, impressive.
DC, as a current prisoner on Amtrak #4 in the territory you’re mentioning, I wish I could relate! Of course, motive power problems are what they are…
Balt, not exctly on-subject, but I certainly related to your situation at retirement. I had three years as Numero Uno before retiring, and the next guy to go was eight years in seniority (six years in actual age) behind me. The guy on the top of the heap now has about ten years before age 60 rolls round for him.
I would say, offhand, that our job as car retarder operator had more in common with an air traffic controller than with a dispatcher. We had moves to react to several times a minute, and our field was constantly changing (fullness of bowl tracks).
The train dispatching function works great. Lots and lots of teething problems. Took nearly 20 years from signing contract to complete rollout. Even the movement planner is working pretty well these days, although not in high density terminal areas - the data quality in terms of what trains will enter the territory when and where is deficient.
Biggest payoff will be when UTCS and LEADER start talking to each other. Can actually plan timed meets and save some nice chunks of fuel for free. Next up after that will be getting the yard planner tool that’s under development to talk to UTCS. That’ll give much better control of traffic entering and terminating at major terminals.
It’s all about using technology to deliver precision railroading above and beyond what the current state of the art.