Pardon such basic questions, but exactly how do railroads schedule crews? What is an extra board? When a train arrives at its destination, does the crew have to stay there or find their own way home? Have things changed since the old (steam) days? Are crew limited as to how many hours they can work? I don’t know anyone who works for a railroad and always wondered about these things.
Here is a good book that answers all those questions. It taught me alot about the railroad.
http://half.ebay.com/cat/buy/prod.cgi?cpid=5061481&pr=1737794
Crews are normally either assigned to a job (same crew works same job) or work in a pool where they work in equence based on when they arrived the terminal and when they are rested. Think of the list to get a seat at a restaurant. When arrive you give your name to the server, when you name comes to the top of the list (called “first out” on the railroad), you are called for your table (train).
The extra board is the group of people that cover vacancies (vacation days, sick days, etc) and trains outside the normal operation of the pool (short turnaround jobs, work trains, unscheduled yard jobs, etc).
There are two places crews can be, at their “home” terminal, their base of operations or their “away from home” terminal, the other end of their run. When the crews are at their away from home terminal the railroad has to provide them lodging. Normally a crew runs from the home terminal to the away from home terminal, gets rested, then runs a train back to the home terminal. If the railroad has to move crews around due to imbalances (they run 5 trains west and only 3 trains east) they will move the surplus crews cack as “deadheads” where they pay the crews to travel to another terminal either to return home or to be available for a train. They can be deadheaded by van, bus, train or Amtrak. there have been a couple places they have been deadheaded by airline.
There have been many, many changes since the steam days. Crews in the steam days could work 16 hrs in a stretch, now they can only work 12 (Federal law change). The distances the crews operate is much longer (150-250 miles typical now versus 100-150 in steam days). There are fewer crew members (an engineer and conductor now vs. engineer, fireman, conductor and 2 or 3 brakemen in the steam era). Some crews now can operate on any of 2 or three routes out of a home terminal, in the steam era it was pretty much one route.
The Federal Hours of Service Law says that if a crew works 11 hr and 59 min or les
Thanks for the replies, I understand now what some of the other sites are saying when they speak of no home life for railroaders, half the time you are not even home at the end of a run. Those 16 hour days back in “the good old days” sound pretty grim.
16 was reduced to 14 in 1971 and reduced to 12 in 1973, IIRC. 12 it remains.
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Originally posted by ValleyX
16 was reduced to 14 in 1971 and reduced to 12 in 1973, IIRC. 12 it remains.
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16 hours was reduced to 14 hours on Dec. 26, 1970 and from 14 hours to 12 hours on Dec. 26, 1972.
Virlon
Save your ticket… The P.E. will rise again…
Well, I was close. [;)]