Wow, look at all those people involved…
Virtually all the manned jobs involved with ‘paper work’ for shipments have been replace with Electronic Data Exchange between the carriers and their customers. The practice of side carding shipments it terminals went out with the 1960’s.
All scheduled manifest trains have a defined blocking scheme for their trips between Origin and Destination. Those blocking schemes may be dependent upon customer, location or interchange location or any of a number of other reasons depending upon traffic volumes. Terminal supervision know what blocks they are making for which trains. Blocking in the PSR world may include Block Swapping between trains at defined locations in each trains route.
Needless to say the caboose went away in the late 1980’s when the carriers changed their methods of operation away from Timetable & Train Orders. With the elimination of the caboose, the size of the crews also reduced to today’s level of the two man crew - Engineer and Conductor. Of course in yards today’s operation is nominally the Conductor with a belt-pack to operate the locomotive during switching, who ‘may’ be assisted by a ‘Utility Man’.
I wonder if replacing a lot of clerks’ jobs with computers was even more of a labor saving than replacing steam with diesel.
Personal observations from my 51+ year career as well as my families employment history from when my Grandfather hired out in 1910 and my father hired out in 1937.
A B&O Magazine article I recall seeing dating from approximately 1950 indicated B&O employment at that time was approximately 50K people. While I don’t have any kind of exact break down, I will guess 30 to 35% of the total employment was involved in supporting the passenger operations. Thus getting rid of passenger operations to Amtrak was a significant savings. The Passenger Car Dept. was trained on special skills that freight car department personnel were not.
When I went to Baltimore in 1971 as ATM, Baltimore Terminal consisted of the yards Bayview, Curtis Bay, Locust Point, Mt. Clare and Penn Mary - which were staffed with a Yardmaster and two yard clerks around the clock. Each of those yards also had a Agent’s Office that was associated with it and dealt directly with the customers in each yard area - and was two positions the ‘agent’ and the clerk to record and handle the demurrage records.
When I retired in 2016 CSX employment was just North of 20K employees - with CSX consisting of properties from B&O, C&O, WM, ACL, SAL, LN, CEI, GARR, AWP, GM and CR.
It was certainly an ultimate time and cost saver. But have you looked at the initial systems adopted in the Fifties?
One of the major disasters with the Penn Central was that the PRR’s system was fundamentally incompatible with the NYC’s.
When CSX was formed in 1980, The Chessie System side of the operation was using a Burroughs main frame computer system to conduct its business. The Seaboard side of the operation was using a IBM main frame system to conduct their operations. During the middle 1980’s a decision was made that CSX and CSXT would be using IBM systems based on what the Seaboard side had been using, but with some significant changes. It was also decided that equivalent computer horsepower would be installed at both Jacksonville and Baltimore. During the change over period it was decided to move Chessie personnel out of the B&O building and donate it to the City of Baltimore for redevelopment - personnel were moved a block to the North into the Charles Center Building, which was the ‘star’ of a urban redevelopment project taking place in the city along with Harborplace around the Inner Harbor area.
With the decision to have equivalent computer systems at both Jacksonville and Baltimore an embarrassing situation developed - Charles Center could structurally support the computers only on the ground floor (lobby) or the basement. Chessie’s Burroughs equipment was housed on the 11th and 12th floors of the B&O Building and the ‘make do’ decision was to put the IBM equipment on those same floors and not in Charles Center.
During the approximate two year ‘change over’ period, extensive training was undertaken for field personnel of both Chessie and Seaboard sides of the operation so that when CSXT was formed as the actual railroad in the late 1980’s there would not have the computer failures that had plagued Penn Central. During the change over period and the time following the IT charge was go ‘go paperless’ in all possible areas of the operation.
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Can’t speak to the 50’s. I didn’t hire out until 1965 on the B&O at Washington, IN. After ‘writing the Book of Rules’ my first job location was at the Shops office, which was a room in the Shops Yard office.
At the Shops Train Order Office, the daylight Operator would survey all the Agent’s at each location on the Division about the cars placed at their customers, cars their customers would need for the next day and the next week as well as the grain doors the Agency had in its possession as well as the number of grain doors that would be needed in the next week. The ‘old head’ daylight Operator would accumulate most of the data using the operative telegraph wires in lieu of the telephone. Once that report was accumulated it was given to the Division Car Distributor.
Train consists were received and sent over teletype lines to both the next terminal the train would be going to and to Baltimore. The teletype consist would print as a hard copy and also produce a punched paper tape of the consist. Yard clerks would store the inbound punched paper tape and upon receipt of the Waybills from the train that stored tape would be cut and matched car for car with the waybills. The Waybills with the inserted tape in the fold of the waybill would be moved around the ‘track rack’ as the Yardmaster would instruct the yard crews to do the switching. When it came time for the Outbound train, the yard clerks would ‘book’ all the waybills in train standing order and in doing so, would remove the tape from the waybill fold and splice those pieces of tape into a master tape the would contain data about every car in the train. Once the master tape was created and the train departed, the tape would be sent on to the next terminal and to Baltimore. I have no idea of how Baltimore handled the consists (and tapes?) they got from all over the system.
In the Fall of 1967, as an Extra Operator on the Akron-Chicago Division I was sent to Haselton tower at Youngstown to train and subsequently work. Haselton had a teletype machine that was connected to the RCA 3301 computer system and it required specific formats to be able to send or receive message. The tower at Haselton was not involved with the consist function, that was handled by the Haselton Yard Office that was located about 1/2 mile West of the tower.
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Thanks for the updated info. I knew the video was probably the Dinosaur era but thought the historical context and look back was interesting. Interesting to read about all the changes in your post. I knew they blocked trains now but no clue how. I used to watch Milwaukee Road switch crews at the Brookfield, WI interchange switch out loose cars from frieght trains for cargo headed down the branch to Waukesha and beyond. It took them the better part of 90 to 120 min to do so and had to break the train several times to get all the cars set out…meanwhile one of two mainlines was blocked and the crossings intermittently blocked as the locomotives made their back and forth moves. Interesting to watch trackside…that was mid to late-1970’s. Back and forth, back and forth over the RR crossing. My other family members would remark after waiting for the train to clear and not making sense of the back and forth moves would remark when they got home that the railroad was “playing” with their trains again. The interchange tracks are long gone and so is the branch between Brookfield and Waukesha (it still exists under WSOR from Waukesha to Prarie Du Chen…where the long ago pontoon bridge was to Marquette, Iowa).
Locomotives in the 1970’s could be anything on the Milwaukee Twin Cities Main. They did use B&O (Navy Blue and Yellow), Chessie System, Southern Railway leased power after the mass locomotive failure event during the winter of 1977.
Thanks for all the info, I have a better understanding on how freights are made 
Thanks though, Seriously I used to think that it was random cars heading to a certain destination but all had different industries and had to be sorted post-trip but now I get it
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Despite what many may think - the Class 1 carriers have their merchandise freight trains operating on internally published schedules with defined classifications of traffic that each train is to be carrying. These schedules and classifications have been developed and modified over time in concert with the customers the carriers have and the needs of those customers.
In the 21st Century it is a given that rail customers have track(s) serving their plants and railroad crews will switch these plants at agreed upon times. Times that work in concert with operations of the customer - customers don’t want their employees to be delayed in the performance of their duties by railroad crews switching. The reality is that most plants get switched after plant operations have ended for the working day - 2nd and 3rd tricks on the railroad.
Part of the rules that apply to railroad shipments both from a shipper and consignee perspective is that the customer is entitled to ONE spotting of a car at their plant for either loading or unloading. If the customer orders a car to a second or subsequent spotting, the customer will be charged a ‘Intra-plant Switching Charge’ for the move.
Another rule that applies to railroad shipments is Demurrage - Demurrage applies to the time it takes for a customer to load or unload a railroad owned car. Demurrage rules allow for a set time for cars to be loaded and/or unloaded without charge - if that time is exceeded there will be a bill rendered for the excessive time that the customer delayed the car.
Railroading is much much more than just operating trains from A to Z that the ordinary railfan sees.
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It’s like BNSF running a high priority ‘Z’ train siding all traffic because its so important compared to other railroads like CSX combining Autoracks and Intermodal on the same trains because of PSR
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Our work windows pretty much went away. Now customers are alerted when the train is on the way with the various apps (or sometimes a phone call). And we do a fair amount of daylight switching at industries, since we also have night time switchers so it allows better engine and crew utilization.
Zug, don’t you work for CSX?
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Zug is NS
Different carriers have differing relations with their customers.
Ah, Ok, Thanks, @BaltACD
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Doesn’t matter. Stuff has changed a lot in the last 5 years even. It’s much more Amazon-esque than traditional RR-ish anymore.
Time marches on.
How bad has it changed since 2020?
on a scale of 1-10 would work
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I don’t know how to put a number on it. I’m immersed in it, and not an outsider.
It’s pretty much like anything else in life. Much more user app based.
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Oh, Ok
What Exactly happened to the SD40Es?
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I just had one the other day. Nothing happened to it?