No, you are.
PUBLIC passenger timetables have nothing to do whatsoever with operating rules questions, so no one but you is talking about them. We are all talking about the employees operating timetable, which is the only timetable that is relevant to running a train over the line. And if a train is running on a timetable schedule, it cannot depart any station ahead of the printed times. Ever.
If I am, then so was Hungerford.
The passenger concern with sections, according to him, was that the ‘last’ section that arrived in Chicago had to stop at no more than the passenger, published timetable time.
Any passenger boarding at an intermediate station might expect “their” train to be leaving no earlier than the scheduled departure time for that station, which led to the question whether one of the sections, presumably the last, was ‘reserved’ for the intermediate boardings, with the others running ahead of the published timetable time. This was one of the questions I had about operating multiple sections of NYC trains.
Equally obviously, any train would not leave ahead of its employee timetable time (except perhaps with appropriate dispatch permission). But employee timetable time is not what passengers care about, or choose a train over. On the other hand, if the employee timetable does not ensure that the train performs to the expectation of the public timetable, and the paying passengers, it’s pointless in this context, isn’t it?
Then you have company.
There is no “appropriate dispatch permission”. The ONLY way to depart a train ahead of it’s scheduled time is to run it as some other train (extra or other schedule that departs early) in which case it is no longer the original train or a section of that train.
Again, you DO NOT run any section ahead of the scheduled time.
The only way to do that is to run a different schedule/train number, which is NOT the same thing as “displaying green signals and running extra sections” which the thread is about.
Those extra sections can only follow the schedule.
The only way to run “advance sections” is to run an entirely different train. Your source is probably talking about that and describing it as an “advance section” in a colloquial sense, and you’re confusing it with the train order rules on running “sections”.
Because otherwise what you’re describing is not allowed under any timetable/train order rules.
Wrong. The question is about displaying green signals and running in multiple sections. That’s an EMPLOYEE timetable question.
The PUBLIC timetable is what is irrelevant and pointless to “running sections” of a schedule under train order rules, and has nothing t
As I recall, the discussion of announced timing came directly after a discussion of ‘advance’ trains like the Advance Commodore Vanderbilt which clearly established that, on NYC, those were considered completely separate trains and run as such, regardless of whether they were in sections or not.
But that’s not what I have been discussing, which is how the EMPLOYEE timetable would have had to be written to account for the issues with the PUBLIC timetable. The ‘relevance’ to “running sections” of a schedule under train order rules, and to operating authority, is that anything employees were told to do would be subservient to what the railroad could tell its passengers to expect. Unless you’re going to pretend you’re model railroaders who can run any train ‘my railroad, my rules’ and ignore that passenger custom is what allows the train to be run profitably at all…
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Incidentally, I’m still waiting for one of you rules mavens to show me the section of a relevant NYC employee timetable that authorizes sections to run so closely together that passengers on an observation platform could clearly make out not only the headlight but the feedwater-vent plume of the following section’s locomotive.
Spacing between trains isn’t specific to running sections. This applies to ALL trains.
IF THERE IS NO BLOCK SIGNAL SYSTEM, a specified time interval (20 minutes in my Canadian UCOR rulebook found under Rule 91, YMMV, most rulebooks should be similar) between following trains is to be maintained between trains passing at open train order offices. Train order signals will be set to stop by the operator to maintain this spacing at train order offices.
If there are block signals, trains will be operating on signal indication and can be closer together.
Your story also doesn’t indicate how straight of a line the trains are operating on. You can potentially see a following train at quite a distance across flat open terrain.
The point here being that there are very good reasons to run the sections close together, the closest approximation possible to ‘one train with multiple engines’.
Likely totally irrelevant to anywhere on the New York Central any train ran in sections…
The question that comes up here is whether or not, if the block signals are set close enough to permit this short a monitored headway, would there be still enough time for the following engineer to actually react to and stop his train within the reported distance. I would personally presume, and this might be fairly easily established, that this functionality might be provided via the NYC ATS, but the irrevocable nature of a ‘penalty’ application under that system would make it highly unlikely, so I’d expect a whole lot of pulling the forestaller combined with a considerable amount of nudge, nudge, wink, wink when the Valve Pilot tapes were read if they included any ATS activation indications.
All the reports I have of the following distance are more or less hearsay from third parties. I think I have seen photos or even newsreel-type footage that shows the actual “effect”, and from those it might be possible to deduce whether the trains were in fact on a relatively long straight or gently-curved stretch (of which there are certainly many on the Water Level Route).
One thing that might be causing confusion is that if a train was running in three sections, the first two sections would have green flags to indicate it was a scheduled (i.e. not an extra) train with a section following. The last section would not have a flag. Perhaps that is why people are thinking the ‘actual’ train is the last one and the sections are running ‘in advance’ of it?
Important to remember that all three sections together would constitute one train; it’s not three separate trains. On a dispatcher’s sheet, the train would not be considered to have passed the station or tower until all three sections had gone by for example.
As noted, a scheduled train couldn’t leave before it’s scheduled departure time, so the first section would only be able to leave at earliest at the scheduled departure time. Each section would then follow. On New York Central, they would be on 10 min. intervals, so stories of one section’s engine being right behind the other’s observation car are probably just a story…although since NYC had quite a bit of four-track mainlines, it’s possible two trains could have been running very close to each other but on separate tracks?
If you had six sections of the Century running ten minutes apart, with the first section departing at schedule time and arriving precisely ‘on the advertised’… the passengers in the last section would be nearly an hour late coming to a stop. That seems unadvisable considering how much these passengers were paying for 18-hour or better service.
If the trains ran end-to-end, or didn’t allow ‘receiving passengers’ at intermediate stops later in the trip, then the answer is simple – the train is run ‘that much’ quicker so that the first section leaves at ‘advertised’ departure time, and the last section just pulls in and stops at ‘advertised’ arrival time. That’s a relatively high increase in overall speed over what the ‘carded time’ would indicate average locomotive or consist speed would be.
If there are intermediate stops, then the 10-minute ‘padding’ becomes more important as each section has to run ‘slower enough’ than the one ahead of it that the entire braking, dwell, and acceleration delay can be accommodated. Conversely, if all the sections stop when the first one does, and then proceed hitching and starting as each subsequent one does, it seems to me that you’re likely to get very unhappy Pullman passengers, of much the kind you hear about regarding switching at Buffalo in media noctem.
Note that these are essentially all customer-service issues, not train-operation rules. They could be readily handled if the ‘last’ train could arrive 10-minutes-times-the-number-of-sections later. But we’d then hear just what I recall Hungerford mentioning – a terrible clamor among passengers to be on as ‘early’ a section as possible, or to receive a
It wouldn’t. The timetable has ONE schedule for each train symbol. No 93 has one and only one schedule. If it has no sections it has that one schedule. If it is run in twenty sections it has that one schedule. Doesn’t matter. One schedule.
No. It doesn’ matter what the public schedule says. The crews and dispatchers will be operating to the timetable schedule. For the operation of the trains, the public timetable is irrelevant. The public timetable is written to correspond to the employee timetable, it holds precedence. If the public time table says the train departs at 305 pm and the employee timetable says the train departs at 310pm, the train departs at 310 pm.
That’s because there isn’t. And they didn’t run sections that way. Sections may be hours apart. There is no requirement for sections to be run nose to tail. That is your model railroader sensibilities taking over.
The first section departs on time, ALL, repeat ALL following sections that are actually sections depart late.
Exactly correct. Now you understand.
We will ignore the fact that in VAST majority of schedules there isn’t a scheduled arrival time, only scheduled departure times.
You will have to explain how that works from a space-time standpoint.
A train, No 5, is scheduled to arrive at Bess at 3:10 pm, has a very leisurely station stop of 5 minutes and a scheduled departure of 3:15 pm. 50 miles away it has a scheduled arrival at Cloy at 3:55 pm and scheduled departure at 3:59 pm.
You say the first section departs at the scheduled departure and the last section arrives at the scheduled arrival time.
As you pointed out in a previous comment there are 6 sections running 10 minutes apart, so the last section is an hour behind the first.
If 6th No 5 arrives Bess at 3:10 pm and 1st No 5 can’t leave Bess until 3:15 pm that means that all 6 sections have to be at Bess between 3:10 and 3:15. Plus since 1st No 5 is running an hour ahead of 6th No 5, that means that first No 5 arrived Bess at 2:10 pm and has just been sitting there twiddling it’s thumbs for an hour before it leaves.
At the next stop Cloy, 1st No 5 departing Bess at 3:
Railfans) You might find this interesting…
Directly quoted from the “Rules of the Operating Department, PERE MARQUETTE RAILWAY COMPANY, effective September 27, 1936.”
Page 24 - Rule D19. When a train is turned out against the current of traffic, green or yellow faces must be displayed to the front and side, and to the rear, a green or yellow face toward the inside and a red face to the opposite side.
Page 24 - Rule 20. All sections except last will display two green flags, and, in addition, two green lights by night in the places provided for that purpose on the front of the engine.
In the “Definitions” section of the same book…
Section - One or more trains running on the same schedule displaying signals or for which signals are displayed.
Extra Train - A train not authorized by a time-table schedule. It may be designated as -
Extra for any extra train, except work extra;
Work extra for work train extra.
Notice in rule D19 the use of “yellow”. Never seen this in practice though 99% of the pictures you see of the PM are B&W. It would be very hard to tell.
PMR
I believe that Rule D19 applied to rear end marker lights. Various roads used green or yellow to the side and front of marker lights with red to the rear.
The green or yellow would be turned to the rear on the side next to an adjacent track when in a siding or running against the current of traffic so that a train on the other track did not think that they were about to hit a train on their track.
Mark
Correct, in many rule books rule 19 applies to marker lights, which are on the rear of the train, and the discussion on sections concerns classifications lights, on the front of the train and are often covered by Rule 20. (Rule numbers may vary by railroad, for example in the B&O 1953 rules, Markers are rule 28 and class lights are rule 21.)
The other thing is that the name rule “D19” indicates it is a rule that only applies in “double track” or “current of traffic” operation (not on single track). Those rules apply on on the current of traffic operation, which while a very common method on the prototype, is a relatively uncommon method on a model railroad. Current of traffic is a very specific signal system with very specific rules (Rule 251 et al), not to be confused with “two main tracks” or CTC (Rule 261 et al) which is a completely different operation, signal arrangement and set of rules.
I didn’t say that, Stix said that, and I was pointing out how that couldn’t possibly work.
The only possible way to do this if all sections are expected to stop is to make the 10-minute spacing ‘flexible’ in the same way CBTC blocks are flexible in distance: as each section arrives at Bess, the 10 minutes starts to decrement during braking, then dwell, then at a slower overall rate as the stopped section comes back up to speed. (This would be the point where people on the observation platform might see trains approach ‘more closely’) To me that implies a reduction to some form of restricted speed for the following section close to the station, but that then becomes incorporated into that section’s braking run for station stop.
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You put the through people on the first trains and they don’t make stops. You put the people going to the last half stations on the middle trains and they are express to the middle, local the second half. Then you put the people going to the first half stations on the last third trains and they makes all scheduled stops. The people on the platforms at the intermediate stations don’t know what train is going by they just know what train the railroad announces. If the first 3 trains go zipping past the station without stopping carrying the long haul passengers, the guy on the platform has no idea what trains they are. Not his. Then the station agent annouces, now arriving track 2, No 5 the Chicagoan (or whatever).&nbs
And yet during World War 2, it happened all the time. Given how hard it was to get a seat - let alone a Pullman berth - during the war, having to wait a half hour or more for your train to leave wouldn’t be seen as a big deal.
And why not?
You realize “expected, scheduled, enforced time” is not a thing, right?
Trains can’t run AHEAD of the operating schedule. The only rule about running late is that their schedule is valid for 12 HOURS. (And if the late train has superiority, the inferior train(s) wait… and wait… and wait… or, you know, the dispatcher gets involved and issues train orders to modify the situation. If CTC, superiority rules don’t apply, and trains run via signal indication.)
Try telling that to contemporary NYC upper management, who insisted on a report of precisely this every day the Century ran, even when they were overseas or on vacation. You certainly wouldn’t work for that railroad very long after that.
Dan will know the specific NYC rules in detail, but I don’t think NYC ran CTC until the early '50s, in the Perlman era, long after the heyday of multiple sections of the more prestigious trains. The rules applying to their version of four-track operation would apply, and I think we’ve already agreed that the only way this could work at 85mph speed would be to run relative to block signal indication or ATS activation followed by forestalling.
We’re not talking about management reports about “on time performance”. We’re talking about how the operating rules for sections work.
And if they’re running 6 sections (so the last one can’t be running less than 1-2 hours “late”) then the performance metric they’re using would account for that. It wouldn’t necessarily be based on the operating timetable.
Not remotely the same topics.