Team drivers are common in the trucking industry and provide many service and economic benefits. Crews of tow boats on the inland waterways sign-on, I believe, for 30 day rotations.
Why not team locomotive engineers? Provide the necessary amenities for sleeping, eating and communicating; appropriate training and information for operating safely and efficiently over the assigned route; all requisite agreements for bidding on assignments, frequency and duration of trips, etc. One nearly universal complaint of train crews is the unpredictability of their lives. With team crews, once on duty the team would know within reasonable boundries when their trip would end, with several days off without being subject to call. Unit trains and transcontinental intermodal trains would seem to be logical “test beds” [:)].
What a cool idea. you could rotate a month on then a month off. I think merchant mariners have much longer rotations like eight months on then four off. Don’t truckers do like a month on then two weeks off? What about accomodations? - A crew car - a decent head would be nice, that seems to be a big deterent to me when considering becoming an engineer or conductor. Do railroads still have dormitories at crew change points?
Could go back to the old GE BQ cabs like the L&N had.[:D]
Remember seeing a crew car on a freight in Australia a couple of years back.The train was going from Port Augusta to Perth across the Nullaboor Plain. Maybe a comment from one of our Australia n friends on the forum> How do the work?
Amtrak experimented with a version of that right after their operating crews took over from the freight railroads in the mid '80’s…Did not work well then.
…That idea seems to have merrit from an outsider’s [me], point of view…What’s in place now seems not to take any blue ribbons. Wouldn’t it seem to have possibilities of becoming more competitive against long haul trucking…Sure Unions would be a problem but they and everything else in railroading might be less of a problem if the railroads continue to loose business to competition…! Maybe reading the hand writing on the wall might cause some serious negotiations.
that is one of the most far out ideas i have ever heard!!! team engineers!! are you nuts!!! you first problem is the rail roads themselfs…just about evey rail road runs by thier own rule book…consolidate the rule books would be your first order of biz… second… i am not one to have to learn 3000+ miles of teritory!!! even if it was 12 on…and then rest time offf…you would still need to learn all of it becouse you might go a long ways in 12 hours…or only a short distance… but you will need to be quified on it all… 3rd… you better be putting some kind of sleeping car on the train… a cab isnt the greatest place to be trying to get rest…you can sleep…but it is very uncomfortable for longer time periods…
it is a fine system the way it is… their is not as much delay in moveing the freight as you think thier is… unit trains dont sit as much as you think they do… if eveything runs as it should… meaning…no mechanical problems…and crew mangement dose its job right… when a train gets to a termial… thier is a crew to get on it and go…very little down time…down time between crew changes most takes place becouse the train is late getting in and a crew is already on duty wating for its arival and is eating up time in which it can work… or crew mangagment messed up…and didnt have a crew rested for its schedualed arival…or the trian needs to be inspecded agin…or the power needs to be serviced (fueled)…
we also know where our trips end…they end at a termianl that is the “end of the line” so to speak for our district…our runs have a starting terminal…and a end terminal… you start at the same place…and you end at the same place…every trip…evey run…
csx engineer
csxengineer-
Can we take it that your not going to sign up for the first trial? LOL
Valid points though.
Jay
Absolutely, if an engineer is familiar with the territory he is running on, with all its little quirks and idiosyncracies, not the mention the location of signals, grades, where the dips are, it is of benefit to everyone involved, other trains they meet, the handling of the train. Can’t even fathom learning enormous amounts of territory so well as to run a train proficiently over it.
On the other hand, I always found Mark Twain’s LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI fascinating when he wrote of being an apprentice riverboat captain and how they’d learn the river and how he thought he could never do it.
Bring back the caboose.
Great responses! Thanks.
Random thoughts in reply:
- Intially use only on single-line routes, not inter-line runs. Chicago-LA on BNSF, for example. No problem with rule books on such a route.
- Information techology would be a major assist. In the 1970’s, Frisco had locomotives equipped with route profiles that “unrolled” the route ahead for engineers. That was primative compared to today’s capabilities.
- Certainly, special training and route-familialization would be required.
- Sleeper cabs have been refined over the years in the trucking industry, so GE/EMD should be able to collaborate with Peterbilt, et al, to build integrated sleepers into lead units of acceptable design. (Crew cars seem to me to be a “throw-back” solution.)
- The comment on Mark Twain as Mississippi river pilot is on-point!
- Does anyone have more information on the Amtrak experiment?
Been watching this with some interest, as I feel in my gut that the BLE merger with the Teamsters has something like this in mind…
Part of the issue, as I see it, is that the 8-hour law would require triple crew, not doubles, in a given ‘team’. Perhaps more if the ‘conductor’ and engine crew have to be separate teams.
Much of the actual incentive for ‘team’ driving in OTR trucking is that husband-and-wife (or other ‘social bondings’) teams are able, and willing, to share the per-mile and per-diem income. One doubts that this would be easy to work into current union/seniority-based assignments, even if route restrictions or changing the 8-hour law to 12 hours were able to permit a two-person team to work over 24 hours straight. This would almost surely have to be started and tested in certain segments, perhaps those where current time delays already exceed 24 to 36 hours and recrewing is difficult (as on some UP segments in the chemical corridor).
With respect to interline runs: Doesn’t seem to me that crew-team changes are particularly onerous here – the train is required to stop every few hundred miles anyway, and it shouldn’t be difficult to balance ‘teams’ to keep run-throughs full crewed in any case where rule-book inconsistencies, unwillingness to run through, etc. were factors.
Information technology is a good idea… but what happens at any time the fancy tech stops working or, worse, is hacked or subject to denial-of-service attacks? In any case, a system fancy enough to ‘unroll the road’ for engineers in the cab could unroll it with equal facility for a team of ‘remote engineers’ sitting in the dispatch building in Omaha or Jacksonville, with the guy actually aboard the train reduced to handling emergency situations, conductor duties, etc. Unions recognize this.
We have seen more or less exactly how much ‘training and route-familiarization’ is likely to ensue should this idea be implemented. Both the magnitude and time require
Great responses! Thanks.
Random thoughts in reply:
- Intially use only on single-line routes, not inter-line runs. Chicago-LA on BNSF, for example. No problem with rule books on such a route.
- Information techology would be a major assist. In the 1970’s, Frisco had locomotives equipped with route profiles that “unrolled” the route ahead for engineers. That was primative compared to today’s capabilities.
- Certainly, special training and route-familialization would be required.
- Sleeper cabs have been refined over the years in the trucking industry, so GE/EMD should be able to collaborate with Peterbilt, et al, to build integrated sleepers into lead units of acceptable design. (Crew cars seem to me to be a “throw-back” solution.)
- The comment on Mark Twain as Mississippi river pilot is on-point!
- Does anyone have more information on the Amtrak experiment?
The Rock Island proposed something like this back in the late 1970s. Have 2 crews equipped with a dormitory car take grain trains from the midwest elevators to the gulf and back. Each crew working 12 hours, changing when ever the time ran out.
Needless to say, not much interest in the idea and never went anywhere.
I second that! … Does the railraod insurance policy cover whiplash?
the caboos is gone…the flagman is gone…the brakeman is gone…and so be the fireman… the engineer is being replaces by a box in yards…and someday…i hope when im long retired… the last crewman on the train might be gone…replaced by a guy in a cubical with a computer screen and some controlls for running a train…first in some center here…and then outsorced to someplace in India…
Thankyou…but or choo choo is broken right now… call agin soon…
csx engineer
All in all, I think it is far more likely that trains may someday be controlled from a remote location than it is likely that this idea would ever develop past speculation. The points made about maintenance of the facilities, as well as eating and proper rest, are exactly right, the railroads don’t do that well maintaining what facilities currently exist.
It would take a special breed to sign up for what would be a month long train ride. And regardless of what kind of system would be developed for previewing the road ahead, I’m sure my fellow engineers would agree with me that a heavy fog would do them in, not to mention heavy snows, rains, not being THAT familiar with the road would override the map in the human brain, at least it would in mine.
Three words:
Vibration dose level
It is unhealthy to subject someone to the levels and types of vibration found on a moving rail vehicle for long periods of time.
Hugh, I agree… but isn’t this addressable by better cab isolation, soundproofing, etc.? (Or even better air-ride seats…something that ought to be easy to do with converted truck technology)
I’ve never heard that long periods of exposure to Pullman accommodations were unhealthy…
Granted, modern locomotive riding quality isn’t too good. But the ‘kinder’ a locomotive is to expensive track geometry, the kinder it’s likely to be to people riding on it. And THAT is a future that needs to come soon (independent of the number of people in the cab)
csxengineer98, what’s WRONG with a cubicle in Jacksonville this time of year? After your ‘8 on’ you can head to the beach…
The thread is interesting, but I think it represents extremes in thinking.
The railroad industry hasn’t figured out-yet- that you stand to make the most money by moving the most freight farthest, fastest, and intact. Shipping lines (both trucks and ships) figured this out long ago. Any trucker will tell you that he gets paid by the amount of mileage he drives, not how many hours he’s worked to get there. Cargo ship skippers make bonusses for bringing in cargo intact, ahead of schedule, and efficiently; nothing makes a ship owner happier than having to spend less on fuel because the skipper sailed the ship well.
Rail employees aren’t dumb- they figured out long ago that it really didn’t matter what you did, because you were going to stop doing it after eight hours. You might end up in a siding in the middle of nowhere, but don’t worry- someone will come out and pick you up. And if the lead unit’s busted or the head is backed up- who cares? You won’t see it again for a while.
What would happen if a locomotive engineer had a unit “assigned” to him? It wasn’t so long ago that railroads did just that. They also assigned cabooses to conductors. I doubt an experienced guy like CSX engineer is going to complain about the head when he knows he’s the miscreant that made the run 8 diarhea deposit in the nose. He’s probably going to clean it up himself, if it’s “his” engine. He’s also going to know, by experience, when that ol’ machine is going to break down. Rather than spend a night in a no-tell motel, imagine how much better off he will be if he spends the night in a decently air conditioned (or heated), sound proofed caboose. No, that’s not possible? Tell that to Grandpa and Granny who are driving around the country right now, living in their Winnebago, spending your inheritance.
And if your relief is only four units and a doorway back from you, you won’t spend “down time” stuck in a siding waiting on a cab. You won’t end up cluttering up the cab with you