My brother called last night with a great story. He’s biking across the country from Vancouver BC to come see us in Iowa, and yesterday he was on his way to Mt. Rushmore. Along the way, he was riding parallel to some tracks and a train passed by. One set of the wheels on a boxcar was stuck in place so it was making lots of noise and kicking up sparks everywhere. The sparks were setting off a whole bunch of grass fires! His water bottle wasn’t nearly enough, so he was able to flag down a car and get them to call the local fire department. When the fire trucks arrived, he helped them put out the fires. He doesn’t know what happened with the train…
Yikes! Can you say “flat spots”?
Hey jsandah, welcome to the forums! What part of Iowa are you located in?
…No surprise…With business operations working on a shoe string with regards to employee’s now, no one is near to even see such happenings when something is wrong and nothing is alerted until a passerby such as in the above post or worse, an accident really occurs…A derailment.
Example: Just a few minutes ago tried to call {a human}, at our cable co. and it took too much time to actually get to one…First had to listen to advertisements and push this button and the next one, etc…Finally did get to a real person…and that was a real surprise…! Most of the time one just speaks to automation…No human…None available.
Sioux County, in a town whose only railroad tracks were ripped up decades ago and all that’s left is a walking trail and an old bridge [sigh]
Hey Quentin, You will not get that here, and I am proud of that fact. Here at my cable company we don’t even have voice mail. In the worst case you might get the answering service after hours but if it’s important they will put you through. If you call here you are guaranteed to talk to a real person. I for one can’t stand the automated answering systems. It says to me that a company doesn’t have enough respect for there customers to hire someone to help them. It’s called customer service, but they make it the customer run-around. And it’s a waste of my time.
jsandah,[#welcome] to the Forums;be sure and check out the Depot,Diner & Coffee Shop
while you’re on.
Be sure to keep us updated on your brother’s trip,that sounds very interesting and a very
good way to see the scenery,along with enjoying railroads and every thing else!
Chad,I admire that very much!!! I wish some of the so called companies would take that
into consideration and put people back to work answering the phones;but as Quentin said,
“try to save money”. I know when I call about something and upset because of an issue
that I have with whom ever,when I get to speak to a person right away,I get less upset
than when I have to keep pushing buttons. Guess they figure if you get frustrated enough
making musical sounds with your phone,you’ll probably forget why you called in the first place!
Would a defect detector pick up something like that?
jsandah - welcome to the forums!
…Chad…More power to you…Shout it from the housetops…! We need more businesses run like that that you cite.
I worked for decades for a large Corportation here in Muncie {and Pennsylvania with test work}, and here in Muncie our large plant had a very nice loby at the entrance with a great ambience including a pleasant operator to greet all who entered and to provide help in locating people, etc…and then in the last decade I worked…guess what…That was changed to a telephone {in the loby}…That was the greeter…A telephone…!! One person’s pay check was saved and how much image was lost upon someone {customer}, entering the front door…
I agree with you Walt, it does make me more mad when I have to navigate through a bunch of questions to get to someone. And it makes me even more mad when I get to the right place only to find a voicemail instead of a person. This has become a real problem lately with our channel providers. All of the satellite delivered services that we carry have hotlines that we call when we are haveing decoder or reception problems. In the past you could pretty much count on someone immediately answering the phone when problems occour. When you are running a head end that feeds 1/2 million homes and a channel goes out you need to get it fixed as fast as possible. Now the service from these channels, especially the digital operation centers, all have these automated phone systems that can take 5-10 min to navigate through all the options, and many of them will refer you to another branch or building only to have to do it all over again. Last month we had our BET channel go out and after 2 hours of trying to get in touch with someone and not getting anything but voicemail boxes I gave up. It was the end of the day and most of these places are back east and long gone by the end of my day. the channel was out all night. i tried again the next morning and still got nowhere. I had to call the co-op that we pay for the channels we carry and tell them what happened. we pay these channels big money to carry them and this kind of thing is unacceptable. Eventually the big wigs of all parties involved had to deal with it and they acted like I was not worth there effort. If this was over the counter kind of bussiness I would never go back. Unfortunately in this situation what can you do. The people want these channels so we have to carry them to satisfy the customer. They got us by the balls. And all this for what? To save a couple bucks at the expense of customer satisfaction. I know I will never run a bussiness like that.
Makes you wonder how many potential customers just turn around and walk out the door. I would much rather work with a poorly run company that I can directly call a representative at, then a well run company where I can never get a hold of anyone.
Sorry about hijacking your thread jsandah.
We’re getting a bit off the specific subject of an undetected bad wheel on a train. Among the examples of bad telephone ettiquette that I hate:
1, Finally getting through to a secreterial person and asking to leave a message for the actually desired party, and having the person say “I’ll switch you to voice mail”. In this case I would have preferred to have gone to the voice mail in the first place.
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Telling your story to one person, they ask you to hold on. Without telling you they transfer you to another number. They may or may not announce you to the next party, but it irritates me when the new person says “Can I help you?” without acknowledging that they have heard any of the story that you already told.
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“Your call is very important to us” messages that interrupt the muzac that I was getting hypnotically lulled by.
You’re just a stone’s throw away from Murphy Siding, then- he can tell you where the railroading hot spots are in that area I’m sure.
#2 really chaps my hide. Especially when you go through 2 minuets of explaining what you want only to have to repeat yourself to every person you get transfered to and you get transfered miltiple times.
I think the hot spots were near Mt. Rushmore!
Yes, Willy, a detector should have caught a sliding wheel, just due to the elevation in temperature. I’m not sure which line this was, but the possibility exists that there were no detectors.
I don’t know that we have what would pass for a “hotspot” in Sioux Falls.[:)] We do hear about Sioux County, Iowa all the time, though. Every time a big bad storm comes through, it seems to miss us, and beat up on Sioux County.[8]
The western part of S.D. is having a drought, and it is dryer than dry. Years back, when I lived in Gillette, Wyoming, I recall some trins being tailed by railroad employees putting out small grass fires.
A defect detector usually will not pick up a sliding wheel until it has been sliding long enough for the heat to transfer from the flat spot being created to near the axle or rim area near the brakeshoes. By then the car may have developed enough of a false flange from the metal being displaced at the flattened area to either have derailed or (hopefully) trip the dragging equipment detrctor.
There may be sliding wheel detectors on some road, but I don’t recall ever reading about one.
I’ve been here less than a year, so I haven’t had to endure any of those big storms yet. But at least we’ve been getting more rain than South Dakota. My brother had to hitch a ride on a bus soon after Mt. Rushmore because of time constraints, so I guess that’s the end of his railfanning.
Any “lukewarm spots” in this area if there are no hotspots? The most activity we have is the BNSF line going north-south through Sioux Center.
I’d think he’d be able to make good time from there- it’s all downhill (to the Missouri River, anyway)![:D]