That is my question for today. Say a yard has been “flat switched” by kicking cars from one end for at least 30 years. RR Company “A” built the yard 30 years ago and then went bankrupt 5 years later. RR Company “B” was created (shortline) to switch the yard and run the remaining tracks. 25 years later, company “C” buys RR “B” and says “no more kicking cars!”.
Any reason why kicking a “flat yard” is suddenly bad besides “We said so”?
A blanket policy of shoving all cars to rest seems unlikely unless the yard tracks are in bad shape. The railroaders in our midst would have better answers.
In a well managed company, management should regularly reevaluate the risk quotient of their activities.
Just because a practice was accepted behavior in past decades does not mean it is appropriate for a current environment. When I was a kid growing up, I didn’t have a bicycle helmet, and the rest of the neighborhood kids didn’t either. Yet these days, kids with helmets on bikes is the norm. Are kids heads softer nowadays, or is today’s pavement harder? Not likely. But parents’ evaluation of the risks have changed.
Amen.
Cars of eggs, light bulbs, tv and monitor screens and dynamite should not be kicked; other things probably ok…but look at the lading and the placards before making your decision.
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Getting the safety numbers up. If nothing moves, no incidents happen (and customers don’t get switched, and they get fed up and take their business to trucks, but that doesn’t seem to matter).
Apparently the amount paid out in service interruptions (cars not getting to the customer in a timely manner due to yard work taking 2-3 times longer) is less than the occasional incident in the yard.
Interesting take. I almost wonder if this could be an attempt to reduce traffic to a desired level… but why? Wouldn’t that devalue the whole property? Another example was somewhere on the CP. They started to allow kicking cars and mounting/dismounting moving equipment… and overall velocity went up. It would seem that there is a line when the cost of safety exceeds revenue lost due to slow/no service.
Different departments. It seems one doesn’t care how the others are affected, as long as their numbers look good.
If they really wanted the railroad (at least the one I’m on) to run better, the best thing they could do is tie all management bonuses to performance of the company overall instead of local fiefdoms.
Jeff
I’m curious if you can explain a bit more on this score. Would it be a normal part of operating practice to review these moves or would this be normally prompted by something (like an incident/accident)?
It seems counterintuitive to me to drastically change operating practice when it gives the appearance of slowing the entire system down.
Have companies banned kicking cars due to a safety risk? If so, which ones? What are the specific risks of kicking cars that are thought to be excessive?
On the UP, it’s allowed only where specifically authorized.
What can go wrong? By passed (off center) couplers, throwing a switch under a moving car, cornering a car that hasn’t cleared the lead, or kicking a car too hard (making a hard joint that can damage the car or load) to name a few. It doesn’t have to be something that happens a lot, if it happens once that old knee just jerks and a new rule comes out.
It seems like the name of the game, in life in general not just on the railroad, is to eliminate all risk from life. Eventually no one will be able to get out of bed, everything will be too risky.
Jeff
And all you can do all those things with locomotives attached. I know, we can’t have common sense out here, so have another rule.
It’s a shame some outlaw kicking. When done right, it can greatly increase the efficiency of a crew.
I was in Lynchburg, VA a few years ago. An NS yard is right next to a mall parking lot and it’s possible to watch some operations without setting foot on RR property.
They were definitely kicking cars that night, and in the dark. A car would be kicked, roll off into the darkness, then “BANG.”
We don’t kick because it’s not good to kick passenger cars. About the only time we see anything resembling a freight car is when we do railfan weekends.
That said, and to confirm what Jeff said - even with slow speed, controlled coupling, sometimes things don’t line up just right. Back it out, readjust everything, and come in again…
Having GE’s for power almost eliminate ‘kicking’ from the switching menu account of their slow loading behavior even when kicking is allowed.
I’m lucky in that my yard is on a downgrade - so I don’t need to kick, just grab some slack. Gravity will do the rest. And we also usually are assigned EMDs, though at times we have been desperate and had to grab some GE road engines. Not the greatest option, but beggars, choosers and all that…
Many years ago, I was watching SP switch cars from the Santa Clara, California yard tower with the tower operator and a friend of mine… No matter what the crew did, they could not get the two boxcars to couple. Finally the engineer backed the car attached the locomotive into the one they were trying to get that it derailed and tipped over. The tower operator, my friend and I started to laugh so hard that we thought we would have an accident. You should have the explitives NOT deleted from the yardmaster in the Whitehall tower at the south end of the yard over the radio. The FCC would have jumped all over SP if they had heard. I wish I was in the Yard Masters office when he had to explain to the Train Master why he needed the big hook from the Bayshore yard to come down to Santa Clara. They did continue to kick cars in the Santa Clara yard.
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I don’t know of any yards that haven’t authorized kicking cars. Most yards already had restrictions (like Ed’s) on what or how many could be released in a cut. When the rule changed (and it could be just a UP specific change, instead of all GCOR users) there was no change in the site specific instructions, so it’s probably taken for granted that one could still cut off cars in motion in those yards.
Jeff
I guess that’s my point - it increases efficiency IMO more than it hinders things. Plus being unable to mount/dismount moving equipment…recipe for disaster and sending freight back to truck where possible.