Does anybody know if UP still uses the Harriman Dispatch Center? Or was dispatching moved when the new UP headquarters opened up in Omaha?
| I dont believe UP’s dispatchers are centrally located. I know they have a dispatch center in Spring Tx, near Houston…Thats an X-SP dispatch center…Maybe someone else can enlighten us…Danny |
|---|
HDC is still very much in use.
The center in Spring is staffed by UP, BNSF, and possibly other companies’ dispatchers to deal with situations peculiar to that area. I believe there’s a similar center in the LA area, and A dispatcher for UP and Metra’s Chicago operations (east of Elmhurst) is stationed at Proviso.
I can’t answer the whole question, but I can say that the UP’s Little Rock Sub (Little Rock-Longview, TX) and Reisor Sub (Marshall, TX to Reisor-Shreveport, LA) are controlled by Omaha dispatcher 29.
The Spring Dispatching Center is specific to the Houston Metroplex…TD1, TD2 and TD3 each have specific dispatching duties.
(Train Dispatcher 1, 2 &3)
One controls inbound/outbound mainline traffic, one controls mainline and industrial traffic inside the Metroplex, and one controls entrance to and from all of the yards in Houston and surrounding areas.
Staffing is provided by UP and BNSF, no preference is given to any one carrier’s trains, and any dispatcher can run any train on either UP’s or BNSF’s tracks to keep the metroplex fluid.
Corridor managers from UP and BNSF have small offices there.
So, odd as it may seem, you might find a BNSF dispatcher running a UP train through the middle of a BNSF yard to get them to their destination, if that’s what is required to keep things moving.
The SP/UP meltdown, and the splitting up of the HB&T taught both roads a hard lesson, the amount of track inside Houston holds only a given amount of trains, it is so interwoven that each trying to dispatch their own trains results in such a serious congestion problem that one goof can kill the entire thing.
Spring Dispatching Center is located in the old MoPac yard building at Lloyd Spring Yard, Spring Texas, just a few miles north of Houston on the Palestine subdivision…
You can see the building from the FM1960 overpass that crosses the yard, but access to non employees is forbidden.
Ed. Can you hear them dsptchg from Spring on the Chataw Sub or Waco sub or even Ft Wth from your location? I here them on the above mentioned and they are dspthg UP trains,Ive never heard BNSF …I can’t hear BNSF from FW either…I think Im too far east of BNSF main…Im about 25 miles from Temple and cant hear them or Teague… Im sitting between UP to the east and BNSF to the west and sth Danny PS Ive wondered what happened to you ,havent seen any post from you lately… |
|---|
BNSF and UP share a joint dispatching center somewhere in or near San Bernardino, Calif. This facility controls their freight mains in the Los Angeles basin. The Southern California Regional Railroad Authority that operates the heavy rail commuter service centered around Los Angeles Union Passenger Terminal has their own train dispatching facility. Since some SCRRA passenger trains operate on BNSF or UP owned and controlled trackage and some BNSF and UP freight trains operate on SCRRA owned and controlled trackage, you’d think that all three entities would share the same suite of offices. But for some unexplained reason they don’t.
The train dispatchers and corridor manager who control the 141-lb. welded rail, concrete-tie-equipped, double track, CTC branchline that connects the Union Pacific Overland Route mainline with the Powder River Basin coal fields have their desks located at the BNSF operations center in Fort Worth, Texas.
The only time I deal with them is here in Houston, when I have to go into CTC…
Beyond that, we don’t listen in on that channel…we work on our own assigned channels.
All the PTRA is RTC or dark territory except a few areas, like Bridge 5A over Buffalo Bayou, and the Deer Park runaround, which are our tracks, but shared with UP and BNSF, and dispatched from Spring.
They may handle the subs you are talking about, I just don’t listen in.
And you usually don’t know whose employee you are talking to, they only ID themselves on the radio as TD1, 2 or 3, or as TD Spring, not by road name…but after a while, you get to know who is who, especially when you phone them ahead of time to get lined up.
.
The Harriman Center is alive and well. The new HQ had no impact. Other functions were centralized (like customer service being moved from St. Louis to the new HQ), but the physical design of the “bunker” in the Harriman center makes it stationary. I toured there about 6 months ago and nothing much had changes since a prior tour 3 yrs ago. I heard that they are in the process of taking down the big wall mounted screens that they had in favor of just having the dispatchers using the monitors on their desk top. That will sure make the tour less interstesting.
So it sounds like they give tours of the center? Do you need to call ahead or are they offerd at certian times of the day? I was thinking of taking a trip out west this summer and if there are tours of the facility I may have to convince the wife we need to make a pit stop in Omaha[bow]
Not quite sure on the dates but I believe UP began phasing in all dispatching @ Omaha in 1989. The former Katy jobs were moved from Denison in 1991. The Katy society 1992 convention was held in Omaha and we did get to take a tour of the place. It was ok but not outstanding in my opinion. Make a long story short, I became tired of hearing our tour guide brag about how great a company UP was.
They have the capability to dispatch system wide from Omaha, but that is not UP practice.
I was at the Spring Texas DS center last October…very impressive facility.
I don’t think that UP allows public tours (possibly pre-arranged group as was mentioned by another person.) I was able to do so because of a business reason. I noticed that Post-9/11, they were a lot more attentive to security details and you had to have a lot more reason to be there. I guess its cool to say you’ve been there, but now that they’re taking down the big screens, its kind of like watching a bunch of people at desks looking at computer screens that you can’t quite make out, because you’re not allowed to get too close to them. For my money, I’d spend some time scouting the fringes of the UP and Iowa Interstate yards in Council Bluffs, hit the Museum at Council Bluffs and at the old Depot in Omaha, stop to see the DD40 and Big Boy overlooking I-80 at the Omaha Botanical Garden and see the 2’ gauge (approx) live steamers at the Henry Doorly Zoo in OMA (very cool zoo by the way)… then get out to Fremont, NE and watch more trains that you can shake a stick at (2 sticks for that matter.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:OmahaZooRiva.jpg
http://www.dwhm.org/
http://www.uprr.com/aboutup/history/museum/index.shtml
http://www.thehistoricalsociety.org/Depot.htm
http://www.uphs.org/4023move.html
Of course, while in the Fremont vacinity, you probably ow