This morning I stumbled across something interesting. A BNSF ethanol train was parked on the main out in the country, a couple miles away from an ethanol plant. A gravel road ran parallel to the sitting train. A mile back from the engine at the next mile road, the train was split to allow access on the cross-road. The stub end of the train had about 8-10 cars.
Did the conductor get dropped off the train to make the cut and set the brakes, and then have to walk a mile back up to the head end, only to reverse the operation later? Why wouldn’t they split the train 8-10 cars behind the engine and leave a mile long train on the other side of a mile road? Does it have to do with how many brakes have to be set?
Bonus: 2nd engine was the rattiest looking KCS locomotive imaginable. The paint job was removing itself.
Was the train on the Main or on a siding? If on a siding were the engine pulled down to the end of the siding? If on the Main, and the engines were pulled up to the clearance point for the road crossing - what are the walking conditions beyond the road crossing. I can continue to ask a number of other questions that will enter into the reasoning of why the crew did what they did, where and how they did it.
Remember air brake rules - would you rather perform a Class 1 walking air test on a larger number or smaller number of cars if they
Train was on the main. Locomotives were stopped short of a paved road far enough back not to set off the lights. The walk back would be on the ballast past mosquito ponds. The walk forward would put you on pavement real quick. As zugmann points out, they probably had a van haul the conductor back and forth to do the work- even though this train is 30 miles out in the sticks.
Does that air test involve checking every car in the train?
The portion that is off air over 4 hours would be subject to an initial terminal test. The part still connected to the locomotive’s air supply and train line pressure is maintained at 60 psi or greater, would not need to be retested.
Always interesting to note the differences between our two countries.
In Canada we are allowed 24 hours off-air, and in certain cases exceptions may be granted to extend that to 48.
Taxis are an incredibly useful tool but also represent a bottomless money-sucking pit that management periodically tries to reign in (usually after a major expense report or audit is done). Getting a ride then becomes like pulling hen’s teeth. This leads to increased train delay and crew costs, which escalate until the next report/audit.
Why not just get permission to make a forward move, kick off the conductor, move up so he can get on the hind end, protect the crossing, make the joint, and perform the air test? Then a reverse move (with permission, of course) so he can get back on the locomotive, and (perhaps after clearing up the grade crossing for a time), highball.
Another thing we used to do in the yard (there was a fire-road crossing that had to be kept clear) was run a long section of train-line across the crossing. You’d have to make a separation, but no cars were being added, and the separation time would be minimal. That would probably save considerable time in the air-test process, but would require someone to be back at the joint, before any moves were made to put the train back together.
What and how big that bottomless pit is on taxi expenses is a function of what form of ‘back office’ controls go into the ordering of taxis and the acknowledgement of service from the taxi’s ordered.
Without having a formal systematic means of recording the order, confirming the taxi applied to the order and formal acknowledgement that the ordered service has been successfully rendered, taxi expenses are a bottomless pit that is virtually inpossible to audit as the records generated are minimal at best and non-existant for the most part.
There are multiple parties that have legitimate authority and need to order taxi transportation - Chief Dispatchers, Trick Dispatchers, Yardmasters, Trainmasters, Crew Callers readily spring to mind as legitimate taxi ordering personnel and the orders of each address different aspects of the need for the taxi’s.
Wild cards that get thrown into the equation revolve around how many crew members the taxi is to haul. When I was working, the maxinum number of crew members that could be hauled by one taxi was FOUR and all their attendent luggage. That can mean two, 2 man train crews - but if you hav
I’ve heard taxis here used to ferry the conductor around for more complex moves - a tremendous time saver if, f’rinstance, they are doubling out off four tracks. I’ve also seen the local trainmaster serve the same function. Usually, though, it’s just ferrying crews around.
A former denizen of the forum, Nora, was a RR taxi driver - some of her runs were pretty lengthy.
CN contracts with a company called Hallcon Crew Transportation to handle all taxi trips across Canada (Hallcon and Renzenberger recently merged). Hallcon directly employs some drivers and owns some vehicles, but also sub-contracts operation to local taxi companies in some places.
For at least as long as I have been working CN has highlighted and tracked taxi costs minutely, I believe the laser focus started with Hunter’s “deadheads are evil” philosophy. Every taxi call is given a CN-initiated trip number which is logged into both CN and Hallcon’s computer systems, and all costs, names, train-IDs and other records are assigned to it. Taxi costs also come out of a separate budget than train operations, which leads to oddities like light-engine moves for repositioning crews, because that will cost the local trainmaster nothing, whereas a taxi trip will show up on his record in a unfavourable light.
On-call taxi drivers will not do anything unless they get a trip number from a CN supervisor or their own supervisor (who got it from CN, possibly via a Hallcon dispatcher).
And of course, an offer by railfans in the vicinity to give a conductor a ride back to the head end has been gratefully accepted on a few occasions. That is out on the line, away from official help (and eyes).
What and how big that bottomless pit is on taxi expenses is a function of what form of ‘back office’ controls go into the ordering of taxis and the acknowledgement of service from the taxi’s ordered.
Without having a formal systematic means of recording the order, confirming the taxi applied to the order and formal acknowledgement that the ordered service has been successfully rendered, taxi expenses are a bottomless pit that is virtually inpossible to audit as the records generated are minimal at best and non-existant for the most part.
CN contracts with a company called Hallcon Crew Transportation to handle all taxi trips across Canada (Hallcon and Renzenberger recently merged). Hallcon directly employs some drivers and owns some vehicles, but also sub-contracts operation to local taxi companies in some places.
For at least as long as I have been working CN has highlighted and tracked taxi costs minutely, I believe the laser focus started with Hunter’s “deadheads are evil” philosophy. Every taxi call is given a CN-initiated trip number which is logged into both CN and Hallcon’s computer systems, and all costs, names, train-IDs and other records are assigned to it. Taxi costs also come out of a separate budget than train operations, which leads to oddities like light-engine moves for repositioning crews, because that will cost the local trainmaster nothing, whereas a taxi trip will show up on his record in a unfavourable light.
On-call taxi drivers will not do anything unless they get a trip number from a CN supervisor or their own supervisor (
SD70Dude: " . . . Taxi costs also come out of a separate budget than train operations, which leads to oddities like light-engine moves for repositioning crews, because that will cost the local trainmaster nothing, whereas a taxi trip will show up on his record in a unfavourable light. . . "
Railroading 101. That used to not count as a ‘train-start’ either - is that still the case?
Those of us here ‘of a certain age’ will remember the “cost per dispatch” story in this article - there, it involved brakeshoes:
Anybody that can use their cell phone and Google maps should be able to find a railroad location that doesn’t have a specific address. I use them all the time to direct my wife when she gets lost out in the country. (And we live in a state that has miles roads on a one mile grid and a street sign at each intersection.)
It’s not uncommon around here to have a “local” get totally bamboozled when we have to close a road because of an incident. They know one way to get where they’re going, and if they can’t go that way, well…
