Say you are on a run that is 100 miles long. Due to various factors, you only make it about 80 miles in 12 hrs. At the 12 hr mark, you stop and wait for a ride, sometimes 3 or 4 hrs. If you are going to your away terminal, then you go to the hotel and get 8-10 hrs off minimum, and wait for your call to go back. Then you could be 12 or more hrs returning, depending on what happens along the way. This goes on day after day after day......If you have a rest day, they can still call you up to 2 hrs before your rest day is due to start, then, you might get you rest "day" 36 or so hrs later, and then you're just off 24 hrs from the time you went off duty back at your home terminal. Regarding 1 person in the cab; there are safety features on most locomotives (alerters, deadman pedals) that can take action to stop the train if there is no response or action from the engineer in a specific period of time. There are many locomotives out there that have no safety stopping features, and in this case it would be easy to become "inattentive" for a while, sometimes just long enough to get in trouble. We have a couple engineers who can't stay awake because they overwork themselves (the greed factor), and it becomes a game for some of the conductors to see how long the engineer goes before figuring out what's going on. One in particular falls asleep and the train just rolls to a stop. She wakes up and off they go again. If you beat on the wall or control stand with a wrench or hammer, they get mad at you! There are also many conductors on our longer runs who are just as qualified to run the engine as the engineer. What will they do when it becomes one person in the cab? Does all of this scare some of you non-railroaders?
I am curious. I thought there was some mechanism on locomotives whereby if none of the controls where operated within X amount of time the train went into emergency stop. Is this not so? Or is this sort of thing routinely disabled?
It's not as common, or easy for truckers to keep the old double log books these days. Doing so has become a lot harder. Some owner/drivers may still try to do it. Larger companies equipped with Qualcomm, and GPS, driver time is highly (remotely) managed. Boxcab E50
This is the "alerter" of which I spoke earlier. It doesn't provide an emergency stop, but what is called a "penalty" application of the brakes. The brakes apply at the normal (service) rate all the way to zero, and the locomotive's power is cut off. Not all engines are equipped with alerters. Once in a while you'll find a deadman pedal, but those are rare anymore. It is a violation of federal law to disable or bypass any safety feature intentionally. The only time they can legally be cut out is due to malfunction which prohibits the use of the locomotive, and that is only granted in very rare instances.
On the subject of one-man operation...Unless I'm mistaken, (passenger guys, help me out here) Amtrak has more restrictive rules in place that limit solo operation time for single person locomotive crew more than the letter of the law. If true, that's the kind of thing that the freight carriers DO NOT want. It's not to their advantage if they have to run two single man crews to replace one two man crew. The whole idea is to wring more out of less so it's going to be a fight every step of the way. There's no reason for the big push unless they're absolutely certain it's in the company's interest to eliminate the crews. It's like anything else, the dangers and drawbacks are outweighed by the fact that most of the time, it'll probably work and the money will come in. They'll roll the dice and take the hit on the percentage of the time they don't win. They use the same philosophy to assign power to tonnage, max it out or even overload it and most of the time, luck will come through and the train will slug it out and make it. The times when it stalls or blows up and blocks the single track for 100 miles in both directions is just a cost of doing business. I'm sure it makes sense in a corporate way and really that's what we are anymore...corporate giant cash generators for the execs and shareholders...not railroads. I have no illusions that it'll never happen because the carriers want it bad enough to keep banging away until they get it, but I do know for sure that I don't really want to be alone with the monster every day for 12 hrs. trying to cover all the bases and get it right. It's going to be a pretty tough row to hoe. For instance...Yesterday our bulletin order contained over 30 temporary speed restrictions from a tenth of a mile to almost 6 miles in length from 10 to 25 mph, about half unmarked except by whole milepost; two sections of track out of service under the control of different MOW foremen on top of the usual traffic, timetable restrictions, meets, grades and engine troubles. The pouring rain and lightning was just the icing on the cake. It was a full time thing for two of us just to keep it all straight. It's my job and I'm not complaining about the workload, that's why they pay us the big bucks I guess but my point is, it's a lot of constantly variable information for one crewman and a dispatcher hundreds of miles away with his own heavy load to keep 100% correct 100% of the time.
This was released yesterday by the NTSB: NTSB DETERMINES THAT CREW FATIGUE CAUSED TRAIN COLLISION NEAR MACDONA, TEXAS: - In a report adopted today, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) determined that fatigue caused the failure of the engineer and conductor on a Union Pacific Railroad train to respond appropriately to wayside signals governing the movement of their train leading to a fatal collision with another train. "Get enough sleep - it sounds so simple and yet we continue to see accidents caused by fatigue," said NTSB Acting Chairman Mark V. Rosenker, "How many more tragedies have to occur before employers and employees get the message that being well rested is critical to job performance?" The accident occurred on June 28, 2004 near Macdona, Texas. A Union Pacific Railroad (UP) train was traveling westbound on the same mainline track as an eastbound BNSF Railway (BNSF) train. As the BNSF train was entering a parallel siding, the UP strain struck its midpoint. The collision derailed four locomotive units and the first 19 cars of the UP train as well as 17 cars of the BNSF train. As a result of the derailment the 16th car in the UP train, a tank car loaded with liquefied chlorine, was punctured. The chlorine vaporized and engulfed the area surrounding the accident site. Three people, the UP conductor and two local residents, died from the effects of chlorine gas inhalation. The Board's investigation determined that sleep debt, disrupted circadian processes, limited sleep during the weekend preceding the accident, and long duty tours reduced the capacity of the UP engineer and conductor to remain awake and alert the night of the accident trip. The Board also noted that the UP conductor's consumption of alcohol on the evening before the accident likely added to his fatigue. An examination of the UP engineer and conductor's off duty time revealed that neither made effective use of the time available to them to obtain adequate rest. Therefore, the Board determined as contributing factors, the crewmembers' failure to obtain sufficient restorative rest prior to reporting for duty because of their ineffective use of off-duty time, and UP train crew scheduling practices that created inverted crewmembers' work/rest patterns. As a result the Board recommended that UP, the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET), and the United Transportation Union (UTU) use the Macdona accident as a case study in fatigue awareness training to illustrate the shared responsibility of rail carriers to provide opportunity for adequate rest and employees to understand the importance and obtain sufficient rest to perform at a safe level of alertness. Further, the Board recommended that the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) require that railroads base their crew scheduling on scientific measures designed to reduce fatigue and to limit the railroads' use of limbo time.
===================================================== every guy(or gal) can tell you beaucoup horror stories about 12hr days. "12 & tow or we dont go" . We can also tell you about 12 hr days where we never turned a wheel. It all depends what sort of work your job does. Switch engine,road switcher or long haul(pool) trains. If you work a pool train you generally will stay at quarters provided by the railroad, normally a discount hotel or motel. I dont know of any railroad owned/operated crew quarters any more. If you "outlaw" on the road, the carrier will have a railroad transport vehicle come and pick you up and take you either to your away from home terminal or back to your regular terminal. As I say, it all depends on your job. As to your second question, some carriers do run their crews halfway and then have them trade trains. I know the IC(now CN/IC) did that on their pool trains. The trains would switch crews more or less halfway along their route. A couple of years ago, we picked up a deadheading IC crew in Wisconsin from one of their "run thru" grain trains. Their meet failed to show and they were going to outlaw and there was a problem with their transport van carrier. We picked them up from their train and they exited at a commuter train platform in suburban Chicago,convenient to their terminal and were picked up by the yard clerk. Some of the older heads in the Chicago/Aurora terminal had shirts with the slogan "6 and go or 12 and tow" printed on them. That pretty much sums up how the jobs work. In the nice spring,summer,fall weather you didn't mind the long days so much. Working the Chicago/LaCrosse pool was always scenic since we ran right along the bank of the Mississippi River just out of Savanna IL, when the line turned north. Winter railroading is alway difficult, snow fouls the air filters,brakes ice up, brake valves malfunction,hoses snap, the older locos get drafty cuz the weatherstripping has deteriorated,and you better hope the cab heat works. And just when you think you have the job licked, you get a "dynamiter" in your train, you cant restore the air and you have to walk the train in sub freezing temps and 8+ inches of snow to discover what's wrong. Switch engines are no picnic in the winter either,cuz you inevitably have to switch an industry that has tracks imbedded in mud. During the day, the stuff will melt but after dark it turns hard as rock and you have to inch the loco thru it or you sure as heck will put it on the ground. Good clean fun boyz and girlz!!!! CT
Voice recorders in the cab would pretty much be useless due to all the noise. Most railroaders do not have access to headphone/mics to wear while in the cab. Besides, there is a lot talked about between crew members that really doesn't/shouldn't be recorded.
Let's see, conversations in a cab. This dispatcher is a........ That trainmanster is a ....... This company is a huge........ You get the point, we would all be fired. Sometimes, laughing at the RR and complaining about the RR are what keep us awake. I love my job but the BS that goes with it can drive you nuts if you don't vent. Adam
Would you believe that airline cockpit voice recorders did, and still do create problems for less than professional crews. Remember all the fuss many years ago concerning female attendants attending to the "needs" of several flight deck crews.....? I doubt if a locomotive cab would present the same situation, not having auto-pilots and other boredom inducing gadgets, but then again........?
Roger that! What I find interesting about the "voice recorder" thing is that folks are trying to find a technological solution to a "human" problem...The problem here was fatigue (and the crew falling asleep) and no amount of technological wizardry or gadgets is going to solve that. I'm going to "drift" a bit off-topic here and go back to a question that John asked... Honestly, I don't know which one scares me more...The fatigue issues or one man crews. Regardless of the crew size, fatigue will always be an issue whether it is "self-induced" (i.e., turnin'-'n-burnin', mis-management of "off time", etc.) or due to "other" circumstances (i.e., disruption of a persons "natural" clock cycle, etc.). The difference is that 2 or 3 "fatigued" crew members may stand a chance of avoiding something while 1 fatigued crew member by himself has no one else...If something happens to this person (heart attack, etc.) or he/she falls asleep, it's all over. There may be a few ways that fatigue can be mitigated but as long as your allowed to claim "11 hours, 59 minutes" when you've really worked a 16 hour day, you're going to have a problem. Shortening the "day" (to 10 hours?) and mandating longer rest periods might be a solution as would some sort of a "normal" shift (i.e., 8:00 to 20:00 or 8:00 to 18:00, etc...Some "jobs" are currently run this way). Unfortunately, both of these (possible) solutions would affect the "average" train crew employee (making less money) and not necessarily make the situation any better. My guess is that the "solution" will come from the FRA, NTSB, or congress...Time will tell... Positive Train Control (PTC/PTS) is being touted (by the RRs and some "others") as a possible solution and seems to be where the RRs are thinking that a "one man crew" would be all that they would need for OTR train operations. BNSF is currently testing a PTC system (BNSF's Electronic Train Management System or ETMS) on 115 miles of track in Illinois. Originally they had wanted to test this system with a one man crew (IIRC, both the BLE(T) and the UTU objected and the FRA concluded that one man crews utilizing PTC would be "tested" after the initial testing of the "system" was completed). Recently, the FRA sent BNSF a letter (basically) identifying several issues and asking for "further clarification or explanation" on these issues. The following article comes from the BLE(T) and can be found at http://www.ble.org/pr/news/newsflash.asp?id=4325.
===================================================== Story time... Some of the switch engines on the BNSF are equipped with a foot switch to activate the XMIT function on the train radio. Sort of a hands free operation. Some of the crewmen had been issued microphone equipped headsets so that they could talk and have hands free to do paperwork such as copying track warrants or "track & time" authority. This foot switch would also activate the handset on the engineers console. Many switch engine engineers just left the handset sitting on top of the console rather than to keep hanging it up and removing it from its cradle. Seems this one night one of my conductor classmates was working a transfer job coming off the BRC and sitting in what is called "the Hole"(tracks are known as "east hole" and"west hole"). Well doancha know that the handset was on top of the console and my unsuspecting classmate had unknowingly stepped on the foot control switch. Well it seems this crew was operating on the main line frequency since they were in a plant controlled by the East End dispatcher. They were also talking about the railroad and its problems, their lives and their problems and certain female employees,one of them being a trainmaster. And you can just imagine that the conversations were quite graphic, also the conversations were being broadcast to each and every train on that frequency and they were blocking the frequency. At any rate a trainmaster tracked them down and the talk stopped. They were lucky that they didn't lose their jobs. Seems that nobody noticed the little red "xmtting" light on the transmitter ! CT
I've discovered by accident the effects of the foot switch on BNSF engines. Fortunately, we don't have the headset mics to pick up conversations, but it disrupts radio communications for about a 10 mile radius with the radio basically "stuck" on transmit. I now make it a habit of disconnecting the plug controlling the pedal and headset system on the back of radios on any BNSF engine I get to alleviate this problem in the future.
A question for the engineers and conductors... I understand that the pay can be good, some have said upwards of 70-100k annually. It seems one way you could slice it is that there is money to be made if you are willing to bust it for a long time. The RRs probably do see the long hours and the 24/7 call scheduling as a way of maximizing productivity. One question that keeps bugging me though is what is the real motivation to work under these conditions? Is it just the paycheck? With all the responsibilty involved with moving so much weight safely at high speeds often with hazardous cargo, and the toll that the hours must take on any kind of family life it seems there must be more to it than just a paycheck. I hope this question makes sense. I ask it respectfully.
I really think it has to be "in your blood". Those that come to the RR with the attitude that it's "just a job" are the ones who play the system to their advantage to avoid work or they just don't last very long.
...for all that, and in spite of all that...I'm still at it and intend to stay. For all it's many drawbacks, it's still the best worst job I ever had.
