ok... so when you get a hotbox and have to set it out, have to drop cars
at a small intermediate yard, etc. Or better yet when you have to cut a
train for a highway crossing... With just an engineer who cuts the cars,
protects the move, etc etc? One guy cannot be in two places at once, if
the guy has to walk back and forth 50 carlengths each time he'll reach his
12 hours just having to stop once.. That makes no sense. maybe you can
get away with it on a shortline with low traffic volume, a guy can walk 3
or 4 carlengths pretty fast and if you're hauling that few cars chances are
another 10 min isn't going to impair service. If the train isn't going to
stop, maybe you can get around it and use utility men at the yards... but
hell you'd need almost as many of them as you have trains, plus more yard
jitneys to get them from train to train, any savings would be minor at
best.
The big roads need to realize that what works on a mom & pop shortline
ain't going to cut it on the mainline with 50-100 car trains. Although
from the sound of it you may as well do the same things I've seen - stop in
town for groceries with your inbounds, then stop where a tree fell and cut
yourself some firewood.. stow it on the deck of the loco then go on to the
terminal to drop the cars.
PC had mating worms, CN has one long worm instead... and since picking up
the IC they have black locos too. Maybe IC should have fired up the "death
star" when the merger proposal first came up?
Bill Kisselstein
(snipped from a long post from the Tuch)
In the October issue of Progressive Railroading, Hunter Harrison and Ed
Burkhardt discuss the point of short, fast and frequent train service. It
is
mentioned that the way to achieve success with this is Engineer only crews.
So if we go Engineer only which obviously is the only way to achieve
success, we can run them even shorter and faster than we do now. I wonder
what ever happened to the success that two people on the train woudl bring?
So that would mean what, with an Engineer only we would have 250 car trains
averaging 8.7 MPH? Gee, if we can eliminate the crews completely, they can
probably achieve speeds that will enable them to break the sound barrier!
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