This is where the Utility man comes into play. What they would want is to have people in vehicles that can meet the train somewhere to assist. Sounds really good in theory and nowhere else as we all know what would happen when they try spread them out too thin, which they are certain to do. Tuch ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ --------------------------- Dear Joe and List, I had to chuckle more than a bit when I heard mention of having a utility man following a train in a Suburban! We as engineers know that it is hard enough to get our conductors to even stay awake, or when they are awake and on the ground, be "in position!" Combined, that alone may be asking too much! After all, it is a well-known fact that they get paid for (supposedly) what they do--we get paid for what we KNOW!!! Seriously, we had utility men on the Union Pacific and Chicago & North Western after they did away with the head-end brakemen in 1991 or so. More often than not, there was one utility man assigned to cover a very large geographic area; in our case, that was an area of several square miles and very well could encompass several yards on both sides of the Mississippi River! Not exactly the kind of scenario that leads to efficiency, where utilization of such unassigned ground employees is concerned. It quickly became apparent to the powers-that-be that, more often than not, the already grossly inadequate physical plant of the Twin Cities Terminal was being clogged to its limit. Chief among the reasons? You guessed it--the utilization of short crews with trains that required extensive picking up, setting out and switching. There were so few utility men available to assist crews, that in some cases crews were literally dying on the law in the terminal, or were experiencing tremendous initial-terminal delays, to the tune of five or six hours, literally half their crews' service lives! I am sure many of you who work in the railroad industry are well aware of these problems. Run a train with one-man crews? Sure! You know what they say--"Wanna get rich? Answer the phone and open up your pockets!" Far be it for me to ever suggest a work-rule change that would eliminate jobs, but if this is the way it will eventually be, I will happily watch the carriers choke to death on the impossible situation they have created with their arrogance and shortsightedness! I will just be sure to have my neck pillow, lots of "viddles" and plenty of blues CD's with me to pass the hours! Markers, J. E. Humbert [EMAIL PROTECTED] BLE Div.#494 St. Paul, MN ------------------------------------------------------ This is the Illiana Railroad Discussion List. For more info visit http://www.railcenter.com/illiana ------------------------------------------------------
