I am a locomotive engineer for UP and I can speak from experience that with two of us in the cab, we help keep each other awake. With going to work every 12hrs and getting little to no time off, we need to help keep each other awake. Also, PTC has sooo many issues its not even funny. Just a couple days ago I was pulling a train into a yard track with ptc and ptc didnt know what track I was in, so it plugged me. This right here caused a 20 minute delay to recover the air in zero degree temps with a 15,000 ft train. Anyways. Its safer with 2 men on head end for so many reasons.
Engineer here as well. My absolute favorite is when I'm at restricted speed, need to have my eyes out the window and my hands on the controls, and PTC WILL NOT STFU and stop chirping at me and demanding my attention. If they get rid of the conductor I'm just stopping the damn train every single time it beeps. Can't risk taking my eyes off the tracks if the conductor isn't there with his eyes on the tracks. Not worth risking my job to answer nagging PTC every two seconds.
Ex train dispatcher here. One evening working BN Centralia South, an engineer suffered a stroke (probably related to a few years earlier hitting a boulder on the track at 35 mph, being flung into the front of the cab, then being unconscious as the engine submerged into the adjacent bay). The radio was, as usual, almost unusable, but what we had to work with. The head man (remember them?) was screaming through the din for help. It was a couple of minutes before I could figure out which train and send help. The delay because of the cra... uh... sub optimal radio was bad enough. Without the second guy in the cab, there would have been no call for help and no help coming instead of a delay in getting help.
The industry has stated that with current safety systems (PTC) that a second person in the locomotive cab is no longer necessary because PTC replaces the redundancy (observing signals, signal compliance) the second employee provides. That is only a small part of the essential nature of at least two people on a train crew. • A second person is required any time handbrakes must be applied. • A second person is required any time a train must cross a highway crossing at grade when the signals are defective or inoperative. • A second person is required in CTC or interlocking limits when a dual control switch must be lined by hand. • A second person is required when the route a train must take includes lining a hand throw switch. A “roving conductor” in a highway vehicle is not an acceptable substitute. • A stopped train can and has created traffic conditions that prevent assistance coming by highway vehicle from accessing the train. • A train stopped by an undesired emergency application (UDE) can pose hazard of a runaway if handbrakes are not applied in a timely manner. • A significant part of the railroad network is not accessible by highway vehicle. • A significant part of the railroad network is in remote areas. A second crew member who is not on the train will be of no use in the case of medical emergency. • A train stopped for a substantial length of time poses a hazard to communities that depend upon crossings at grade. The delay waiting for a “roving conductor” can pose a significant hazard to communities along the line as well as a significant inconvenience. • Rail transportation is an essential response to the climate emergency. The US rail system is already underutilized. Considering train miles per mile of track, adjusted for US train length, is 11th in the world. There are generally small areas of massive congestion separated by long expanses of empty track. The current method of operation and business management of the railroad industry is already detrimental to the increased use of rail transportation and the essential mode shift from highway to rail. Subjecting the network to even more extensive delays for disabled trains waiting for a “roving conductor” to assist is not acceptable. • The inaccessibility of the train may be mitigated if the “roving conductor” is using a hyrail vehicle; however that requires the conductor to also be qualified on Maintenance of Way rules. A high rail vehicle approaching a train that has experienced a UDE on an ascending grade from behind is at risk if there has been delay in reaching the train to apply handbrakes. Train inspections by crew members are required by rules (e.g., GCOR 6.29.2, NORAC 72). A crew of only one person cannot inspect both sides of the train as required. Fatigue among train and engine crew personnel is a substantial problem in the railroad industry. There is no defined time to be on duty, thus no defined time for rest. The projected on duty time for a crew member regularly changes several times while the crew is off duty. For example, it is possible for a person to sleep anticipating a 9pm call, be fully awake at 7pm, and be called for 5am,, when it is time to sleep again. Accident reports regularly cite the number of hours that a crew is off duty, making them legally rested, without citing the train lineups that were published between the off duty and on duty time. A second, questionably rested, person in the locomotive increases that chance that a condition requiring attention (e.g., person or vehicle on the track, obstruction or defect) will be detected. Not only is a second person necessary, on the extreme length trains currently being operated, a third person, located at the rear of the train, is necessary. A brisk walk is 4 mph. When walking ballast and looking for the cause of a UDE, walking speed is no more than two mph. That’s three feet per second. Inspecting a train 15,000 feet in length will take approximately 1 hour 20 minutes. Were the train stopped on an ascending grade, that amount of time before applying hand brakes on the detached portion is excessive. As well, a third crew member on the rear of the train reduces inspection time by 50 percent, a significant amount when considering blocked highway crossings and line capacity. Technical safety systems (e.g., PTC) have not replaced verbal communication of mandatory directives and may not in the foreseeable future. Safety of verbally communicated mandatory directives is increased when more than one person on the train is listening to the transmission and repeat. A second person understanding and comparing the content and meaning is also essential. This is particularly true in verbally transmitted written authority (e.g., Track Warrant Control).
Short line and regional railroads, moving long trains with heavy tonnage across rough terrain, had found that one man in the cab and one man riding in a truck along with the train works in many cases. All cases? Certainly not. But for tens of thousands of miles it absolutely can work. Let's address a couple of your points. Train inspections. The second man in a truck can inspect the same train many times in its route. That same man in the cab cannot do so. A man in a truck can run ahead and flag crossings. Roving conductors have been found to be an excellent alternative in many situations where trains have gone into emergency and minor repairs are needed. It ABSOLUTELY does work in many situations. Again, not all situations. But many.
Heck even on the sub of ours I heard it’s coming to, it’ll be a major safety risk. One spot, we had an HED failure and even though we weren’t far from a crew base, you had to go through a bison farm, private gates, and a rough access road to get us a new one (we couldn’t move due to rules). The manager and utility couldn’t get through a fence so I had to go between the locomotive and fence. Oh and for the past two weeks, we’ve had a form c about the bison being on the tracks… am I the only one who has seen all the videos of them goring people in Yellowstone? Our mountain route has no access roads, we need to be highrailed in to relieve crews that don’t make it to a assessable siding
@@grantd1011 probably? Which defeats the purpose of the video... now you may have to drive 30 miles passed the train to find a crossing you can get on the rails at.
I’m a retired industrial engineer - the guy who watched and timed workers (not in the rail industry, though) and analyzed the data. I was had responsibilities for quality and safety in my organization. Using the term “expediter” is an admission that the system is failing. You are absolutely correct that the rail companies are gambling with safety by removing the conductor from the cab.
I was a Union Pacific/Missouri Pacific ( agreement employee on the Mopac ) rail train operator/supervisor depending on the territory I was working on . I worked in 18 states of the UP system and I can tell you for a fact that less than half of UP right of way and none of the old Mopac right of way had roads or trails beside the track that a person could gain safe access to a train . I rode rail trains when they had rail on them , there's places beside the track that's almost a straight drop off down the dump , open deck bridges and trestles . Winter weather conditions are another subject .
Ex-Conductor here. We always had to walk the entire train, even after we found a separation. We didn't just replace the knuckle and go back to the engine. This is all about getting the "crew" down to 1 man,
The same thing happened when they pitched the Utility man. They worked the piss out of those poor souls. I saw a guy late one night that walked into the crew room. He looked sick so I asked if he was okay. He said I'm fine just beat. I've put away 5 trains so far and I usually make 12. So I've got 5 more hours to go. This is rough. They'll do the same thing with an Expiditer. He'll have to drive 30 miles to place a car at customer A then drive 15 miles in heavy traffic to the bad side of town and determine why the air dumped on a through freight, then back to the manifest train to setout a cut in a siding for interchange etc. They'll work him into ground!
I was having the mentality that it would be the other way around, I guess it depends on big of a area each person has. Also a lot of guys are going to be disgruntled and not give a crap doing a job they dont want to do. Can’t see many guys flying up from their seat and speeding to the location especially if there are no penalties for being late or rewards for being on time. Interested to see how this really plays out if it actually gets passed
@@NAT-turners-Revenge Thanks for letting me know. I think the idea would be great, if that was a separate role. We need the conductors in the cab where they belong!
Today I heard CP call for help with their PTC because their screen didn't match with the signal in front of them. Their train went into suppression while rolling over a diamond in La Crosse, Wisconsin. That not only held up CP but also held up BNSF.
PTC loves to get confused and either dump it, or more often (quite often, really, especially whenever it rains, or even gets cloudy) loses track of where it is and I need to get it down to restricted speed to get it back up again.
PTC will never be able to replace the conductor. I listen to NS’ radio traffic in Altoona and there’s always a train toning the PTC help desk. And like you said, PTC can’t help when there’s an accident.
If such a plan was instituted... Something tells me a shocking number of extended mainline delays, and tragic accidents would see this policy reversed through the natural order of events/necessity.
@@billradley Former CSX engineer here. I don't know how many times a more senior employee told me to "just hold your pocket open and let the company put more money in it with these rule changes." Ka-ching! Seriously, I agree with needing two in the cab. Often, on a well-put together train that doesn't work any intermediate points the conductor has an easy day, but he's not there for that, he's there for when the crap hits the fan. It's like insurance, you hope you don't need it, but you're sure glad you have it when something happens.
5 member crew in 1956. Fireman, Brakemen, Engineer, Conductor and Rear trainmen. 3,200 tons 76 cars and caboose. 12 hours rest. Now 2 member crew, RR's wants 1 man crew. PSR ,4,100 tons 125 cars trains, sick time when they tell you, no time off.
When I started with KCS in 1976 we had an Engineer, a Fireman, a Head Brakeman, a Rear Brakeman, and a Conductor. We had Ten percent of the people in management that are in management today. And those in management were old heads that came from their craft after having actually worked switching or braking or running an engine. Not like today where they work six months and the next time you see them this kid is your boss. They don’t know crap yet here they are. Now you have cameras staring at you all day pointed at your face in the cab of the engine. Then they literally watch your every move till you tie up and drive home. I worked there 38 years and retired ten years ago. Railroading at one time used to be enjoyable and guys loved what they did. Now, they hate it
@@creekdweller9662 Six months? Most trainmasters these days are either straight from college or they are the snakes that everyone hated anyway clawing to get some kind of life outside of work since these draconian insane attendance policies.
PTC breaks more knuckles than any engineer I know. Also, if Sam can't walk 69 cars in under 20 minutes, Sam needs to be pulled from service. Another point, if you can't get to a train and have a knuckle changed within 10 minutes with a TRUCK, it's not even worth it. Lastly, NOBODY sits at a blocked crossing for more than 10 minutes, let alone 3 hours. All they want is to deposit thousands of conductors paychecks into the pockets of about 20 people
Yes, an E style knuckle weighs around 67 lbs, an f style does weigh around 80 lbs. Also we're going to grieve every mechanical repair you make. That's our work, not conductors work. We allowed it in the past to save time because the conductors were right there. We're not going to allow them to become line of road mechanical personnel.
I used to live in Scottsbluff, sister city to Gering. They can only try this because there's state highways parallel to the row most of the way to North Platte. There are places that diverge from the tracks however. The only access then is county roads, mostly dirt. How can a train be accessed in an emergency if those are impassable? Flooding happens, snow happens. Even if 90% of trains on this line are coal, it's a bad idea and I hope it gets pushback on every level from inside the railroad to outside from the FRA.
It won’t work in the worst of snowstorms either when they shut down the highways, and when the dirt roads accessing the right of ways are snowed in. BNSF uses Snow Coaches on their Northern Transcon to transport crews when it’s too snowy for the crew vans to get to the train.
NS engineer here... If energy management and trip optimizer didn't knock-off dynamic brakes going down hill, or reduce throttle when coming out of a bottom, allowing the rear to run in, then back out and "sit down", or remaining in idle through undulating territory not keeping the train stretched or bunched and allowing the slack to do whatever it wants to do, then there wouldn't have been a broken knuckle.
I've seen loco's on a track here in Northern California with no engineer in the cab and a sign on the side saying this is a remote control engine, at a crossing while kids was on the track with BMX bikes and we told them to get off the tracks. But nothing will be done about this until someone gets killed!!!
Yeah RCOs are common. (Remote control) typically a conductor who is RCO certified operates those. Most of the time they service local customers close to the yard or are used on the pull back or (trimming) and to send trains over the hump into the class yard.
When it said PTC would take the conductors role I laughed out loud. It costs them pennies to have an extra guy on the train compared to the millions of dollars the railroad makes just per trip. The railroad would rather keep their pennies than keep the communities they operate in safe… These revenue saving policies coming out of corporate were drafted by suites who’ve never touched a train before.
45 minutes to walk 3900 ft listening for the air? That’s epic… my conductor walked our 6400 ft train to the rear and back in just over an hour last night looking for defects. Lots of places where I run aren’t accessible by automobile.. a conductor worth “anything” being the first responder to any incident is priceless.
@@richardmatuszewski269 That sounds about right! This video makes me wonder just what kind of people U.P. is hiring to man their trains. I think U.P. should be examining their hiring practices and not looking for excuses to remove another man from their freight crews. When I was required to provide flag protection under Rule 99 I could cover the 2000 yards in under 15 minutes. Sam - who walks and is shaped like a turtle - couldn't never do that! lol
Your idea of having both is the only way this would be a good system. The expeditor could be a carman position, which would bring back some life to that craft as I think out of all the craft jobs, carmen have been cut the heaviest by far. As you said though, this is a sales pitch to further cut costs at the expense of safety, therefore it would never be implemented this way.
@@84hansennr Big Orange also has carman craft responders. If your train has a problem that the conductor cannot fix with the tools at hand or it is a carman type issue like the car itself, not just a knuckle or air hose, well, put up your feet, boys, and wait for the dog catch. You ain't goin' NOWHERE.
I have zero knowledge of the railroad world, this is interesting to see what happens when trains have mechanical failure, and reading little in between the lines seeing how the company wants ONE person to handle driving and repairing the train.......that seem HIGH amount of stress on one person
I love how Conductor's PTC was inactive when he was in the cab but active and displaying track when he was gone. Secondly, Conductors need to step their game up and protect their craft to the max. Allowing outside forces like Responders (mobile mech) come out and fix their trains, i.e. knock forgotten handbrakes, broken knuckles, air leaks etc, while they sit on the locomotive on their phone is totally unacceptable.
@jeffisdefThe people you’re talking about have all been working for the RR for 15-20 years and got overweight during that time. Have you seen the people they’re hiring? One in ten or twenty is overweight.
The Railroad official at the meeting said it himself Efficiency First and Safety Second. No matter what they paint on the steps of a locomotive. Been that way for a long time.
Where is OSHA? No but seriously. Are the pockets so deep, they just cut checks on the daily. Or is it the fear driven work culture of not reporting, and risking termination. I have questions. I like to voice publicly, you know cuz I can.
@@heidi22209 We didn't have internet. Which is kinda cool for you guys. We had a Federal Mediator on our property a long time ago. Our General Chairman said, when the meeting was over. The RR official asked the Mediator if he wanted to go golfing. The Mediator agreed. My General Chairman told me He knew we were fk'd. He was right. We lost a lot over the years. After that, I don't trust any government agencies or politicians.
Been working the South Morrill subdivision sense 2006. That's not the Morrill Travelodge motel, not the South Morrill yard office, I've never seen that Sam guy. Guess the UP figured that if they were going to make a fictional propaganda film for the FRA they might as well fake every aspect. We do have right of way roads for over 90% of the territory but it frequently crosses from the North side of the tracks to the South side so if you're driving beside a 3 mile long coal train looking for the reason it went into emergency odds are good that you will run out of road, have to back up, get out on the highway or county road, find an open crossing then back track to where you left off and continue your inspection. Broken knuckles used to be extremely rare, infact I only had to replace 1 in the first 12 years I was on that run. Now because of the insanely long and heavy trains we build coupled with the Trip Optimizer energy management system broken knuckles are common. This expediter concept isn't new. We used to have a Foreman General stationed in Oshkosh. He was a trained, experienced carman/mechanical employee with a 4 wheel drive truck. He would work WITH the conductor and engineer to set out bad order cars, replace defective Fred's or head-end devices. Fix frozen bells and horns and other small mechanical problems on the locomotives. Of course the UP abolished the job shortly after the beginning of PSR and shortly before we began building 3 mile long coal trains because they were deemed to be unneeded.
About the same day Union Pacific announced this plan a freak accident took place on the NS line in Birmingham AL where a piece of metal was thrown up by a train traveling in the opposite direction entering the Windshield of a locomotive and killing a Conductor trainee. Imagine if it was a single crew train and the engineer was killed. Yeh there are safety tools like the alerter and what not but still not a good idea.
Coming from a Railfan I have nothing but respect for Conductors, every conductor I've met has always been kind to me, one even gave me a ride in his truck so I could railfan his yard job. Nothing but respect for them and what they do. I also got one of your hats for Christmas today it's really clean.
My Railroading experience is a couple of years firing a tourist steam locomotive in Amory, Ms. and rail photography. You can't run 3 or 4 210 ton engines and a 7000+ foot train with 1 man. I have always been mechanically inclined, and I see 520 axles 48 to 64 cylinders and so on. It's like turning a toddler loose in a feather factory with a lollipop in each hand...."It'll be ok." And I have picked up more than one conductor after he waded a creek and climbed a bank to get to the hwy and needed a ride to the head end. Sheffield to Memphis has many places where an ATV can't get to the track. West end Oldham..clear.
100% agree with you. This increases the variable of danger on (and off) the rail exponentially. Hell I haven't even started training yet and I can tell you, an expediter will NOT be able to respond to severe situations that require someone already there. You are right though, bathroom breaks!! Hello mcfly! The engineer will eventually have to use their Carnal faculties 😂
I worked for the KCS when trains moved under train orders with a caboose, engineer and conductor plus head-end and rear-end brakemen when thru trains were about 5,000 ft long. I never agreed with allowing railroads to eliminate the caboose. I can't believe railroads would even remotely consider a one man crew moving a 10,000 ft freight train.
@@bobjohnson1587 You must be correct...and how sad. How much revenue is enough? Many railroads lived with much less, but of course they are gone now. With M&A only the strongest survive....but are we any better off?
@@phmoffett Unfortunately, I know all too well what can happen when the 'bean counters' gain control at a Class 1 railway and greed becomes part of the operating plan. That happened at mine in the late '80 early '90's. By about '94/'95 the new buzzword was 'operating ratio'. How do we lower the OR from 93 to 87 was what you heard almost every day from the company. One of the ways they did that was to not purchase any new mainline freight locomotives for over 15 years - just refurbish what they had or buy refurbished ones from private sources. Another way they did that was to buy lower grade diesel fuel in the winter. Those two short-sighted decisions led to a cataclysmic situation in the winter of '96/'97 when their beyond their prime locomotive fleet began falling victim to on line massive failures caused by the low grade diesel fuel clogging up the engines fuel filters in the bitterly cold weather. Locomotives were dying everywhere that winter! And so were their trains and their customers shipments! They learned their lesson the hard way that winter, or at least you thought they would have, but still the buzzword was operating ratio! And when they reached their target OR of 87 they weren't satisfied. They now had to try for 82. And when they reached 82 they had to try for 77 and so on and so on. Greed; it's a terrible thing!
22 years on the job myself, well said !! You missed 1 big thing that the conductor can do in the locomotive cab that is first aid to a engineer in case of injury or illness. Say said engineer has a heart attack and passes out. Up here on CSX (Conrails double track Chicago Line)we have a thing called "Trip Optimizer" from GE. That basically runs the locomotive for the engineer. Add trip Optimizer with PTC and basically the engineer is mostly blowing for crossings. Both of those systems won't realize that the engineer is passed out incapacitated from a heart attack. Who's gonna stop the train and call the dispatcher so the dispatcher can call 911 and send EMDs or Paramedics ??? Certainly not PTC or Trip Optimizer, but who can ??? The CONDUCTOR CAN !!
Yeeeeeeeeeeah, we just blow crossings. Until TO has NO IDEA how to handle the train and either it dumps it in your lap at the last possible second, or if you know what you are doing and know what you are looking at, you either take over earlier than that or hit the air brakes that TO doesn't even know it needs. TO runs worse than most students I have had. I generally run a smooth train when allowed to run it myself. TO has us bouncing around like the ball in a rattle can with all the run ins and run outs. I cannot WAIT for TO to rip my train apart and to get the call from the RFE asking what happened and tell em why don't you ask your computer?
@docaholic all I know is CSX insists on you running it or your getting a phone call from management. I'm not defending TO, ALL I'm saying if the Engineers becomes incapacitated who knows how far the train goes. I know for a fact if your having a Heart attack TO AND PTC cant do CPR.
We had this job and they did away with it when PSR came along. recalled all of them back to the house. I love the timing of this just after the contract negotiations.
Hey Joey the CT that died down in Georgia was my classmate in McDonough just a month and a half ago :(. Sat two seats away from me..... prayers for his family
Hey they want to do that to because of the pilot shortage! Better be careful. My rule is 2&2. If it don't have 2 engines and 2 pilots, you ain't get me on.
As a former Track Inspector for BNSF i can honestly say there are way to many variables for this to work. Not only is it putting the general public in danger but their employees as well. Terrible plan
Ex-UP conductor here (now working for BNSF) that is the most ridiculous position they can come up with. I still talk to some of my former co-workers and they are not happy with it.
Exactly most tracks you can't drive right next to so the guy in the truck is going to take a heck of a lot longer. They hand selected a best case scenario and ignored every other one.
First UP is full of shit!!!! I am a conductor for UP and there are never any nice little roads to drive your truck to change a knuckle. What activities was he doing for 6 hours if he’s just waiting on something to happen. That schedule they’re talking will never work because the will have those positions cut to a bare minimum and that will be working his off 12 hours 11 days straight while TSC coordinators will be off everyday including weekends with their OA (tsc on assignment) buddies waiting for the next concert or football game. 😮 since he can never reach the car with the broken knuckle he’ll have to carry the light 80 pound 50 cars deep on a steep hill with the ballast sliding under his feet
Sam has to drive 100 miles from home to change a knuckle 5 cars back, runs out of hours, and has to check into a flea bag hotel for the 5th night in a row.
I don't work for the railroad,but I can tell you the conductor can never be replaced.It's too damn dangerous taking him or her out of the cab.Just ain't gonna work!
@@mikehowey4869 There are MANY regional and short line railroads running 10k ton plus mile long trains. LOTS of them. And some of these are currently running with one man in the cab. Many Amtrak trains run one man in a cab. These are trains moving hundreds of people at high speeds and one man in a cab is permissible. And Class I railroads switch cars just like short line / regional railroads. So what is good for a small switching operation should be good for a Class I switching the same type of industry.
What about a otr truck driver.....your gonna be seeing semis driving them selves ...it's already happening in Texas ... Florida had taxis....railways won't be able to compete...
I'm a conductor for csx what happens if it was just a air hose 10 Cars away on a long flat trash car walk back 5 mins relace the airhose zip tie and back to the head end then ground base conductor u could be in the middle of nowhere they would have to find where u are access where u are then find the problem and fix when it could have been fixed and already on my way dumb idea let alone hitting a person and the engineer not noticed
UP is easily the worst railroad to work for, i was a carman for them for almost 9 years. After being there about 2 years they stopped caring about safety, only profit. And then they wonder why they can’t get people in to work for them. Their reputation has been destroyed by the executives and their shareholders.
One thing I would note: Emergencies don't always come one at a time. Say a man has 200 miles to cover. A train goes into emergency 90 miles away. Just as he pulls up to the first trouble a train at the other end of his territory has a problem. He hasn't even started on the first problem yet and already he has a 3+ hour drive just to get to the second one. Presuming he can get the first one fixed quickly (less than an hour) the second train will be standing for 4 hours. And if it is a busy main line there will likely be more trains standing behind the second one. That roving employee would really be saving money for the company that day!
I lived in a town where CSX runs the main line form Louisville to Cincinnati a few years back the train busted a knuckle they had to send an engine south to pull the rear of the train north and put it on a siding in order to get to the car with the busted knuckle and pull it back north and place it on a siding then go back and get the remainder of the train and go back south I have been told before by N/S RXR that they are not allowed to make any repairs they have to wait on a mechanic
I’m only 1 week in of my conductor training course I can already see that is a terrible plan. They show us a video with perfect conditions train breaks a knuckle near in a convenient road with perfect weather. Now show a video example with less then ideal conditions like the train derails in a area not accessible by truck in a blizzard with 2 feet of snow while the engineer is having a medical emergency and needs immediate medical assistance. Then what? If only there was a conductor on board that train that could help immediately with all these issues.
You are absolutely right in everything you said. They are basically trying to do away with thousands of conductors and add a handful of carmen to save money. (As if they don’t make enough already) Not to mention, if they really wanted to speed things up they should get rid of that trip optimizer that runs at less than half the speed limit most of the time in hilly terrain where I’m at. On top of that, we have stops on the way to set cars off and pick others up. Who’s going to direct those movements, do C102s and such on that work. Nonsense if you ask me.
I retired from KCS Railway nine years ago. I went to work for them April 6-1976. I remember when they cut the brakeman off and took away the caboose. We were in Dark Territory so I figured that under the rules in the Rule Book at the time, there was no way you could do it. All they did was change the rules. The Railroad doesn’t care about the safety of the public or the efficiency of transportation of the goods. They are focused more on cutting jobs. I too know that railroads run through places where there are literally no highways or roads. This guy in the truck will probably be furnished a four wheeler with the truck to get to these trouble spots. Train goes in emergency ? The Engineer gets on the radio and starts getting hold of the Dispatcher. That train can sit there till the Engineers go on the law probably because the man in the truck is tending to three other trains. I’ll tell you something else. The day will come when the trains will be operating with nobody onboard. All that electronic gadgetry in the nose of the engine will run the train. And the guy in the truck will be working twelve hour shifts trying to keep this stuff running. And in the end the hundreds of guys in “Management “ will be stroking the guys in the Board room telling them alls well.
Yes, that's the ultimate goal, profit margin surplus, and "streamlining". I work for UP in California and we're beaten to the ground. I've been sick since Wednesday..... nowhere to run... nowhere to hide
@@NAT-turners-Revenge you know guys that have never had to deal with working insane hours with literally no schedule getting called to go to work dead ass tired. I have literally just fallen asleep after working on my ole lady’s car all evening after working an all night train and not even been asleep long enough to swarm up my pillow. And that f$:/king crew dispatcher on the phone forcing me to take a call for some BS that I’m not supposed to be protecting. Back in the 70’s we didn’t have cell phones. He’ll didn’t have pagers either. I remember one time on the extra board being first out all day. Even three days since I worked. Starving to death. Drove to the store to get cigarettes. Gone fifteen minutes and missed a call. Couldn’t plan to go hunting, fishing, socializing with other families. They thought I was crazy when I’d tell them I can’t tell you where I’ll be tomorrow. I’m on call. Finally people quit asking. No friends. Unless you have lived it, you just don’t understand
I live next to the CSX Henderson Sub, and I’ve never liked the thought of one man train crews, especially when many of these trains are 2 to 5 miles long now. They run pretty much every type of railcar down this route between Evansville, IN and Nashville, TN., including ethanol trains…
Former conductor with CSXT and MARC running on America's oldest rails... This is impossible because the majority of the tracks hardly have enough walking room let alone room for a truck to respond. Hell we couldn't even get an even walking surface let alone a roadway along the tracks.
I'm a retired conductor. I hired out in 1971 and retired in 2014. I agree with everything you've said, but I'm wondering what you mean when you disagreed with the weight of a knuckle. Do you think a knuckle weighs more or less than 80 pounds? An E knuckle weighs a little less than a F knuckle, but they're both around 80 pounds. I googled it and confirmed my memory of what it was like carrying them around.
whoa! even wind speed?! that’s good too acknowledge, i wouldn’t even think about that.. unless told otherwise…you the man Joey appreciate your honesty and love all your videos!!! cheers
OK HUGE WARNING TO ALL YALL HIRING IN THE HI-LINE DIVISION ON BNSF, I was in 4 days and they canned me for absolutely no reason, I tried but literally they canned me over a raft guide, and I had experience on D6s and shit. These managers there at these terminals are wolves in sheep's clothing. We had our employee evaluation earlier in our trainee group since they could do it and used it to can me. I had good relationships and all positive feedback from my coworkers but since we aren't vested in 1 year with the Union, our union representative who was there couldn't help me and he was pissed. Hire to fire, be careful guys it's another hire spree and fire as well!!!
Excellent analysis and observation RT! Sadly, you are correct about the reduction of manpower. We've already seen the robot trains being tested. I have seen the end results of many derailments here in VA, back when Southern was Southern and then when it became N&S. There many more shopping centers and suburbs built around those rights-of-way now. Disaster awaits us as you've noted, playing with innocent lives. Merry Christmas and thank you for your thoughts on the subject!
Thats exactly how we do things here at RJ Corman in Clearfield but we don't wait for a call if something happens we follow the train from start to finish. The down sides are what Joey already mentioned but the upside is that if you need to stop for something you can and for example last week I had a family emergency and my daughter was in a wreck so I called my train master and told him what was going on and he sent another conductor to replace me so I could go right to the hospital. I'm not saying what the up is doing is right at all but coming from a conductor who already works like the video except a few things. It''s not all that bad and no I'm not trying to upset anyone and I know we are a short line but I we operate like a class 1 and we run 130 car coal trains and grain trains as well. A big down side is when your train go's into emergency and you have no way of getting to the train and you have to walk for as long as it takes to get to your train and then find what's wrong.
That's not what UP is trying to do.. They want this Expeditor position to work with sometimes 10+ trains all at once.. You would hear far less argument out of us if it was one to one. One truck for one train. The driving goal that UP has, is to cut they're Conductor workforce into a quarter of not less than they have it.
I drive a shuttle van for the railroad. Majority of the track at least in my area can’t be accessed by vehicles. So how would it save time if the expediter is gonna have to walk the train anyway?
Interesting video. I’m a driver (engineer) in the UK, we’ve operated single manned freight trains for the past 20 plus years, I’ve only worked them for 8. However I fully accept that yours is a different form of railroading to ours, yours is railroad on steroids, your trains are longer, heavier and you travel through an awful lot of wilderness where stuff could happen. For me, if anything happens, I’ve probably got an hour or two at the most to wait before someone ground based turns up in a van - assuming I can’t solve it myself. I’ve got instant communication with the signaller, I can stop all trains in my immediate area using my in-cab GSM-R radio if it’s a serious issue. It’s also a very different form of working for shifts, very few lodging turns, always return home to my own bed each shift, virtually fixed rest day pattern so I know what day off I’ve got in 6 months time and can plan accordingly. Just learning about the working practices you currently have makes me feel uneasy, never mind what they want to change it too.
Sounds nice. Yall hiring? Yeah, railroading in the US is basically treat anyone not in management like less than the dirt on your shoe and hope it all works out. And we make it work because it pays well. The pay isn't keeping up with other jobs here, so the quality of what new hires they can even get is swirling the toilet bowl.
@@livefree223 Some companies are taking on but it’s hit and miss. Most of the passenger business is in industrial disputes with their companies (and government by default) about pay rises (or lack of them), plus changes wanting to move passenger trains to reduced staffing. Pay varies widely for drivers across the sector, as does working hours and conditions, so you do get a move of staff from one company to another. Most of our industry is governed around running passenger services, so on freight we are lower priority out on the network. Usually get a decent run in the middle of the night, once all the trains with windows have gone to bed.
I'm not a railroader, but I help my father in his tractor-trailer. While we aren't talking on the same level, I'm sure we can both agree that issues with coupling can be a pain in the ass. December 26th, 2022, our 5th wheel froze up at the DC and we couldn't get unhitched, we would've gone to the nearest truck stop to warm it up, but our efforts lead to the jaw being half-open meaning we couldn't safely leave the yard. and that kids is why you bring a blow torch to work after your truck's been sat in below 0 weather all night, woulda fixed the problem then and there.
Well i got a new job duty for the conductor, Re crewed a train in this nasty blizzard only to have a bad trailing locomotive, then we had issues with the Leader shutting down coasted to a stop over a two hr period with the diesel doc, unable to fix it. now keep in mind my second unit was operating but could not be used as a leader due to no working bell, all it took to fix it was swapping out the MU cable, but needless to say had to limp it down to the next siding to clear the main approx 6 miles. as we proceeded thanks to the Road foreman giving us his ice scrapper my conductor had to scrap the windshield on the inside so i could see so remember conductors are Needed. and the temp was -20 with windchill. and for fun the GURU valve popped as we tied the train down in the siding had all that steam come up as i wrapped my hand brake on.
I definitely agree with you! I don’t understand this thinking, except you nailed it. The big corporations don’t care about anything except profits. Screw the safety of the general public as long as they go play golf and get richer! Thank you for this video!
There was a time I was chasing trains with all my kids. We spotted one train that had to go into a siding and wait for another train to pass. The conductor had to let the whole train pass, and would have had to walk up to the front of the train. He obviously had his handheld, and since we were watching the operation, I offered to take him up to the locomotive and save him the walk. So, I asked him to have the engineer pull up to the next grade crossing. We got there before the locomotive hit the crossing, and the kids got to see him jump on the train as it eased by. We followed a few more miles, then I went home to get the kids to bed. I never considered the amount of time I saved both the conductor and engineer for their work shift! I’ll add this one thing. I was an OTR trucker for better than a decade. Things happen. Blown tires, equipment malfunctions, traffic… This is what makes me say that there is NO WAY that fully automated, robot controlled trucks will EVER be a normal happening. Too much can go wrong, and DOES.
OK. You say NO WAY. Lets move ahead 20 years. A driver takes his truck 40 miles outside of Chicago. The interstate system is now striped and marked so computer systems inside the truck can safely navigate that truck through low-density routes for hundreds of miles. No trucker falling asleep at the wheel. No trucker driving 85 right up a family's minivan. Can it be done today? Not safely. But 20 years from now my bet is that trucks and cars will be able to self-navigate on hundreds of thousands of miles of highways.
when i retired 11 years ago as an owner operator i sold my mack truck to a guy in nigeria africa and he said they have a conductor in the truck there 2 men !!!!!
@@realtruth172 I have seen that. In particular in countries where hijacking is an issue. You also encounter incredible road hazards in countries like Nigeria. You become your own mechanical team on those 'highways'
As you point out, the expediter would have to have a two-path road all along the track everywhere. It might work if the expediter drove a high rail truck, but even that would have problems. They would have to have the expediters stationed between terminals to cut down driving time. I have stated before that it is the hyper greedy hedge fund managers that are forcing a lot of these wrong-headed practices on the railroads. Stop these organizations and a lot of these problems would be taken care of.
As a class 1 railroad conductor and this would be a good job if you could hold it. Ideally both would be good. I would imagine that they would have several expeditors going back and forth between the two terminals. Now yard jobs and freight runs through cities like you mentioned that wouldn’t work. But freight runs straight through for example Pratt Kansas to Dalhart TX have expediters that travel so far out and come back and so far out from Dalhart and come back. Then crews that travel west from Dalhart to Vaughn and stop half way and Vaughn to Dalhart and stop half way. Seems to have some logic to it but like you said they want to take away jobs so this isn’t an effort to make it better otherwise they would still have a conductor and make the expeditor role both permanent positions to bid.
This is a real tell of what I find in the Facebook Trains Magazine community where when I bring up concerns that carriers are on a mad-dash to get rid of as many employees as possible, I always get push back by folks on those forums, them defending the owners and shareholders of those carriers instead of giving a sh*t about the employees and/or the general population for that matter. Just seams like there's just no turning back from this trend until there's a real loss-of-life catastrophic event that forces laws to be made to bring back more eyes and adaptable folks back on trains, trains that are maybe a little shorter and safer.
UP already has traveling car inspectors in most areas that perform the task of assisting mainline trains (but they leave that part out in the video). The TCI trucks are equipped with parts needed to get trains rolling if they can be repaired on site. Many times you need a cutting torch and/or welder and the mechanical experience to perform those repairs. This is full on attempt to push for 1 man crews...cutting jobs for both mechanical and transportation
What they aren’t saying about saving time is the train will just go in the hole for that extra time. Nobody gets home “early”. If you haven’t made almost 12hrs you haven’t worked long enough and they’ll find something for you to do
I guess the railroads are going to make roads adjacent to the railroad tracks all over America. On the division I worked on there is up to 10 - 15 miles without any access. Walking thru overgrown land, sloughs where snakes breed, and/or undulating terrain, will make that difficult to do. But, just like cutting off the caboose, the conductors and brakemen helped make it work by calling a taxi to take them up to the engine instead of walking up. Being gone from home for over forty hours they want to get home as quick as possible.
I’m an engineer with csx for over 20 years. One man train is a disaster. Even if I don’t particularly care for whom I’m working with, 200 miles alone will be miserable. You need human interaction to stay awake and alert. Black coffee is my drug of choice. How am I supposed to use the bathroom? Stop every time? It’s not about anything but money.
I worked for the WC (CN) for about 20 years. The CN has been talking about doing this since 2002 or so. I bet on paper it looks great but in operation it will never work. The only roads next to tracks are in yards. Besides that, my conductor can fix a knuckle and be back on the head end before any "expeditor" would even get to the scene. Railroads have gotten too big for their britches. Time to split them up.
This reminds me of when I worked on a drilling rig in south Texas, if the rig broke down, we would have to repair it, i always said, not only did I work on a drilling rig, I had to "work on it". That was years ago, now they got it made in the shade.
So it sounds like Expedition service is going to require the railroads to invest Millions if not billions of dollars into building thousands of miles of access roads along 100% of their entire rail routes. Good job
When I was a kid back in the 70's I wanted to work on the railroad for any of the Midwestern lines IC, BN, C&NW or Milwaukee Road I wasn't fussy. But at the time there was a hiring freeze going on. Now I'm seeing railroad jobs opened up and unfortunately due to physical problems, I think all my working for the railroad will have to be in Model form. Keep the vids coming. Merry 🎄Christmas everyone.
Back in the 70's newly married with kid tried too higher out with an Class 1 RR. Was told if you wear glasses they ain't hiring you as an Engineer. Conductor maybe. They did me the best favor ever. Well, I said. Hello major local electric utility. Home every night and saw family every holiday and retired with a great pension / benefits in 2010.
Absolutely incredible I worked for Conrail from 1979-1984; many freight trains had a crews of 5: engineer, fireman, conductor and a couple of brakemen. Crews were gradually reduced to 2 or 3. Railroading is hard, dangerous work: larger and larger trains, poor equipment and trackage, people disregarding crossing signals, people deliberately committing suicide. Look at railfan videos of the late 1960’s and 1970’s: graffiti on equipment was relatively rare - now, most rail cars are covered in it. Rail workers, especially on passenger trains, are frequently assaulted - and the railroad employee is not allowed to defend themselves Oh, you can believe the remaining Class 1 carriers are salivating over automation - someday it’ll just be BNSFUPCSXNSCNCPKCS 😛, one mega railroad that will operate trains with AI and no humans PTC? Ask Metrolink (Southern California Commuter Rail) commuters about PTC….I lived in Southern California for 31 years and commuted to work on Metrolink: trains that would suddenly stop between stations, schedules that had to be adjusted, trains that simply wouldn’t move, signal infrastructure that had to be changed - and so on
Csx is dismissing crews when engineers ask conductors to sit in the set and hit the button while the engineers use the restroom. They make it clear to stop the train.
I wonder how long it'll take for a crash to happen because you're taking away a person that helps keep the engineer awake and aware to what's in front of them.
I have never worked on the railroad, but did a lot of business with Norfolk Southern before I retired. I want to say I agree 100% with your points and logic. There was a day when railroads were ran by people who rose and were promoted through the operations positions. Unfortunately today this is not the case in many businesses. I will stay on topic with railroads. Instead of having operations people running railroads you have more and more finance and accounting people in charge. Unfortunately these people cannot see the operations perspective; they only see EBIT, sales and cashflow. Having dealt with these types of individuals for many years I would say UP would like to see one man crews. Heck I know there are some Finance VPs who would like to see unmanned trains in operation. Some of this nonsense is already occurring in railroad yards. In closing I support your stance and the points you make! Excellent video! 👍
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I am a locomotive engineer for UP and I can speak from experience that with two of us in the cab, we help keep each other awake. With going to work every 12hrs and getting little to no time off, we need to help keep each other awake. Also, PTC has sooo many issues its not even funny. Just a couple days ago I was pulling a train into a yard track with ptc and ptc didnt know what track I was in, so it plugged me. This right here caused a 20 minute delay to recover the air in zero degree temps with a 15,000 ft train. Anyways. Its safer with 2 men on head end for so many reasons.
Hmmmm save an hour to sit 5 for dwell and block crossing hmmmm.
Don't worry about the Engineer having to stay awake, they'll be after his job next. Cause, you know, AUTOMATION!
Engineer here as well. My absolute favorite is when I'm at restricted speed, need to have my eyes out the window and my hands on the controls, and PTC WILL NOT STFU and stop chirping at me and demanding my attention. If they get rid of the conductor I'm just stopping the damn train every single time it beeps. Can't risk taking my eyes off the tracks if the conductor isn't there with his eyes on the tracks. Not worth risking my job to answer nagging PTC every two seconds.
AND ghey're in ur business!
Help each other stay awake? You're exaggerating. Conductor stays awake with you? Stop lying
Ex train dispatcher here. One evening working BN Centralia South, an engineer suffered a stroke (probably related to a few years earlier hitting a boulder on the track at 35 mph, being flung into the front of the cab, then being unconscious as the engine submerged into the adjacent bay). The radio was, as usual, almost unusable, but what we had to work with. The head man (remember them?) was screaming through the din for help. It was a couple of minutes before I could figure out which train and send help. The delay because of the cra... uh... sub optimal radio was bad enough. Without the second guy in the cab, there would have been no call for help and no help coming instead of a delay in getting help.
Thomas, isn't UP just so entertaining these days?? 😆
@@donstarr7261 Pretty much all of them. The most depressing thing about today's railroads is that they are essential.
@T.A.W can't imagine how they would get any one on the side of Napavine short of a hyrail...
@@thaney423 The BN Alliance Division had a helicopter for dogcatching. It's only money...as long as they don't have to give any to the employees.
Sure... We'll jump right in a helicopter 'properly' maintained by the railroad... 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 Said no one ever!!!!
So Sam drove from his home terminal in North Platte to Gering in 29 minutes? That's 170 miles at 340 miles per hour.
Up super race cars
The industry has stated that with current safety systems (PTC) that a second person in the locomotive cab is no longer necessary because PTC replaces the redundancy (observing signals, signal compliance) the second employee provides. That is only a small part of the essential nature of at least two people on a train crew.
• A second person is required any time handbrakes must be applied.
• A second person is required any time a train must cross a highway crossing at grade when the signals are defective or inoperative.
• A second person is required in CTC or interlocking limits when a dual control switch must be lined by hand.
• A second person is required when the route a train must take includes lining a hand throw switch.
A “roving conductor” in a highway vehicle is not an acceptable substitute.
• A stopped train can and has created traffic conditions that prevent assistance coming by highway vehicle from accessing the train.
• A train stopped by an undesired emergency application (UDE) can pose hazard of a runaway if handbrakes are not applied in a timely manner.
• A significant part of the railroad network is not accessible by highway vehicle.
• A significant part of the railroad network is in remote areas. A second crew member who is not on the train will be of no use in the case of medical emergency.
• A train stopped for a substantial length of time poses a hazard to communities that depend upon crossings at grade. The delay waiting for a “roving conductor” can pose a significant hazard to communities along the line as well as a significant inconvenience.
• Rail transportation is an essential response to the climate emergency. The US rail system is already underutilized. Considering train miles per mile of track, adjusted for US train length, is 11th in the world. There are generally small areas of massive congestion separated by long expanses of empty track. The current method of operation and business management of the railroad industry is already detrimental to the increased use of rail transportation and the essential mode shift from highway to rail. Subjecting the network to even more extensive delays for disabled trains waiting for a “roving conductor” to assist is not acceptable.
• The inaccessibility of the train may be mitigated if the “roving conductor” is using a hyrail vehicle; however that requires the conductor to also be qualified on Maintenance of Way rules. A high rail vehicle approaching a train that has experienced a UDE on an ascending grade from behind is at risk if there has been delay in reaching the train to apply handbrakes.
Train inspections by crew members are required by rules (e.g., GCOR 6.29.2, NORAC 72). A crew of only one person cannot inspect both sides of the train as required.
Fatigue among train and engine crew personnel is a substantial problem in the railroad industry. There is no defined time to be on duty, thus no defined time for rest. The projected on duty time for a crew member regularly changes several times while the crew is off duty. For example, it is possible for a person to sleep anticipating a 9pm call, be fully awake at 7pm, and be called for 5am,, when it is time to sleep again. Accident reports regularly cite the number of hours that a crew is off duty, making them legally rested, without citing the train lineups that were published between the off duty and on duty time. A second, questionably rested, person in the locomotive increases that chance that a condition requiring attention (e.g., person or vehicle on the track, obstruction or defect) will be detected.
Not only is a second person necessary, on the extreme length trains currently being operated, a third person, located at the rear of the train, is necessary. A brisk walk is 4 mph. When walking ballast and looking for the cause of a UDE, walking speed is no more than two mph. That’s three feet per second. Inspecting a train 15,000 feet in length will take approximately 1 hour 20 minutes. Were the train stopped on an ascending grade, that amount of time before applying hand brakes on the detached portion is excessive. As well, a third crew member on the rear of the train reduces inspection time by 50 percent, a significant amount when considering blocked highway crossings and line capacity.
Technical safety systems (e.g., PTC) have not replaced verbal communication of mandatory directives and may not in the foreseeable future. Safety of verbally communicated mandatory directives is increased when more than one person on the train is listening to the transmission and repeat. A second person understanding and comparing the content and meaning is also essential. This is particularly true in verbally transmitted written authority (e.g., Track Warrant Control).
We need to get you testifying. What a post!
@@stanhumphreys9282 Already did. That is what I sent to FRA.
@@T.A.W Got it. Thanks!
really good response.
Short line and regional railroads, moving long trains with heavy tonnage across rough terrain, had found that one man in the cab and one man riding in a truck along with the train works in many cases. All cases? Certainly not. But for tens of thousands of miles it absolutely can work. Let's address a couple of your points. Train inspections. The second man in a truck can inspect the same train many times in its route. That same man in the cab cannot do so. A man in a truck can run ahead and flag crossings. Roving conductors have been found to be an excellent alternative in many situations where trains have gone into emergency and minor repairs are needed. It ABSOLUTELY does work in many situations. Again, not all situations. But many.
I like how "Sam" started at 1500 (3pm), replaced a knuckle in the dark, but then pulled back into home in what looked like the next afternoon.
Sam is also a time traveler! lol
Would love to see a video from UP on how this will work across the Roseville Subdivision, commonly known as "Donner Pass".
Or La Grande sub
Heck even on the sub of ours I heard it’s coming to, it’ll be a major safety risk. One spot, we had an HED failure and even though we weren’t far from a crew base, you had to go through a bison farm, private gates, and a rough access road to get us a new one (we couldn’t move due to rules). The manager and utility couldn’t get through a fence so I had to go between the locomotive and fence. Oh and for the past two weeks, we’ve had a form c about the bison being on the tracks… am I the only one who has seen all the videos of them goring people in Yellowstone? Our mountain route has no access roads, we need to be highrailed in to relieve crews that don’t make it to a assessable siding
Hi-rails maybe?
The expeditors will be doubled up with MOW on the snow plows in the winter. Duh! Hahaha
@@grantd1011 probably? Which defeats the purpose of the video... now you may have to drive 30 miles passed the train to find a crossing you can get on the rails at.
I’m a retired industrial engineer - the guy who watched and timed workers (not in the rail industry, though) and analyzed the data. I was had responsibilities for quality and safety in my organization. Using the term “expediter” is an admission that the system is failing. You are absolutely correct that the rail companies are gambling with safety by removing the conductor from the cab.
I was a Union Pacific/Missouri Pacific ( agreement employee on the Mopac ) rail train operator/supervisor depending on the territory I was working on . I worked in 18 states of the UP system and I can tell you for a fact that less than half of UP right of way and none of the old Mopac right of way had roads or trails beside the track that a person could gain safe access to a train . I rode rail trains when they had rail on them , there's places beside the track that's almost a straight drop off down the dump , open deck bridges and trestles . Winter weather conditions are another subject .
Ex-Conductor here. We always had to walk the entire train, even after we found a separation. We didn't just replace the knuckle and go back to the engine.
This is all about getting the "crew" down to 1 man,
The same thing happened when they pitched the Utility man. They worked the piss out of those poor souls. I saw a guy late one night that walked into the crew room. He looked sick so I asked if he was okay. He said I'm fine just beat. I've put away 5 trains so far and I usually make 12. So I've got 5 more hours to go. This is rough. They'll do the same thing with an Expiditer. He'll have to drive 30 miles to place a car at customer A then drive 15 miles in heavy traffic to the bad side of town and determine why the air dumped on a through freight, then back to the manifest train to setout a cut in a siding for interchange etc. They'll work him into ground!
Sounds like a lot of possibilities for conductors to be caught up in a wreck..
I was having the mentality that it would be the other way around, I guess it depends on big of a area each person has. Also a lot of guys are going to be disgruntled and not give a crap doing a job they dont want to do. Can’t see many guys flying up from their seat and speeding to the location especially if there are no penalties for being late or rewards for being on time. Interested to see how this really plays out if it actually gets passed
@@Railroad_TalkNOutdoorsis Union Pacific unbelievable 5:15? 😂
@@jbaros8629 They are.... I work for them 😳
@@NAT-turners-Revenge Thanks for letting me know. I think the idea would be great, if that was a separate role. We need the conductors in the cab where they belong!
Today I heard CP call for help with their PTC because their screen didn't match with the signal in front of them. Their train went into suppression while rolling over a diamond in La Crosse, Wisconsin. That not only held up CP but also held up BNSF.
Good
PTC loves to get confused and either dump it, or more often (quite often, really, especially whenever it rains, or even gets cloudy) loses track of where it is and I need to get it down to restricted speed to get it back up again.
PTC will never be able to replace the conductor. I listen to NS’ radio traffic in Altoona and there’s always a train toning the PTC help desk. And like you said, PTC can’t help when there’s an accident.
Bring back the caboose
In other countries there is no one in the cab....
@@ShawnCalay-hi6gyUnfortunately that is indeed the case, and it’s a terrible idea.
@@Maverick_31 the worst idea is semi trucks with no one in them....railways will need to compete....if not we will have cross country paths...
I wonder if those motorists stopped for three hours and fourteen minutes on County Road 24 knew they were being unpaid extras in an industrial video?
If such a plan was instituted... Something tells me a shocking number of extended mainline delays, and tragic accidents would see this policy reversed through the natural order of events/necessity.
@@billradley Former CSX engineer here. I don't know how many times a more senior employee told me to "just hold your pocket open and let the company put more money in it with these rule changes." Ka-ching! Seriously, I agree with needing two in the cab. Often, on a well-put together train that doesn't work any intermediate points the conductor has an easy day, but he's not there for that, he's there for when the crap hits the fan. It's like insurance, you hope you don't need it, but you're sure glad you have it when something happens.
5 member crew in 1956. Fireman, Brakemen, Engineer, Conductor and Rear trainmen. 3,200 tons 76 cars and caboose. 12 hours rest. Now 2 member crew, RR's wants 1 man crew. PSR ,4,100 tons 125 cars trains, sick time when they tell you, no time off.
100% and getting more ridiculous by the day
When I started with KCS in 1976 we had an Engineer, a Fireman, a Head Brakeman, a Rear Brakeman, and a Conductor. We had Ten percent of the people in management that are in management today. And those in management were old heads that came from their craft after having actually worked switching or braking or running an engine. Not like today where they work six months and the next time you see them this kid is your boss.
They don’t know crap yet here they are. Now you have cameras staring at you all day pointed at your face in the cab of the engine. Then they literally watch your every move till you tie up and drive home. I worked there 38 years and retired ten years ago. Railroading at one time used to be enjoyable and guys loved what they did. Now, they hate it
@@creekdweller9662 Six months? Most trainmasters these days are either straight from college or they are the snakes that everyone hated anyway clawing to get some kind of life outside of work since these draconian insane attendance policies.
PTC breaks more knuckles than any engineer I know. Also, if Sam can't walk 69 cars in under 20 minutes, Sam needs to be pulled from service. Another point, if you can't get to a train and have a knuckle changed within 10 minutes with a TRUCK, it's not even worth it. Lastly, NOBODY sits at a blocked crossing for more than 10 minutes, let alone 3 hours. All they want is to deposit thousands of conductors paychecks into the pockets of about 20 people
Yeah I walked like 47 racks in about 15 or 20 he was walking short coal cars!!
Yes, an E style knuckle weighs around 67 lbs, an f style does weigh around 80 lbs. Also we're going to grieve every mechanical repair you make. That's our work, not conductors work. We allowed it in the past to save time because the conductors were right there. We're not going to allow them to become line of road mechanical personnel.
Man I use to hate changing those F style back in my carman days. Couplers also, that huge pin underneath the plate on the bottom.. good times lol
I used to live in Scottsbluff, sister city to Gering. They can only try this because there's state highways parallel to the row most of the way to North Platte. There are places that diverge from the tracks however. The only access then is county roads, mostly dirt. How can a train be accessed in an emergency if those are impassable? Flooding happens, snow happens. Even if 90% of trains on this line are coal, it's a bad idea and I hope it gets pushback on every level from inside the railroad to outside from the FRA.
It won’t work in the worst of snowstorms either when they shut down the highways, and when the dirt roads accessing the right of ways are snowed in. BNSF uses Snow Coaches on their Northern Transcon to transport crews when it’s too snowy for the crew vans to get to the train.
NS engineer here... If energy management and trip optimizer didn't knock-off dynamic brakes going down hill, or reduce throttle when coming out of a bottom, allowing the rear to run in, then back out and "sit down", or remaining in idle through undulating territory not keeping the train stretched or bunched and allowing the slack to do whatever it wants to do, then there wouldn't have been a broken knuckle.
TO run worse than any student I have had.
yep
I've seen loco's on a track here in Northern California with no engineer in the cab and a sign on the side saying this is a remote control engine, at a crossing while kids was on the track with BMX bikes and we told them to get off the tracks. But nothing will be done about this until someone gets killed!!!
Yeah RCOs are common. (Remote control) typically a conductor who is RCO certified operates those. Most of the time they service local customers close to the yard or are used on the pull back or (trimming) and to send trains over the hump into the class yard.
When it said PTC would take the conductors role I laughed out loud. It costs them pennies to have an extra guy on the train compared to the millions of dollars the railroad makes just per trip. The railroad would rather keep their pennies than keep the communities they operate in safe… These revenue saving policies coming out of corporate were drafted by suites who’ve never touched a train before.
45 minutes to walk 3900 ft listening for the air? That’s epic… my conductor walked our 6400 ft train to the rear and back in just over an hour last night looking for defects. Lots of places where I run aren’t accessible by automobile.. a conductor worth “anything” being the first responder to any incident is priceless.
Yes, this conductor must be getting paid by the hour not by the mile! lol Your conductor sounds like how I was when I was a conductor. Good man!
It takes the average person 15-22 minutes to walk one mile. On ballast, I would say closer to the 20 minute mark with an out of shape conductor
@@richardmatuszewski269 That sounds about right! This video makes me wonder just what kind of people U.P. is hiring to man their trains. I think U.P. should be examining their hiring practices and not looking for excuses to remove another man from their freight crews.
When I was required to provide flag protection under Rule 99 I could cover the 2000 yards in under 15 minutes. Sam - who walks and is shaped like a turtle - couldn't never do that! lol
Your idea of having both is the only way this would be a good system. The expeditor could be a carman position, which would bring back some life to that craft as I think out of all the craft jobs, carmen have been cut the heaviest by far. As you said though, this is a sales pitch to further cut costs at the expense of safety, therefore it would never be implemented this way.
U.P. Already does this.
@@84hansennr Big Orange also has carman craft responders. If your train has a problem that the conductor cannot fix with the tools at hand or it is a carman type issue like the car itself, not just a knuckle or air hose, well, put up your feet, boys, and wait for the dog catch. You ain't goin' NOWHERE.
I have zero knowledge of the railroad world, this is interesting to see what happens when trains have mechanical failure, and reading little in between the lines seeing how the company wants ONE person to handle driving and repairing the train.......that seem HIGH amount of stress on one person
I love how Conductor's PTC was inactive when he was in the cab but active and displaying track when he was gone.
Secondly, Conductors need to step their game up and protect their craft to the max. Allowing outside forces like Responders (mobile mech) come out and fix their trains, i.e. knock forgotten handbrakes, broken knuckles, air leaks etc, while they sit on the locomotive on their phone is totally unacceptable.
@jeffisdefThe people you’re talking about have all been working for the RR for 15-20 years and got overweight during that time. Have you seen the people they’re hiring? One in ten or twenty is overweight.
The Railroad official at the meeting said it himself Efficiency First and Safety Second. No matter what they paint on the steps of a locomotive. Been that way for a long time.
Where is OSHA? No but seriously. Are the pockets so deep, they just cut checks on the daily. Or is it the fear driven work culture of not reporting, and risking termination. I have questions. I like to voice publicly, you know cuz I can.
Uphill slow downhill fast, profit first safety last
@@heidi22209 We didn't have internet. Which is kinda cool for you guys. We had a Federal Mediator on our property a long time ago. Our General Chairman said, when the meeting was over. The RR official asked the Mediator if he wanted to go golfing. The Mediator agreed. My General Chairman told me He knew we were fk'd. He was right. We lost a lot over the years. After that, I don't trust any government agencies or politicians.
As a trainmaster in Oakville Ont once told a conductor safety will always take a backseat to productivity
@@thomasklimchuk441 You must have been a good man! At least honest! Rare among trainmasters!
Been working the South Morrill subdivision sense 2006. That's not the Morrill Travelodge motel, not the South Morrill yard office, I've never seen that Sam guy. Guess the UP figured that if they were going to make a fictional propaganda film for the FRA they might as well fake every aspect. We do have right of way roads for over 90% of the territory but it frequently crosses from the North side of the tracks to the South side so if you're driving beside a 3 mile long coal train looking for the reason it went into emergency odds are good that you will run out of road, have to back up, get out on the highway or county road, find an open crossing then back track to where you left off and continue your inspection. Broken knuckles used to be extremely rare, infact I only had to replace 1 in the first 12 years I was on that run. Now because of the insanely long and heavy trains we build coupled with the Trip Optimizer energy management system broken knuckles are common. This expediter concept isn't new. We used to have a Foreman General stationed in Oshkosh. He was a trained, experienced carman/mechanical employee with a 4 wheel drive truck. He would work WITH the conductor and engineer to set out bad order cars, replace defective Fred's or head-end devices. Fix frozen bells and horns and other small mechanical problems on the locomotives. Of course the UP abolished the job shortly after the beginning of PSR and shortly before we began building 3 mile long coal trains because they were deemed to be unneeded.
About the same day Union Pacific announced this plan a freak accident took place on the NS line in Birmingham AL where a piece of metal was thrown up by a train traveling in the opposite direction entering the Windshield of a locomotive and killing a Conductor trainee. Imagine if it was a single crew train and the engineer was killed. Yeh there are safety tools like the alerter and what not but still not a good idea.
To the railways employees are expendable.
Sam spends 3 hrs trying to figure out how to look up the car and identify if its and E type or F type knuckle
Yes, that Sam is quite the model employee! NOT! lol
Coming from a Railfan I have nothing but respect for Conductors, every conductor I've met has always been kind to me, one even gave me a ride in his truck so I could railfan his yard job. Nothing but respect for them and what they do. I also got one of your hats for Christmas today it's really clean.
A conductor with a truck? Where was his train?
So many people are quitting the Railroad now… with the poor sleeping patterns and bad health of the crews.. this will definitely make more quit..
My Railroading experience is a couple of years firing a tourist steam locomotive in Amory, Ms. and rail photography. You can't run 3 or 4 210 ton engines and a 7000+ foot train with 1 man. I have always been mechanically inclined, and I see 520 axles 48 to 64 cylinders and so on. It's like turning a toddler loose in a feather factory with a lollipop in each hand...."It'll be ok." And I have picked up more than one conductor after he waded a creek and climbed a bank to get to the hwy and needed a ride to the head end. Sheffield to Memphis has many places where an ATV can't get to the track. West end Oldham..clear.
You can absolutely run trains of this nature with 1 man in the cab. It is already done in the US on large regional railroads.
Well said!
@@cdavid8139 🐂💩
100% agree with you. This increases the variable of danger on (and off) the rail exponentially. Hell I haven't even started training yet and I can tell you, an expediter will NOT be able to respond to severe situations that require someone already there. You are right though, bathroom breaks!! Hello mcfly! The engineer will eventually have to use their Carnal faculties 😂
I worked for the KCS when trains moved under train orders with a caboose, engineer and conductor plus head-end and rear-end brakemen when thru trains were about 5,000 ft long. I never agreed with allowing railroads to eliminate the caboose. I can't believe railroads would even remotely consider a one man crew moving a 10,000 ft freight train.
Well, they are! Greed has no limits!
@@bobjohnson1587 You must be correct...and how sad. How much revenue is enough? Many railroads lived with much less, but of course they are gone now. With M&A only the strongest survive....but are we any better off?
@@phmoffett Unfortunately, I know all too well what can happen when the 'bean counters' gain control at a Class 1 railway and greed becomes part of the operating plan. That happened at mine in the late '80 early '90's. By about '94/'95 the new buzzword was 'operating ratio'. How do we lower the OR from 93 to 87 was what you heard almost every day from the company.
One of the ways they did that was to not purchase any new mainline freight locomotives for over 15 years - just refurbish what they had or buy refurbished ones from private sources. Another way they did that was to buy lower grade diesel fuel in the winter. Those two short-sighted decisions led to a cataclysmic situation in the winter of '96/'97 when their beyond their prime locomotive fleet began falling victim to on line massive failures caused by the low grade diesel fuel clogging up the engines fuel filters in the bitterly cold weather. Locomotives were dying everywhere that winter! And so were their trains and their customers shipments!
They learned their lesson the hard way that winter, or at least you thought they would have, but still the buzzword was operating ratio! And when they reached their target OR of 87 they weren't satisfied. They now had to try for 82. And when they reached 82 they had to try for 77 and so on and so on. Greed; it's a terrible thing!
22 years on the job myself, well said !! You missed 1 big thing that the conductor can do in the locomotive cab that is first aid to a engineer in case of injury or illness. Say said engineer has a heart attack and passes out. Up here on CSX (Conrails double track Chicago Line)we have a thing called "Trip Optimizer" from GE. That basically runs the locomotive for the engineer. Add trip Optimizer with PTC and basically the engineer is mostly blowing for crossings. Both of those systems won't realize that the engineer is passed out incapacitated from a heart attack. Who's gonna stop the train and call the dispatcher so the dispatcher can call 911 and send EMDs or Paramedics ??? Certainly not PTC or Trip Optimizer, but who can ??? The CONDUCTOR CAN !!
Yeeeeeeeeeeah, we just blow crossings. Until TO has NO IDEA how to handle the train and either it dumps it in your lap at the last possible second, or if you know what you are doing and know what you are looking at, you either take over earlier than that or hit the air brakes that TO doesn't even know it needs. TO runs worse than most students I have had. I generally run a smooth train when allowed to run it myself. TO has us bouncing around like the ball in a rattle can with all the run ins and run outs. I cannot WAIT for TO to rip my train apart and to get the call from the RFE asking what happened and tell em why don't you ask your computer?
@docaholic all I know is CSX insists on you running it or your getting a phone call from management. I'm not defending TO, ALL I'm saying if the Engineers becomes incapacitated who knows how far the train goes. I know for a fact if your having a Heart attack TO AND PTC cant do CPR.
I guess to the railways engineers are dispensable!
We had this job and they did away with it when PSR came along. recalled all of them back to the house. I love the timing of this just after the contract negotiations.
Hey Joey the CT that died down in Georgia was my classmate in McDonough just a month and a half ago :(. Sat two seats away from me..... prayers for his family
This makes as much sense as taking a copilot out of an airliner!!
Hey they want to do that to because of the pilot shortage! Better be careful. My rule is 2&2. If it don't have 2 engines and 2 pilots, you ain't get me on.
Cargo airlines have already petitioned to do this! They want a single pilot to fly heavy freighters like 767/777. Insanity.
Sounds like bunch of BullSHIT
🍎 🍊
Computers are better than people.
As a former Track Inspector for BNSF i can honestly say there are way to many variables for this to work. Not only is it putting the general public in danger but their employees as well. Terrible plan
Absolutely 😂 but to some corporate cubicle worker.... *iT maKeS peRfeCt seNse*
Ex-UP conductor here (now working for BNSF) that is the most ridiculous position they can come up with. I still talk to some of my former co-workers and they are not happy with it.
What happens with the got dang blizzard we just had in this exact area. ROADS were closed for a week.
You are exactly correct. I have worked for a few big companies that tried a form of this nonsense bs, and it never worked out for anyone.
Insane! Engineer and conductor need each other to be safe.
Exactly most tracks you can't drive right next to so the guy in the truck is going to take a heck of a lot longer. They hand selected a best case scenario and ignored every other one.
First UP is full of shit!!!! I am a conductor for UP and there are never any nice little roads to drive your truck to change a knuckle. What activities was he doing for 6 hours if he’s just waiting on something to happen. That schedule they’re talking will never work because the will have those positions cut to a bare minimum and that will be working his off 12 hours 11 days straight while TSC coordinators will be off everyday including weekends with their OA (tsc on assignment) buddies waiting for the next concert or football game. 😮 since he can never reach the car with the broken knuckle he’ll have to carry the light 80 pound 50 cars deep on a steep hill with the ballast sliding under his feet
Sam has to drive 100 miles from home to change a knuckle 5 cars back, runs out of hours, and has to check into a flea bag hotel for the 5th night in a row.
As a worker for a class 3 line, class 1 railroads are insane
I don't work for the railroad,but I can tell you the conductor can never be replaced.It's too damn dangerous taking him or her out of the cab.Just ain't gonna work!
It already works on many short line and regional switching railroads throughout North America.
@@cdavid8139 Big difference between Class 1's and shortline and regionals though. Class 1's running humongous trains for one.
@@mikehowey4869 There are MANY regional and short line railroads running 10k ton plus mile long trains. LOTS of them. And some of these are currently running with one man in the cab. Many Amtrak trains run one man in a cab. These are trains moving hundreds of people at high speeds and one man in a cab is permissible. And Class I railroads switch cars just like short line / regional railroads. So what is good for a small switching operation should be good for a Class I switching the same type of industry.
What about a otr truck driver.....your gonna be seeing semis driving them selves ...it's already happening in Texas ... Florida had taxis....railways won't be able to compete...
I'm a conductor for csx what happens if it was just a air hose 10 Cars away on a long flat trash car walk back 5 mins relace the airhose zip tie and back to the head end then ground base conductor u could be in the middle of nowhere they would have to find where u are access where u are then find the problem and fix when it could have been fixed and already on my way dumb idea let alone hitting a person and the engineer not noticed
I guess UP didn't take into account that when the engineer dropped the knuckle and pulled up the conductor they cleared the crossing in about an hour
UP is easily the worst railroad to work for, i was a carman for them for almost 9 years. After being there about 2 years they stopped caring about safety, only profit. And then they wonder why they can’t get people in to work for them. Their reputation has been destroyed by the executives and their shareholders.
One thing I would note: Emergencies don't always come one at a time. Say a man has 200 miles to cover. A train goes into emergency 90 miles away. Just as he pulls up to the first trouble a train at the other end of his territory has a problem. He hasn't even started on the first problem yet and already he has a 3+ hour drive just to get to the second one. Presuming he can get the first one fixed quickly (less than an hour) the second train will be standing for 4 hours. And if it is a busy main line there will likely be more trains standing behind the second one. That roving employee would really be saving money for the company
that day!
I lived in a town where CSX runs the main line form Louisville to Cincinnati a few years back the train busted a knuckle they had to send an engine south to pull the rear of the train north and put it on a siding in order to get to the car with the busted knuckle and pull it back north and place it on a siding then go back and get the remainder of the train and go back south I have been told before by N/S RXR that they are not allowed to make any repairs they have to wait on a mechanic
I’m only 1 week in of my conductor training course I can already see that is a terrible plan. They show us a video with perfect conditions train breaks a knuckle near in a convenient road with perfect weather. Now show a video example with less then ideal conditions like the train derails in a area not accessible by truck in a blizzard with 2 feet of snow while the engineer is having a medical emergency and needs immediate medical assistance. Then what? If only there was a conductor on board that train that could help immediately with all these issues.
I agree with you 100%. There are a lot of issues that could arrive with conductor there be solved in shorter time than waiting on someone in a truck.
The 'shorter time' is a business decision. If the Class I roads are ok with a 'longer time' then it is a matter of justififying cost
As they should be. If 'longer time' still results in reduced cost, then that is EXACTLY what they should do.
Had roaming utilities to replace management. Terminal was awesome. Still miss working there
Furloughed?
@@TexasAlabamaBoi205 was so went south for work
You are absolutely right in everything you said. They are basically trying to do away with thousands of conductors and add a handful of carmen to save money. (As if they don’t make enough already) Not to mention, if they really wanted to speed things up they should get rid of that trip optimizer that runs at less than half the speed limit most of the time in hilly terrain where I’m at. On top of that, we have stops on the way to set cars off and pick others up. Who’s going to direct those movements, do C102s and such on that work. Nonsense if you ask me.
I agree, put the trip back in the hands of experienced crews and away from computer programmers and accountants...
Ground based expetiter? Carry tools and parts? It sounds like a ground based carman. That's our job.
Yep union better fight this its cross craft.
Yep, they’re doing the job of a Carman, for sure! Time for the Carmen to put in time claims & grievances!
Here I am still thinking getting rid of the Brakeman was a bad idea…
And the caboose, too!
They need a brakeman at the rear of the train so they can have eyes at both ends
I retired from KCS Railway nine years ago. I went to work for them April 6-1976. I remember when they cut the brakeman off and took away the caboose. We were in Dark Territory so I figured that under the rules in the Rule Book at the time, there was no way you could do it. All they did was change the rules.
The Railroad doesn’t care about the safety of the public or the efficiency of transportation of the goods. They are focused more on cutting jobs.
I too know that railroads run through places where there are literally no highways or roads. This guy in the truck will probably be furnished a four wheeler with the truck to get to these trouble spots.
Train goes in emergency ? The Engineer gets on the radio and starts getting hold of the Dispatcher. That train can sit there till the Engineers go on the law probably because the man in the truck is tending to three other trains.
I’ll tell you something else. The day will come when the trains will be operating with nobody onboard. All that electronic gadgetry in the nose of the engine will run the train. And the guy in the truck will be working twelve hour shifts trying to keep this stuff running. And in the end the hundreds of guys in “Management “ will be stroking the guys in the Board room telling them alls well.
Yes, that's the ultimate goal, profit margin surplus, and "streamlining". I work for UP in California and we're beaten to the ground. I've been sick since Wednesday..... nowhere to run... nowhere to hide
@@NAT-turners-Revenge you know guys that have never had to deal with working insane hours with literally no schedule getting called to go to work dead ass tired. I have literally just fallen asleep after working on my ole lady’s car all evening after working an all night train and not even been asleep long enough to swarm up my pillow. And that f$:/king crew dispatcher on the phone forcing me to take a call for some BS that I’m not supposed to be protecting.
Back in the 70’s we didn’t have cell phones. He’ll didn’t have pagers either. I remember one time on the extra board being first out all day. Even three days since I worked. Starving to death. Drove to the store to get cigarettes. Gone fifteen minutes and missed a call. Couldn’t plan to go hunting, fishing, socializing with other families. They thought I was crazy when I’d tell them I can’t tell you where I’ll be tomorrow. I’m on call. Finally people quit asking. No friends. Unless you have lived it, you just don’t understand
I am a mechanical rapid responder I help with broken knuckles all the time
I live next to the CSX Henderson Sub, and I’ve never liked the thought of one man train crews, especially when many of these trains are 2 to 5 miles long now. They run pretty much every type of railcar down this route between Evansville, IN and Nashville, TN., including ethanol trains…
More "supertrains" coming..... in 2023. I work for UP
@@NAT-turners-Revenge at the rate the railroads keep loosing business or giving away routes, they won’t need to run any trains…
Former conductor with CSXT and MARC running on America's oldest rails... This is impossible because the majority of the tracks hardly have enough walking room let alone room for a truck to respond. Hell we couldn't even get an even walking surface let alone a roadway along the tracks.
4:28 ohhhh so thats why UP wants 1 person crews! They want to lay the conductors off so they have more time at home. Well thats just nice of them.
I'm a retired conductor. I hired out in 1971 and retired in 2014. I agree with everything you've said, but I'm wondering what you mean when you disagreed with the weight of a knuckle. Do you think a knuckle weighs more or less than 80 pounds? An E knuckle weighs a little less than a F knuckle, but they're both around 80 pounds. I googled it and confirmed my memory of what it was like carrying them around.
Yes, this guy was a little soon to speak about the weight of a knuckle. I think he now knows.
whoa! even wind speed?! that’s good too acknowledge, i wouldn’t even think about that.. unless told otherwise…you the man Joey appreciate your honesty and love all your videos!!! cheers
OK HUGE WARNING TO ALL YALL HIRING IN THE HI-LINE DIVISION ON BNSF, I was in 4 days and they canned me for absolutely no reason, I tried but literally they canned me over a raft guide, and I had experience on D6s and shit. These managers there at these terminals are wolves in sheep's clothing. We had our employee evaluation earlier in our trainee group since they could do it and used it to can me. I had good relationships and all positive feedback from my coworkers but since we aren't vested in 1 year with the Union, our union representative who was there couldn't help me and he was pissed. Hire to fire, be careful guys it's another hire spree and fire as well!!!
Excellent analysis and observation RT! Sadly, you are correct about the reduction of manpower. We've already seen the robot trains being tested. I have seen the end results of many derailments here in VA, back when Southern was Southern and then when it became N&S. There many more shopping centers and suburbs built around those rights-of-way now. Disaster awaits us as you've noted, playing with innocent lives. Merry Christmas and thank you for your thoughts on the subject!
Thank you for speaking out.
Thats exactly how we do things here at RJ Corman in Clearfield but we don't wait for a call if something happens we follow the train from start to finish. The down sides are what Joey already mentioned but the upside is that if you need to stop for something you can and for example last week I had a family emergency and my daughter was in a wreck so I called my train master and told him what was going on and he sent another conductor to replace me so I could go right to the hospital. I'm not saying what the up is doing is right at all but coming from a conductor who already works like the video except a few things. It''s not all that bad and no I'm not trying to upset anyone and I know we are a short line but I we operate like a class 1 and we run 130 car coal trains and grain trains as well. A big down side is when your train go's into emergency and you have no way of getting to the train and you have to walk for as long as it takes to get to your train and then find what's wrong.
That's not what UP is trying to do.. They want this Expeditor position to work with sometimes 10+ trains all at once.. You would hear far less argument out of us if it was one to one. One truck for one train. The driving goal that UP has, is to cut they're Conductor workforce into a quarter of not less than they have it.
I drive a shuttle van for the railroad. Majority of the track at least in my area can’t be accessed by vehicles. So how would it save time if the expediter is gonna have to walk the train anyway?
"Additional 3 hours and 14 minutes to get the train moving"
Source: we made it up
Yep, all made up! Probably came from their publicity department.
Interesting video. I’m a driver (engineer) in the UK, we’ve operated single manned freight trains for the past 20 plus years, I’ve only worked them for 8. However I fully accept that yours is a different form of railroading to ours, yours is railroad on steroids, your trains are longer, heavier and you travel through an awful lot of wilderness where stuff could happen. For me, if anything happens, I’ve probably got an hour or two at the most to wait before someone ground based turns up in a van - assuming I can’t solve it myself. I’ve got instant communication with the signaller, I can stop all trains in my immediate area using my in-cab GSM-R radio if it’s a serious issue. It’s also a very different form of working for shifts, very few lodging turns, always return home to my own bed each shift, virtually fixed rest day pattern so I know what day off I’ve got in 6 months time and can plan accordingly. Just learning about the working practices you currently have makes me feel uneasy, never mind what they want to change it too.
Sounds nice. Yall hiring?
Yeah, railroading in the US is basically treat anyone not in management like less than the dirt on your shoe and hope it all works out. And we make it work because it pays well. The pay isn't keeping up with other jobs here, so the quality of what new hires they can even get is swirling the toilet bowl.
@@livefree223 Some companies are taking on but it’s hit and miss. Most of the passenger business is in industrial disputes with their companies (and government by default) about pay rises (or lack of them), plus changes wanting to move passenger trains to reduced staffing. Pay varies widely for drivers across the sector, as does working hours and conditions, so you do get a move of staff from one company to another. Most of our industry is governed around running passenger services, so on freight we are lower priority out on the network. Usually get a decent run in the middle of the night, once all the trains with windows have gone to bed.
I'm not a railroader, but I help my father in his tractor-trailer. While we aren't talking on the same level, I'm sure we can both agree that issues with coupling can be a pain in the ass.
December 26th, 2022, our 5th wheel froze up at the DC and we couldn't get unhitched, we would've gone to the nearest truck stop to warm it up, but our efforts lead to the jaw being half-open meaning we couldn't safely leave the yard.
and that kids is why you bring a blow torch to work after your truck's been sat in below 0 weather all night, woulda fixed the problem then and there.
I love how they exploit the 45 minute walk HOWEVER they don't say how long it took SAM to drive there.
Well i got a new job duty for the conductor, Re crewed a train in this nasty blizzard only to have a bad trailing locomotive, then we had issues with the Leader shutting down coasted to a stop over a two hr period with the diesel doc, unable to fix it. now keep in mind my second unit was operating but could not be used as a leader due to no working bell, all it took to fix it was swapping out the MU cable, but needless to say had to limp it down to the next siding to clear the main approx 6 miles. as we proceeded thanks to the Road foreman giving us his ice scrapper my conductor had to scrap the windshield on the inside so i could see so remember conductors are Needed. and the temp was -20 with windchill. and for fun the GURU valve popped as we tied the train down in the siding had all that steam come up as i wrapped my hand brake on.
I definitely agree with you! I don’t understand this thinking, except you nailed it. The big corporations don’t care about anything except profits. Screw the safety of the general public as long as they go play golf and get richer! Thank you for this video!
There was a time I was chasing trains with all my kids.
We spotted one train that had to go into a siding and wait for another train to pass.
The conductor had to let the whole train pass, and would have had to walk up to the front of the train.
He obviously had his handheld, and since we were watching the operation, I offered to take him up to the locomotive and save him the walk.
So, I asked him to have the engineer pull up to the next grade crossing.
We got there before the locomotive hit the crossing, and the kids got to see him jump on the train as it eased by.
We followed a few more miles, then I went home to get the kids to bed.
I never considered the amount of time I saved both the conductor and engineer for their work shift!
I’ll add this one thing.
I was an OTR trucker for better than a decade.
Things happen.
Blown tires, equipment malfunctions, traffic…
This is what makes me say that there is NO WAY that fully automated, robot controlled trucks will EVER be a normal happening.
Too much can go wrong, and DOES.
OK. You say NO WAY. Lets move ahead 20 years. A driver takes his truck 40 miles outside of Chicago. The interstate system is now striped and marked so computer systems inside the truck can safely navigate that truck through low-density routes for hundreds of miles. No trucker falling asleep at the wheel. No trucker driving 85 right up a family's minivan. Can it be done today? Not safely. But 20 years from now my bet is that trucks and cars will be able to self-navigate on hundreds of thousands of miles of highways.
when i retired 11 years ago as an owner operator i sold my mack truck to a guy in nigeria africa and he said they have a conductor in the truck there 2 men !!!!!
@@realtruth172 I have seen that. In particular in countries where hijacking is an issue. You also encounter incredible road hazards in countries like Nigeria. You become your own mechanical team on those 'highways'
As you point out, the expediter would have to have a two-path road all along the track everywhere. It might work if the expediter drove a high rail truck, but even that would have problems. They would have to have the expediters stationed between terminals to cut down driving time. I have stated before that it is the hyper greedy hedge fund managers that are forcing a lot of these wrong-headed practices on the railroads. Stop these organizations and a lot of these problems would be taken care of.
As a class 1 railroad conductor and this would be a good job if you could hold it. Ideally both would be good. I would imagine that they would have several expeditors going back and forth between the two terminals. Now yard jobs and freight runs through cities like you mentioned that wouldn’t work. But freight runs straight through for example Pratt Kansas to Dalhart TX have expediters that travel so far out and come back and so far out from Dalhart and come back. Then crews that travel west from Dalhart to Vaughn and stop half way and Vaughn to Dalhart and stop half way. Seems to have some logic to it but like you said they want to take away jobs so this isn’t an effort to make it better otherwise they would still have a conductor and make the expeditor role both permanent positions to bid.
I SPENT 20 YRS AT CSX INTERMODIAL FACILITY....A FEW YRS AGO THE CSX CUT 5,000 JOBS NATION WIDE...
This is a real tell of what I find in the Facebook Trains Magazine community where when I bring up concerns that carriers are on a mad-dash to get rid of as many employees as possible, I always get push back by folks on those forums, them defending the owners and shareholders of those carriers instead of giving a sh*t about the employees and/or the general population for that matter.
Just seams like there's just no turning back from this trend until there's a real loss-of-life catastrophic event that forces laws to be made to bring back more eyes and adaptable folks back on trains, trains that are maybe a little shorter and safer.
UP already has traveling car inspectors in most areas that perform the task of assisting mainline trains (but they leave that part out in the video). The TCI trucks are equipped with parts needed to get trains rolling if they can be repaired on site. Many times you need a cutting torch and/or welder and the mechanical experience to perform those repairs.
This is full on attempt to push for 1 man crews...cutting jobs for both mechanical and transportation
What they aren’t saying about saving time is the train will just go in the hole for that extra time. Nobody gets home “early”. If you haven’t made almost 12hrs you haven’t worked long enough and they’ll find something for you to do
I guess the railroads are going to make roads adjacent to the railroad tracks all over America. On the division I worked on there is up to 10 - 15 miles without any access. Walking thru overgrown land, sloughs where snakes breed, and/or undulating terrain, will make that difficult to do. But, just like cutting off the caboose, the conductors and brakemen helped make it work by calling a taxi to take them up to the engine instead of walking up. Being gone from home for over forty hours they want to get home as quick as possible.
I’m an engineer with csx for over 20 years. One man train is a disaster. Even if I don’t particularly care for whom I’m working with, 200 miles alone will be miserable. You need human interaction to stay awake and alert. Black coffee is my drug of choice. How am I supposed to use the bathroom? Stop every time? It’s not about anything but money.
I worked for the WC (CN) for about 20 years. The CN has been talking about doing this since 2002 or so. I bet on paper it looks great but in operation it will never work. The only roads next to tracks are in yards. Besides that, my conductor can fix a knuckle and be back on the head end before any "expeditor" would even get to the scene. Railroads have gotten too big for their britches. Time to split them up.
Another excellent video keep them coming.
This reminds me of when I worked on a drilling rig in south Texas, if the rig broke down, we would have to repair it, i always said, not only did I work on a drilling rig, I had to "work on it". That was years ago, now they got it made in the shade.
So it sounds like Expedition service is going to require the railroads to invest Millions if not billions of dollars into building thousands of miles of access roads along 100% of their entire rail routes. Good job
They are banning conductors, canning, gas stoves, what are they preparing us for?
When I was a kid back in the 70's I wanted to work on the railroad for any of the Midwestern lines IC, BN, C&NW or Milwaukee Road I wasn't fussy. But at the time there was a hiring freeze going on. Now I'm seeing railroad jobs opened up and unfortunately due to physical problems, I think all my working for the railroad will have to be in Model form. Keep the vids coming. Merry 🎄Christmas everyone.
Back in the 70's newly married with kid tried too higher out with an Class 1 RR. Was told if you wear glasses they ain't hiring you as an Engineer. Conductor maybe. They did me the best favor ever. Well, I said. Hello major local electric utility. Home every night and saw family every holiday and retired with a great pension / benefits in 2010.
@@whereisthedollar what railroad line would you have hired on with?? What part of the US 🇺🇸 are u in? Have a happy new year everyone
@@davidurban6813 It was NS or CXS, I've forgotten. Mid-Atlantic US.
I can’t believe this! The FRA needs to make sure a minimum of two crew members are in the cab at all times.
They should learn from Transport Canada and Lac-Megantic!
did you notice the PTC isnt even engaged in there video?
Looking at his watch to see... We on the money yet? Dispatcher holding us for everybody lmao
They got rid of the firemen years ago now their looking to get rid of the conductors job , they just won’t quit !
Absolutely incredible
I worked for Conrail from 1979-1984; many freight trains had a crews of 5: engineer, fireman, conductor and a couple of brakemen. Crews were gradually reduced to 2 or 3.
Railroading is hard, dangerous work: larger and larger trains, poor equipment and trackage, people disregarding crossing signals, people deliberately committing suicide. Look at railfan videos of the late 1960’s and 1970’s: graffiti on equipment was relatively rare - now, most rail cars are covered in it. Rail workers, especially on passenger trains, are frequently assaulted - and the railroad employee is not allowed to defend themselves
Oh, you can believe the remaining Class 1 carriers are salivating over automation - someday it’ll just be BNSFUPCSXNSCNCPKCS 😛, one mega railroad that will operate trains with AI and no humans
PTC? Ask Metrolink (Southern California Commuter Rail) commuters about PTC….I lived in Southern California for 31 years and commuted to work on Metrolink: trains that would suddenly stop between stations, schedules that had to be adjusted, trains that simply wouldn’t move, signal infrastructure that had to be changed - and so on
Csx is dismissing crews when engineers ask conductors to sit in the set and hit the button while the engineers use the restroom. They make it clear to stop the train.
I wonder how long it'll take for a crash to happen because you're taking away a person that helps keep the engineer awake and aware to what's in front of them.
At the QNSL it took just one day! Look it up.
I have never worked on the railroad, but did a lot of business with Norfolk Southern before I retired. I want to say I agree 100% with your points and logic. There was a day when railroads were ran by people who rose and were promoted through the operations positions. Unfortunately today this is not the case in many businesses. I will stay on topic with railroads. Instead of having operations people running railroads you have more and more finance and accounting people in charge. Unfortunately these people cannot see the operations perspective; they only see EBIT, sales and cashflow. Having dealt with these types of individuals for many years I would say UP would like to see one man crews. Heck I know there are some Finance VPs who would like to see unmanned trains in operation. Some of this nonsense is already occurring in railroad yards. In closing I support your stance and the points you make! Excellent video! 👍