I'm getting some unconfirmed rumbles out there that CSXT is taking a much harder line on equipment interchange on equipment that has grease-fitting roller bearings (basically anything with non-rotating end caps). At this point I'm just looking for some confirm/deny reports from you guys; I don't know if this is just one individual having a bad day or if this is something to ring all the fire bells about. I've also heard that RPCA has been in on this, but nothing appears to be out there in writing by either them or CSXT. But I've had my first report of equipment being denied for interchange because of roller bearing (either that or a per-mile fee that's in the stratosphere).

Randy, as far as I know you are correct - that has been the official CSX stance for a year or so now. Whether they would enforce it was another question, but it sounds like they are.

Chris.

Hmmm. Anybody reading this get a SUCCESSFUL move on CSXT despite that in the recent past? PM me if you don't want to break cover....

The Bluewater Michigan Chapter moved some cars to/from Ohio last December without incident over CSX.

I don't know if you deal a lot with CSX, but if you do, you would find that they have major internal problems with communication and coordination, combined with a lot of internal turnover, which occasionally makes it hard to figure out what is real vs. what is rumor out there.

Chris.

TYBR is even having trouble getting freight cars handled. It doesn't help that we connect to them in the ConRail area. I worry that I'm wearing out my welcome with the various officials that I have asked for help.

I can personally attest to having witnessed cursing matches via phone and in person between "old guard" personnel (the kind that actually recognize that a car is a passenger car based only on the reporting marks and number on the computer) and younger "wet, worthless young whippersnappers" with lots of authority and an MBA but no field knowledge on CSX. One terminal will handle your special shipment with kid gloves, only to have the next yard hump the "do not hump" car and pull the drawbar trying to pull the train back over the hump. And if such shenanigans happen, do you think the brass at the top catch the flak? Think again.

All the more reason to not trust anybody on any railroad, and send an escort via road.

Part of CSX's problem is that the young people the put in management positions get moved around so often - they start in Livonia, then a few months later go to Chicago, then to Tennessee, the Florida, then somewhere else a year later - they never get any experience on any one part of the railroad. And it becomes impossible to build relationships with any local officials when they move around so fast. That is a big problem in a state like Ohio where their operations are quite convoluted on the best day.

I disagree a bit with Alexander's post - I think the RRs could use quite a few more whipper-snappers with MBAs to help them get a handle on managing their properties. And part of of the problem with Class 1s is that they use the "kid gloves" excuse to not handle passenger cars at all or to hold them up forever. A postwar passenger car in good operating condition does not need that much special handling - they just need to be switched at 4mph or less, can't be coupled to top-shelf couplers, etc., like any other car. They can be anywhere in the train and can handle 10,000 or so tons behind them. And as long as they don't have any china or loose stuff in them they can take a trip over a hump. Back in the 80s and 90s CSX didn't give Bluewater any hassle about moving our cars - they would just put them in the middle of the next freight train and go with them. Today CSX insists that they have to be at the end of the train, but not at the end of the train as they don't have a FRED that will work with them, etc. etc. I doubt any class 1 RR will ever say no, we won't move your passenger car, but they will make it so hard no one will want to.

Chris.

What a broad brush. Any wonder why the RRs shy away from moving your "priceless artifacts"?

If a railcar can't stand a normal coupling or a little slack action, then it is unfit to be on the rails. But there are plenty of us on the RR that would take cars of special cars. So don't lump us all together.

"If a railcar can't stand a normal coupling or a little slack action, then it is unfit to be on the rails. But there are plenty of us on the RR that would take cars of special cars. So don't lump us all together."

OK, I won't. But, let me say this about that--- placarding an "otherwise-fit" car as "Do Not Hump", then having the car sent down the hump anyway, and then having three loaded salt hoppers sent down after it (thus fubar-ing one end of said car), is not "normal".

And on the last equipment move I was involved in by rail, over two railroads, one road had a great trainmaster and mech dept foreman, and operating crew. The second railroad sent no trainmaster, and a nasty, cursing, verbally-abusive old-head conductor. That second road did make sure to have TWO railroad PD crusiers following the move, to keep the railfans away (at 0215 hrs, and 15-degree temps). That was important. Zugmann, I sure wish you were on that crew that night....

I've escorted cars in freight service over long distances, I've been involved with trucking Pullmans and boxcars and BIG 4-6-0s over the road. I've been involved in rail moves of locos, passenger and freight cars. The game has changed, and it's really a shame. I guess modern roller-bearing freight cars and locos have no problems at all out on the road, right?

The easiest thing on a railroad is to just say NO to old, weird stuff. You don't lose your job that way....

Howard P.
Preservation Cave, CT

Perhaps OT to the discussion, but an interesting sidebar, is the inability of roads to correct a misdirected move in any other manner than to retrace in reverse the entire incorrect routing that got the load to the wrong place. I have had properly waybilled equipment with correct AEI tags and up-to-date Umler registration end up moving a thousand miles in the wrong direction, then returning all the way to the point of origin to start the trip all over again, even when a much shorter redirected routing to the correct destination was available over the same carrier. Good thing rail transportation is so efficient. It helps make up for this inability to figure out their own system.

PC

In response to various:



I may have been painting with too broad a brush when I said "never trust anyone"--but I've also never had any equipment I escorted damaged (save for one ditch light smashed by an overhang) when taking this approach. I've stood there and had a trainmaster (new one) and his assistant (young pup) assure me that my car would be handled at the rear of the train, and then watched eight hours later as the train leaves the yard with the passenger car smack in the middle of an estimated 7000 tons. The message didn't get through the shift change, obviously. And just because a crew or yard in Chicago or Roanoke might have a passing familiarity with passenger stuff doesn't mean the crew at Waycross, Houston, or Kansas City will.

You know the old saying "if you want anything done right ya gotta do it yourself"? Well, the railroad won't let us do it ourselves (unless we're Jerry Jacobson or Andy Muller), so we have to do the next best thing: perch like a vulture and stare over every move anyone makes around the shipment.



The best/worst I've ever been told: Two cars waybilled Joliet-Chicago-Montreal.
One turned up in Elko, Nevada.

Missing rail equipment is not just a modern malady. I recall hearing about a brand spanking new Climax loco that was handed over to the PRR on its own wheels for forwarding to a logging outfit down south. A month later, the customer called Climax and asked about their lokie, which had not yet arrived. No one on the PRR or the connecting carriers could locate it. Two months later, they called again. The engine was still invisible. At that point, Climax shipped a second engine from stock and began a serious search for the first one. Three months later, the customer called to report the original engine had arrived in their yard several days after the second one was delivered.... I wonder how that was finally resolved?

The stories I could tell you about a certain hump yard (but won't). Yeah, historic cars and other special loads should never be sent screaming down a hump, but all it takes is a few people that for some reason or another do not want to do their job.

I always like to get oddball stuff in my train, but rarely do. Most recent item were export engines, but they had those tarped up tighter than all get out, so I couldn't check them out as close as I wanted to. But yeah, I'm that sick minority of RRers that actually likes railroads.

As far as cars getting sent many miles away? Happens lots of ways. SOmetimes it can be as simple as a yardmaster drawing the line in the wrong spot on a cut sheet, or a crew making the wrong cut. Then it gets put on the wrong train and sent away. Sure the scanners will say it's going the wrong way, but no one wants to be responsible for delaying a train to cut out a car that's stuck in the middle of another block. A lot easier to pass the buck to the next YM, DISP, TM, etc. Another problem showed up at a yard I worked at. We had a local that served "Appleton", PA. For some reason the powers-to-be kept sending cars destined for an industry in "Appleton, OHIO". Right city, wrong state. We would send them back, and they would come back. I think these scrap gons took 3 round trips before finding the right yard. At least they weren't perishables.

And if you toss a modern car on the ground, the claims agent comes out, cuts a check, buys the load, then the RR either sends the car to the shop, or buys it from its owner and scraps it. The customers understand that in the normal order of RR business, there will be cars crunched. Not as easy to cut a check to purchase that old steam engine.

These new managers running the show are nothing but bean counters. They need to be given books on the differences between a boxcar and a tank car. But they call the shots, and not us groundpounders.

One problem with misrouted cars - and this applies to our topic, too - is that trains don't often move over the shortest routes. One reason is to consolidate traffic on a few lines and large yards. Another is that in this era of deregulation, some railroads set prices partly by the mileage actually rolled, so the more circuitous the route, the more the computer program will charge! This can also apply to our special moves.

The trains from Cheyenne, Wyo. via UP and NS to Morrisville, Pa. and to South Philadelphia, Pa. pass through many yards along the way, including Conway, Pa., which is very big. But the last yard that does any switching of this pair of trains seems to be North Platte, Neb.! If that yard puts a car in the other train, all the destination can do is send the car back to the yard that made the mistake. The return train isn't switched anywhere in between, either. Using a combination of local trains would mean that yards that had nothing to do with the mistake get stuck with the expense of fixing it.

May large yards are set up to handle through cars that come in one end and go out the other. "Turn around" cars that come in one end, reverse direction, and go out the same end are a terrible problem, best left to the next (and the next and the next...) shift to handle.

Gee, how come you never read about any of this in "Railway Age" or "Progressive Railroading"?

Howard P.
Press Release, NY