Railroaders' Nostalgia > BN - I can't do this any more

The rest of the story of the Kansas City debacle. I thought about this as I was commenting on cab cameras and couldn't get it out of my mind until I wrote it. Working in a tower and the workings of mechanical interlocking are a lot more fun subjects.

The TSS World Tour, as we called it, gave me the opportunity to see first hand the things I was sure were going on all over the system. I tried to remember that I was merely there to train yardmasters on TSS. There were lots of things to overlook. Birmingham, in order to meet the managers' goals would gather up tracks of no bills and wrong way cars that couldn't/shouldn't move for one reason or another and run a drag to Memphis. A few hours later, someone in Memphis would look at the list and have spatch stop the train, run around it, and send it back. That served the intended purpose of keeping yard dwell below the required level. Trains being held out of Memphis and Birmingham were anchored west of Lincoln.

That's fine. It was only money. When I went back to railroading in 1976 after about a year's hiatus (following my Milwaukee uh...experience), I did it promising myself that I would only take it seriously enough to not be involved in bending anything, hurting anyone, or getting anyone fired. If it was stupid and cost money, I would be ok with it. Boy, was that last part hard to do, but after years of self-training, I could finally do it, just as many of my colleagues had taught themselves.

I had descended into Limbo, Purgatory, or both. I was a scheduled (union) train dispatcher. I had an assignment that didn't really exist. I was doing management work, but I was not promotable. I was working 12-18 hours a day, seven days a week as a scheduled train dispatcher, but my overtime claims were cut because I was doing management work. After a while, I stopped getting paychecks at all. The excuse was that I was in a unique position and nobody was assigned to my payroll. After some high level complaining, I'd get checks a month or two late, minus the overtime claims.

I saw the writing on the wall a few years before and had thought about an exit strategy, but didn't have one.

Unfortunately, I encountered the other things that I was sure were going on that I couldn't avoid being involved in.

I was in the yardmaster tower in Springfield in the middle of my 6p-6a shift one night. The temperature was below freezing outside and really cold inside. There was almost nothing going on. I was sitting in a chair across the room and behind the yardmaster. He was idly spinning the camera at the west end of the yard. There was a train for Kansas City smoking past us on the yard lead. There was a coal train on very short time coming toward us from Monett. The 98.6 in the dispatcher chair called and asked where to put the coal train. Main line and change at the yard office. As the camera swung past the control point at the west end of the yard, it looked to me like the coal train was slowing. Woah! Back it up. Why is that coal train getting a hold of it out there? The yardmaster replied Sure is, isn't he? and got on the radio to stop both trains. The coal was lined into the yard lead against the guy for Kansas City that the uh...dispatcher had just told on the radio that he was ready for.

The YM got on the dispatcher phone and asked what he was doing. I'm bringing the coal in first; he's on short time. The yardmaster said, I told you main for the coal and let the freight train out for Kansas City. There was no response. The coal train got stopped short of the switch. The man for KC was stopped. A new voice came on the dispatcher end of the phone, the coal train was lined for the main, and Plan A was executed. That sure woke us up!

Birmingham had two disasters going at once. There was the TSS cutover, and the way the yard was being run. The yardmasters and crews were beyond frustrated with the situation. This is where I encountered running trains just to clean up the car records so no cars exceeded their allotted terminal time. The yardmaster would set a crew working on something and the trainmaster would show up and change it. Then the change would change before anything constructive happened, then that change would change. It was that way every night.

I was mudhopping a couple of times a night to fix the lists that the computer problems were screwing up. There was a carload of machinery on the team track. Not only had it not been inspected and released, the carmen hadn't finished tieing it down. The next morning, it was going to show on the terminal's performance as excess time in yard. The trainmaster came into the yardmaster's office and ordered her to put the car on the train that she was building. She objected, saying that the car department hadn't released it. Do it anyway! I want that car out of this yard! I wasn't about to see that happen. I told her don't do it. The trainmaster started screaming at me. Stay out of this; it has nothing to do with you. I replied through the continued screaming that the car department hadn't released the car, it wasn't going. He got in my face, screaming that it was none of my business, get out. I pulled out my train dispatcher rules card and told him that just like an off-duty cop, it IS my business. The car stays. It isn't even fully tied down, let alone inspected. He screamed Stay out of this or I'll have you fired. The car goes.

I led him out into the hall so the yardmaster wouldn't be subjected to it at such close range. He was red in the face and still screaming about his performance report. The car goes or you're all fired. I told him to make my day because if the car is in the train when I see it pulling, I'll call FRA. He screamed that I didn't have authority to do that; get out of his yard office now. He was going to have the gumshoe take me out forcibly, have me fired, and have me arrested.

I told him that not only was I not leaving, but if that car left and anyone was killed, hurt, or fired as a result, I would hunt him down and he would never be able to hide. He backed off. The car didn't go.

Three strikes...

I was sent to Denver. Like Birmingham and Memphis, Denver was already in meltdown before the TSS show rolled into town. I was on the first team to arrive.

I was assigned to days, 6a-6p in the west yardmaster tower. In the tower, there was the yardmaster and an operator handling some local CTC. Under a special agreement that applied to Denver and Pasco, the yardmaster ran the main lines in Denver. The operator worked for the yardmaster, not the dispatcher. The yardmaster's desk was a big L shaped console with switches for lots of talkback speakers and phones. The computer terminals and radio were also on the desk as well as the yardmaster's paperwork. The CTC was a CRT on the operator's desk, next to the yardmaster.

The place was a pressure cooker. The yardmaster I was working with would periodically jump out of the chair, run to the door onto the roof of the offices section, light a cigarette, suck it down in one toke, and run back to the chair. The yard was straight across and there were trains parked on the main in both directions. All of the helpers for the trains toward Pueblo were on the road or dead on hours of service here, there, and about Denver. It was all the dinger could do to keep the place sort of afloat.

That was bad enough, but the management grapevine conveyed the rumor/message that Krebs was coming to inspect the place. The yardmaster's office was a real filthy pit. Management decided to spiff it up with new wall to wall carpet. They gave the job to a local contractor, the low bidder.

I had been in Denver for a few days out of my scheduled two weeks (they had long ago given up on seven days) when carpet day happened. That was a surprise to the yardmaster, the operator, and me. Somebody in management brought the contractor up. He threw a fit. He was given a drawing of a 24 foot square room with two doors. That is what he proposed on. There were also two big desks, the yardmaster console, the CTC desk, and cable - lots of cable running along the floor. Along with the din of operation, we now had the contractor screaming at the management guy. The management guy got the B&B foreman, who joined the argument. The B&B guy decided that they could attach clamps to the beams (roof joists) above the yardmaster and chain hoist the desk up a couple of feet. He decided in his infinite wisdom that the CTC CRT could be put on the floor so the desk could be moved, the operator sitting on the floor to work.

Meanwhile, the B&B electrician came in to move cables so that the desks could be moved. Shortly after that, the communications guy showed up and started screaming at the B&B electrician about messing with communication cables. In the middle of the shouting, the signal maintainer showed up. The carpet guy was screaming, the B&B and communications guy were in a fist fight, the signal maintainer was moving the operator's desk and attached cables in order to get the CTC CRT onto the floor, and the yardmaster, operator, and I were trying to run the railroad.

But that's not all, folks. Ft Worth sent a management team to straighten up Denver. They were going to get to the bottom of the congestion and delay, take names, kick (#2 ends), and straighten the place out. One of them walked into the middle of this debacle. The tower was full. There was almost no room for me. I was now 20 feet from the yardmaster who really needed my help. I couldn't get to him. The management hit man was between me and him, with the bout of electrical fisticuffs going on between him and the yardmaster. The management guy took no note of that. He was too busy asking about excess dwell and why certain cars weren't moving. At one point, he tripped while ducking back from the free-for-all. I caught him before he went down. He didn't notice.

By this time, the yardmasters console was suspended from the roof joists, swaying with every touch. He couldn't use the desk to mark up lists or make notes. The operator was sitting on the floor in front of the CRT with the radio and phones a few feet away because of the cable runs. The carpet covering the front half of the tower had been rolled up to the middle of the room, making a pretty good-sized obstacle.

The operator told the yardmaster that he had a Rio Grande coal train to go. The yardmaster told him go with it.

A while later, we had a breakthrough. A helper came back from the hill with time to work! We could get a Pueblo train out of town. But...there were three dead trains in front of him. The yardmaster told him wrong main from South Denver to 16th Street. Train dispatchers, at least old school ones, just can't keep from picturing the situation and the trains when listening to the radio or other conversations. I looked out the back window of the tower. The Rio Grand was smoking by.

I had to deal with it without attracting attention. I didn't want the yardmaster to get fired. He sure didn't arrange for the situation we were in but he would be the fall guy. I pushed the management guy aside, grabbed the yardmaster's shoulder from behind, bent down next to his ear and said quietly "No! Rio Grande." He had his wits about him enough to calmly tell the helper that he had given instructions to wrong main only seconds ago "...and that will be after the Rio Grande coal train gets by." As cover, I started loudly explaining some TSS procedure, telling him that I noticed that he wasn't doing it right.

A few minutes later, the yardmaster at the other end of the yard called on the speaker. He had to send his engine home. There was a safety team from Ft Worth in town and they threw the foreman out of service because he wasn't wearing his safety glasses!

That was it! I had just stopped the third potential wreck in three months. Management set this yardmaster and the yardmaster in Birmingham up to be responsible...and they were throwing a snake out of service for glasses! The completely cratered yard was about to get worse, right in front of the service hit man from Ft Worth, who really didn't understand what he was seeing and hearing.

I stayed in the tower for the remainder of my shift. When my relief came, I walked around downstairs until I found an empty unlocked office. I sent a wire to my various bosses, stating that I was resigning effective with my arrival in Seattle at the completion of the Denver assignment. I sent another wire to the people I worked with over the years. It said:

Martin Luther King said Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, I'm free at last
Janice sang Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose
73
TAW

I called my wife and told her what happened and what I was doing. I told her I just couldn't do it any more. After 21 years with me, putting up with the railroad and learning about railroads, she didn't ask why. She knew. She asked What are we going to do? I said, Not a clue, but not this. We'll figure it out like we always have.

I arrived in Seattle, took a shuttle home but told the driver I needed to stop at 2454 Occidental Avenue for a couple of minutes. He was ok with that. I went in, left my key card, computer,  and other company stuff in what had been my office, got in the shuttle and went home. It was around midnight. There was nobody there, which was fine with me.

As I walked out the door the last time, BN still owed me about $10k that should have been paid under the union contract but they refused to pay because I was (although not promotable) working in a management role.

TAW

 

TAW, couldn't the union do something to help you on the 10 grand?  Surely the railroad violated some part of the labor contract.

I don't know how you kept your sanity.  I don't think I have ever heard of more incompent management than this but, I am sure someone else has.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/17/15 11:43 by tomstp.

Smart man, Tom, you quit this circus

Another fabulous TAW story.  Did BNSF ever try to contact you again or try to get you to come back?  Just wondering.

Lee Hower - Sacramento

TAW, I do love your stories!!  It's amazing to me you put up with it as long as you did. 

Thanks for tellings these tales. 

Nick Thralson,
Marion, IA

Its not only the BN!
This is just two little quickies.
In early '73 the PFE at City of Industry closed down on Sundays, which meant that there would be no place for the 75 or so dirty reefers that came East on the Marne local from LA.  Only problem was that they didn't tell LA.

So, when the Marne arrived, they had him pull up the Extension (which was the CTC Siding,) shove around the wye into the Charlie yard, and take his train back to LA!
Many years later, when the UP was congesting Roseville, they sent a train to Stockton that was all destined for everywhere between Stockton and Bakersfield.  Instead of helping out and flat switching it, the TM had the crew run around the train, hang the tele on the other end, and take it back to Roseville.
He got to use his Yardmaster's seniority again for a while, but the rest of us had a laugh over it.
G

What was your "Milwaukee . . . uh, experience?" A journalistic endeavor, perhaps?

These stories make what happened in the Rougemere Nights article look like disciplined, scheduled railroading.
What does "73" mean in your signoff?

"73" was a telegraphic sign-off   I heard it defined as "Best regards" most often.  73s and GM

CPR_4000 Wrote:
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> What was your "Milwaukee . . . uh, experience?" A
> journalistic endeavor, perhaps?

CPR_4000, do a search on TAW on Facebook and you'll find many of his stories.  Including the time that the MILW crew treated their caboose so roughly, it knocked the cupola off of it.  Good stuff.

Lee Hower - Sacramento

mcfflyer Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Another fabulous TAW story.  Did BNSF ever try to
> contact you again or try to get you to come
> back?  Just wondering.

I did two consulting jobs for the passenger services department.

The freight and engineering folks were not really thrilled, I guess one might say, that after I left BN, Washington State Department of Transportation hired me as a consultant to work on their rail program development.

TAW

As a retired railroader,I love your stories and can relate to them.
I have to laugh.Like I hated basic training,but laugh at it now.
Your story acts like an Abbot and Costello play-------
"Who's on first,etc"? What a way to run a railroad!
Keep them coming!

Uncle Joe Seffner,Fl.

tomstp Wrote:
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> TAW, couldn't the union do something to help you
> on the 10 grand?  Surely the railroad violated
> some part of the labor contract.

They did indeed. Even that is a long story. Cliffs Notes:

• Four guys did time working Havre West in the year that I was in Havre and Havre West relief was my regular position. The job was a mankiller, no doubt about it. The local chairman and I did all of the homework necessary to prove that the territory had to be split into two jobs. The file went to the general chairman. BN agreed that the job had to be split and offered a position in Havre, but the GC traded it for a position he wanted in Cicero.
• Back in Seattle, I did a bunch of work on a claim for several people in the office because the local chairman was not interested. I developed the entire file, went around the local chairman, and sent it to the general chairman. Nothing happened.
• I complained to ATDA headquarters about not receiving some important information that everyone else got. The response was that I would need to change my address because they got new software and my address was too long for the address field.
• I was given several out of scope, as it were, temporary assignments throughout the 80s. Some others were too. ATDA never took exception.
• After the Fowler meet http://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/RAR9301.pdf there was the usual FRA, NTSB and operating department investigations. There was also an additional investigation started by senior management. They hired some consultants to look into the why, not the who to hang. I was asked to support the effort. I was asked a lot of general and specific questions. I wound up being the technical support for the group of business consultants. They figured out quickly that they were not dealing with the usual business office situation. I was asked to provide a clear picture of what we were doing. This was the result http://www.halcyon.com/tawhite/just/justnx.htm. They came to the conclusion that working conditions and pay were big problems. I had told them not only did Air Traffic Controllers make more than train dispatchers (but their working conditions were not a lot better) that had I hired out in a grocery store instead of a railroad in 1967 and moved from box boy into cashier, that by 1992 I would be making more than train dispatchers were making. I was blunt about working conditions, sort of like <http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?18,3462601,3462601#msg-3462601&gt; and <http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?1,2275177,2276673#msg-2276673 Date: 09/12/10 09:57 Re: UP collision and derailment in Fontana>. ATDA was not happy that the company was asking me and not them. Ultimately, the senior management investigation recommended improvements in working conditions and better pay in order to attract better suited candidates. It was a blank check that ATDA basically turned down.
• I have a big file (somewhere in storage) on my effort to deal with the worse than terrible radio conditions. ATDA didn't think it was an issue. <http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?11,2350325,2350529#msg-2350529 Date: 12/26/10 11:20 Re: Runaway - part 8 - a little more> The chief (there had historically been one management chief in an office and the 2d and 3d trick assistant chiefs were his equivalent-in the 80s, management chiefs were established on all three shifts) I talked to in conversations with the boss-13 did. He was the same guy who appointed me to the Fowler meet investigation.
• Five of us were assigned to be part of that group of 36 dispatchers assigned to fix the chaos. Folks in the office made fun of us and ATDA didn't take exception to the assignments.
• The temporary work we were assigned to turned into full time work (imagine, fixing the chaotic operation of a US freight railroad). When it looked like we had a good deal, others wanted the jobs and ATDA took exception.
• The ATDA response to the position I had wound up in was quit that work and go back to handling trains. That was not an option. I had made it through over 20 years of being a train dispatcher (and more as an operator) without even being a witness at an investigation. Bad things that I was involved in and even bad things somebody else did that I could catch and head off didn't happen. It had become impossible to keep that up. There were at least a couple of terrifying shifts a week. That conversations with the boss-13 was not an unusual day, nor was the radio clip in runaway part 8, just the breaking point.
• ATDA was just not the same organization that I joined in 1969 (when I was actually proud of being a member).

>
> I don't know how you kept your sanity.  I don't
> think I have ever heard of more incompent
> management than this but, I am sure someone else
> has.

Had that last special assignment not happened it wouldn't have been long before I quit and not gone back. I intended that when I left SP and when I left MILW, but it is hard to move from a railroad career to anything else that pays the same. Folks on the outside don't believe the kind of authority and responsibility that rails have (or had up until the 80s). Everybody Knows about railroads and featherbedding. Everybody Knows that you get paid well for doing nothing. I had some interviews in which I was told that I had to by lying about what I did. It didn't take long to see this last assignment as an exit strategy. I was meeting and working with railroad consultants who couldn't deal with the system any more and were freelancing their knowledge. I was making some valuable contacts and building the way out for which I had been looking for a decade, so I stuck it out as long as a could.

It didn't take long on the street before I started getting calls from folks offering me consulting work after finding out I was no longer at BNSF. I haven't looked [longingly] back.

TAW

skrambo Wrote:
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> "73" was a telegraphic sign-off   I heard it
> defined as "Best regards" most often.  73s and GM

...and 73s is actually commonly used incorrect telegraph grammar. The code is 73 for best regards.

TAW

CPR_4000 Wrote:
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> What was your "Milwaukee . . . uh, experience?" A
> journalistic endeavor, perhaps?

http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?18,3461040,3461040#msg-3461040
http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?18,3460082,3460082#msg-3460082
http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?18,3459005,3459005#msg-3459005
http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?18,3460529,3460529#msg-3460529
http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?18,3461489,3461489#msg-3461489

TAW

fwiw, '73' is also used by radio amateurs -
http://www.arrl.org/ham-radio-glossary
There is a bit of  RR history on that ARRL listing.
...Lorenzo

ExSPCondr Wrote:

> Many years later, when the UP was congesting
> Roseville, they sent a train to Stockton that was
> all destined for everywhere between Stockton and
> Bakersfield.  Instead of helping out and flat
> switching it, the TM had the crew run around the
> train, hang the tele on the other end, and take it
> back to Roseville.

...not quite the same result as I got a cople of decades earlier...
http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?1,818639,818686#msg-818686
Date: 11/14/04 10:49 Re: Largest Power Move?

It's not what you do as much as how you do it, but then, things I did to keep my railroad running decades ago are now considered bad. Oh well.

TAW

TAW wrote:
Birmingham, in order to meet the managers' goals would gather up tracks of no bills and wrong way cars that couldn't/shouldn't move for one reason or another and run a drag to Memphis. A few hours later, someone in Memphis would look at the list and have spatch stop the train, run around it, and send it back. That served the intended purpose of keeping yard dwell below the required level.

Your experiences on the ex-Frisco were very interesting, especially when it is remembered
that the Frisco was the breeding ground of this continents greatest railroad talent. ;(
It must have really fallen apart after the talent moved on.  Or was the practice of keeping cars one step
ahead of the computer a Frisco "innovation"?

The practice certainly moved on after the Frisco takeover of the BN.  At one yard on the BN there was a 5 day a week local
that took empties and distributed them to the sand mines going south and collected the empties coming back
north. Of course by Sunday afternoon the yard had many empties that had collected over the weekend awaiting
distribution by the local on Monday.  Nothing inefficient about that and the cars were not plugging the yard. The
problem was that it made the dwell time report look bad in Frisco's yard.  The solution?  Explain the situation
to higher management and move on to important things?  No!  Call an extra on Sundays to distribute the cars
so the report makes Frisco look like an all star.  That was certainly a good way to allocate the company's
resources. Not worrying about those cars gave ample time for other projects like planning to single track
the railroad from Aurora to Galesburg.

Now the Frisco team has moved on to straighten out other properties. On the latest conquest, at least as of two years ago,
the practice of sending cars from yard "B" to another yard when they actually should have stayed at yard "B" was still alive. 
Got to keep those cars one step ahead of the computer. It may still be the active plan but thankfully I am now out of the loop.

TAW just think of the great career you could have had if only you had left your integrity at the door.  I sense cover photos
on Railway Age and Railroader of the Year awards. Instead of hanging around the Willow Springs depot and McCook tower
learing real Railroading, you should have gone to school and got your MBA.
 

It has gotten a lot better, at least from what I've heard.  Both the UP and BNSF systems and service design folks are pretty easy to work with and well grounded in the understanding of the real railroad.  They've taken away some of the tricks (like Rule 15 offerings) from local managers (or just taken away the local managers) and add more system wide metrics like total car events.  

It'll be interesting to see what happens when the 'follow what the computer says no matter what' generation is all that's left and there's one manager covering hundreds of miles of territory.  I fear for the loose car network.

englewood Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
TAW just think of the great career you could have had if only you had left your integrity at the door.  I sense cover photos
on Railway Age and Railroader of the Year awards. Instead of hanging around the Willow Springs depot and McCook tower
learning real Railroading, you should have gone to school and got your MBA.

Actually, it has been a great career and still is http://www.vtd.net/VTDPUB/TAW033015.htm

I was  right in following the example of the really good rails I encountered while on the various uh...special assignments over the years, including that last six year stretch.They quit the railroad and became consultants. Some were working for engineering companies. The best were freelancers. All of that gave me a reputation on the outside and a resume that I couldn't have gotten handling trains. I had long ago dehorned myself from chief jobs because I couldn't take the BS any more. Trick jobs were worse than horrible, and it was obvious that operator and clerk jobs were becoming extinct.

In the end, I kept being discovered within BN by folks who wanted my knowledge at minimum cost. Until I couldn't take it any more, I kept giving it to them and writing it all down for future use.

Now people look for my knowledge and actually want to pay for it.

Promoteable? Well, here's a bit of wire traffic from last week:

Hi Tom,
We are including degrees in our staff table. Can you tell me yours?

• I used to say same as Bill Gates, but he did a speech at Harvard and they gave him an honorary. I can't say same as Steve Jobs, because the same thing happened there.
• So, searching for others in my boat, I see that I still have the same degree as Mark Zuckerberg, Ted Turner, Oprah, and Abraham Lincoln.
• However, college students have used my books, and I have some Masters and PhD theses in my library that I was either cited in or was an adviser on...for whatever that's worth.

That and the resume is all I have needed ever since leaving BN[SF].

Railway Age - don't need a cover photo and award. I don't even read Railway Age (used to read Modern Railroads before it became extinct). I learn more from trainorders.com than I ever could from Railway Age.

I owe a lot to the guys who put up with a kid who wanted to learn railroading every weekend and summer day

TAW