Railroaders' Nostalgia > Lineups

When the Tacoma BN office merged with the Seattle office, the Tacoma Chief was the boss.

Over on the Spokane Division, the Chief put hours of work developing a 30ish hour plan. As it should be, figures were right on for the first 16 hours or so and thereafter might slip by a couple of hours as one might expect. The lineup was then updated throughout the day as things changed, but nothing varied substantially. That was the same procedure we used in the Seattle office under the ex-GN Chief, Bakersfield on SP and pretty much what we did in Chicago on B&OCT. In each office, we ran the railroad from the lineups we produced. Power, crew, counts, etc. all in one document.

The Spokane and Portland offices were moved into Seattle. The Spokane and Portland Chiefs did not come over with the offices.

The Seattle office standard, brought up from Tacoma, was to stick out lineups of no more than six hours into the future, and do it often. All of the information needed to run the railroad was contained in notes on lots of separate clipboards.

I moved into a Chief job (we had a Super - management- chief for administration, and Assistant Chiefs, really chief dispatchers, for each division). I brought with me my way of managing the railroad. That included the procedures I had used for a decade or so - do all of the homework, stick out a plan good for over 24 hours once in the shift, and handle the variations. I would stick out a lineup around the middle of every shift. On some positions, there were two or three of us who were like-minded about running the railroad. Sometimes, I was the only one, which meant that instead of getting an organized railroad and keeping it organized, I would get chaos and have to start from scratch (which was one of the reasons that I disqualified myself from all Chief work and never went back).

There were many arguments involving me and lineups. Folks in the field had become used to the 6 hours of useless drivel standard. One day, some of the 6 hour guys ganged  up on me and the Chief threatened discipline if I didn't comply. After some very serious arguing on my part, the Chief (a Tacoma guy) allowed a test period to see if I was as accurate as I claimed I could be. Not only was I accurate to a couple of hours 24 hours out, I was more accurate in the first 6 ours of each lineup than my 4 times a shift 6 hour lineups colleagues. I wasn't disciplined and wasn't ordered to change.

However, the standard was not changed. I was just allowed to be an exception. If I wanted to organize my railroad and keep it organized, I could do the extra work but nobody else would be required to do that. That was vastly different from my previous dispatching lives in which the only job requirement was perfection to the degree that it could be attained.

A few years later, after some management changes both in the field and in the office, that old subject came up again. I would inherit chaos on the Spokane Division every Monday morning on the relief job I had, which indluded Spokane Division Sunday and Monday. It would take hours and a lot of diligent and concerted effort to figure power, crews, yards, traffic, and gandys and come up with a plan that I could commit to writing. I became a problem. The Spokane division management expected a lineup at least 4 times per shift and they had to wait for me to stick out only one. That wasn't acceptable. Then one day, I was threatened. The Spokane Division Superintendent called the Chief (the Super Chief) and instructed him to straighten me up or get rid of me. As normal for the late 80s (my Chief on SP and on B&OCT would never have given in to instructions from outside on how to manage the office or run the railroad..and I threw the VP Operations out of my office on an SP trick job without one word of censure from the Chief), the Chief brought the edict to me. I was to furnish the Spokane Division with as many lineups as I could or be canned for insubordination and anything else they could get on me (I pretty much was wearing a target for most of my 21 years at BN, so I was used to that).

The lineup was maintained in a text file in the yard management computer system. The main IS didn't have that capability. The file was a technology upgrade from the days when we worked from a big stack of IBM cards. Each train was represented with at least one line that showed station, time, engines, engine instructions, car count, grain pools, etc. and instructions for train handling. It was all there. A lot of my colleagues never updated more than the top few lines of the file. Many merely deleted what had happened and added nothing. As the day wore on into the night and into the next day, everything below the top few lines (or what was not deleted yet from yesterday) became more and more of a fantasy. I noticed one guy who would immediately delete everything predicting more than 6 hours as soon as he sat down. That was acceptable to management; in fact, they were happy with that. As they changed stuff, they did it on notes on a clipboard and didn't touch the file. I decided to comply exactly as directed. If they were going to fire me for not enough BS lineups, I would give them lots of BS lineups.

The Spokane lineup/plan was typically a couple of pages long and predicting as far over 24 hours as could be predicted with some degree of surety (unless it had deteriorated into the last few lines of an old one, not touched in the past 24 hours, which is what I usually inherited on Monday mornings). I set out to do my normal routine BUT...

After completing the work on each train, I changed the lineup number in the file and transmitted (group address to lots of printers on the Spokane Division, the Seattle regional office, and Overland Park KS, one of the temporary homes of the BN control center). I published 37 lineups in 30 minutes. It took a couple of minutes to print each, so the backlog became pretty big and the printers kept puking out paper for over an hour. The Spokane Division Superintendent complained bitterly to the Chief. The Chief brought those tidings to me. I said, I'm following your instructions. The lesson is DON'T THREATEN ME!

The standoff ended. I was told to go back to making the railroad work and putting out accurate information. However, I had enough as did several other colleagues who were working Chief jobs and got tired of fighting the system. We all went back to trick jobs at about the same time, all disqualified ourselves from chief work at the same time, and made do with handling trains and complying with whatever stupid instructions were issued by they (most instructions were preceded with they want because nobody would accept any responsibility). Chief work started going to the low end of the seniority list, to folks who were not so troublesome, which made management happier than a clam in salt water.

TAW

(I moved this from Nostalgia to here, where I intended to post it.)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/22/15 22:55 by TAW.

Excellent history.

Railroading I was used to:

The Chiefs would put out a plan once every 24 hours about what trains would be run with what power, cars, crews and what work those trains would do where on their portions of the railroad. As you say, the plans had about a 30-hour horizon. We had excellent chiefs. A lot of thought went into the plans. They were consistently very good plans, and so they were achieved pretty well. I always thought the Chief jobs were the most interesting jobs at the Division-level on the railroad. (The most interesting job at the District level was the Superintendent of Transportation, but that is another story.)

It was NOT the Chief's responsibility to issue updated line-ups as the shift wore on and as the day wore on. That was the responsibility of the trick dispatchers, i.e., the trick dispatchers generated inidividual updated line-ups covering just their individual dispatching territories that were distributed to the officials and the call boards. It was up to the officials to take that information and update their copies of the overall Division plans, if they were so inclined.

I would love to hear about the incident in Bakersfield where you threw the VPO out of the office.

Best regards,

Rob L.

rob_l Wrote:
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> I would love to hear about the incident in
> Bakersfield where you threw the VPO out of the
> office.

Second

-Dave

This...this is proper railroading.  I know my job, you know your job, and that includes knowing enough to leave me alone to do my job!

It's called "malicious compliance". If you don't want to let me do the job you pay me to do, and want to threaten me to do things YOUR way, I'll happily do EXACTLY as I'm instructed. I will comply with a smile on my face. And when it doesn't work, because I've been doing this job 20 years and you never have, I'll just say, "I did exactly as I was told". 

Just like in your story, it usually ends up I'm doing what I was supposed to be doing in the first place. 

Great story!

-Joe

djh4d Wrote:
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> rob_l Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
>
> > I would love to hear about the incident in
> > Bakersfield where you threw the VPO out of the
> > office.
>
> Second
>
> -Dave

Third. Hard to believe RDS would just walk out without a word.

            Fourth on that, lets hear it even if the guy you threw out is still living. That would be even better.

            The oilfield works on that same principle too pretty much of the time. The incompetents are moved up because they are first and foremost, suck ups who are too stupid and lazy to do the job. Good buddy #27 promotes good buddy #361 to look after the people that are doing ther job # 361 does not understand. He writes various standard operating procedure that make no sence at all because he hasn't a clue what is going on in front of him. The SOP is moved up through the ranks of nitwits and recieves approval from his excellency at the top who is normally found drinking heavily at 9:30 in the morning.  AS long as the SOP includes the words 'safety', 'cost reduction' or 'better personnel management' it goes through as if greased. 15 minutes later after making this high level but difficult decision complete with serious and lengthy discussions, the drinking continues in order to celebrate another milestone in management. Yeehaw !    And I am still spraying Lysol into my eyes years later trying to forget ever seeing this occur in person.                          Gentlemen, we have to protect our phoney baloney jobs here! Hrrummph Hrrummph!

WAF Wrote:
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> djh4d Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > rob_l Wrote:
> >
> --------------------------------------------------
>
> > -----
> >
> > > I would love to hear about the incident in
> > > Bakersfield where you threw the VPO out of
> the
> > > office.
> >
> > Second
> >
> > -Dave
>
> Third. Hard to believe RDS would just walk out
> without a word.

RLK

I'll do that one some time soon.

TAW

Interesting story,when I first went to work in Dec 72, the Mop Chief  in KC usually had each dispr put out a line-up for crews around 7-9 A.M. and that would be it until later in the day, which would be after 3:00 P.M. The problem for crews were trains that were, for whatever reason, left off the line-up after the original was put out.  I know used check the line up and then go home and the phone would be ringing and it was the caller telling me I was called for such and such. When I asked where that train came from, it would usually a grain train that sort of appeared out of the blue. I can't imagine how many people missed calls over such trains. Deadheads were never on the line-ups and the Chief would see he needed crews down at  Coffeyville, would have two crews deadheaded, and then ask the caller if any of the crews had a car they needed to get to Coffeyville as they could use that. This was  before the  days of  crew vans.                                                                                                                                                    

    It  wasn' t until Centralized Calling  System came along ,CMS in the   in  the  early 80's that some semblance's  of a line-ups came  out. When local calling  was taken away, line-ups were actually better in that at least all the trains were on there; no matter how far of the mark or time they were, or as it used to say"NO TCS events  reported."  Later on the =TL function came out which allowed  crews access line ups on their own,which were usually 24  hour line ups. When I left in 2013, there  were days the line ups were spot on and other times usually coal trains or grains they would be hours or days  off . Most of the times it would be coal trains in the Powder River  Basin on the 24 line up that didn't have a chance showing when the line said they would,but that was better than nothing. Usually yard trains out of Neff or 18th St would show up before they were, and were usually pretty close to the line up.

For whatever reason the Mop never did put what could be called accurate line-ups.  Maybe because the crews at out lying locations never  strayed to far  away, and many times in smaller towns; the caller would go look for them.I wish now I had some saved some of the old line-ups,although I do have some northbound line-ups out of Coffeyville. I used to tell the new hires how we operated with little or no line-up information, and they can't  believe it. Looking  back sometimes I can't  either.     

Great reading,but I do not understand any of it.Too complex.Never had
that problem as a car knocker.If it was broke we fixed it,it derailed,we
put it in the track.

Uncle Joe,Seffner,Fl.

retcsxcfm Wrote:
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> Great reading,but I do not understand any of
> it.Too complex.Never had
> that problem as a car knocker.If it was broke we
> fixed it,it derailed,we
> put it in the track.


Oh yeah. You could much more easily relate to the time I had a train throw out a rip 60 foot bulkhead flat of lumber at Twin Meadows MT.

I sent a wire to the Whitefish car foreman: car number, L FB6, destination Chicago, defect description, Repair and advise.

Lateer that day, the Whitefish car foreman called to tell me that the empty bulkhead at Twin Meadows was ready to go. I said, the car at Twin Meadows is a load. You sure they got the right car?

Yup, same number you gave me, but it's an empty.

It seems that between setout and the arrival of the wheel truck, the local log truck guys managed to steal 100 tons of lumber.

TAW

 

Finders Keepers!

Someone built a couple of houses on the BN

retcsxcfm Wrote:
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> Great reading,but I do not understand any of
> it.Too complex.

I get the idea of a lineup, but a more complete explanation of the need for, and use of, lineups would complete the picture.  My railroad experience was mostly passenger and engineering and did not include lineups.  Thanks.

RRTom Wrote:
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> retcsxcfm Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Great reading,but I do not understand any of
> > it.Too complex.
>
> I get the idea of a lineup, but a more complete
> explanation of the need for, and use of, lineups
> would complete the picture.  My railroad
> experience was mostly passenger and engineering
> and did not include lineups.  Thanks.

Good point.

Unlike most of the rest of the world, North American freight operation is completely improvised, generally even when it is called scheduled. Unlike in other industries, asset management is improvised around operation management.

Those managing the assets (crews, locomotives, cars, track) need something that tells when trains will run. In the case of T&E crews, the assets themselves need to know when trains will run.

This information is distributed in a form called  lineup, which is actually a schedule, by the people managing the operation.

Carefully constructed, this information should reflect the best possible prediction of operation, considering all events that can be predicted. The prediction range should be at least long enough that assets can be procured, moved, etc. For example, track maintenance happens during weekdays 0700-1500. The train information should extend beyond the next 1500. Crews need to be off duty at least 8 hours. they need, for example, a two hour notice to come on duty, and the quickest trip to the other end of the territory is 8 hours. The planning horizon needs to be at least 18 hours.24 hours used to be pretty much standard. The first 16 or so hours of the plan should run itself, the part of the information falling later than 16 hours being developed and appended as time goes on.

In modern times, lineups have deteriorated to a few hours worth of guesses at what might run, the source of all of the angst you see here at trainorders from guys in T&E service.

My story is about the struggle (that went on for about 10 years before defeat was finally declared) to keep planning operation and publishing worthwhile information that could be relied on in the face of a push to just do something quickly to appease folks who wanted information.

TAW
 

I sometimes work as hump yardmaster at a major terminal. We also work with lineups to some extent. When I sit down for my turnover, I usually build a plan and then work the plan. Yes, there are things that happen outside of the plan, but the plan settles things down and keeps me on track for the day. I put down my inbound trains and what they have. I put down the bowl and how it looks and what the projected need for empty tracks are, tracks that will be pulled during my shift based on the outbound plan. I also talk with the tm about power assignments for both terminating and orginating trains.

I can tell you 8 hours ahead (based on my shift) what tracks I will put trains in, where cars will be in the bowl, and where the power for all trains in the yard will be that I have to deal with. It usually takes me about 20 minutes to build this. Mind you, my phone never stops ringing at turn over time and all my crews are going to work at the same time. Just like you, I try to make sure people know what is going on.

Many of our newest trainmasters have zero ground experience and don't understand the ebb and flow of the actual operations. It's hard dealing with those folks because they have no concept of how long it takes to do a simple procedure such as doubling tracks or setting out bad order cars from a train that is well over 9000 (the new norm) and getting the crew back on the head end. All they care about is their number of the day. (such as ODTOD) It makes life hard at times because they won't listen either.

Some days I fight to get a word in. Other days, I simply let them tell me how to mess up the yard.
Joe

Some of the locations I work from are excellent when it comes to line ups but others Fake it till the make it or just throw a WAG at it. Then there's when they pull a train out of a hat. I can understand if it's a last minute diversion of a grain train. But when it's been headed this way for 300 miles already and it's not on the line up that's just lazy IMHO.

Posted from Android

NSDTK Wrote:
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> Some of the locations I work from are excellent
> when it comes to line ups but others Fake it till
> the make it or just throw a WAG at it. Then
> there's when they pull a train out of a hat. I can
> understand if it's a last minute diversion of a
> grain train. But when it's been headed this way
> for 300 miles already and it's not on the line up
> that's just lazy IMHO.

http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?1,3192719,3194001#3194001

http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?11,3590050,3590192#3590192

TAW

rantoul Wrote:
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> I would find it helpful to view a list or
> explanation of the basic reporting/operating
> hierarchy...VP Operations, Superintendent, Chief
> Dispatcher, Other Dispatcher, etc....perhaps this
> is laid out in a previous post.
>
This probably varied by railroad and by decade. The UP before 1980:

VP Operations
General Manager of District
General Superintendent of District
Division Superintendent
Division Asst. Superintendent
Chief Dispatcher (on the UP before 1980, disptaching territories did not overlap divisions)
Asst. Chief Dispatcher
Trick Dispatcher

Unlike many roads, dispatchers on the UP were officials and not union employees. When there was a strike, we would work all hours and work unusual jobs, e.g., yardmaster, train or engine crew, etc.

Also unlike many roads, the UP's District General Managers had considerable autonomy. Operations and traffic within origin and destination within one District were not managed by Omaha but instead were totally the responsibility of the District. The District made up its own train symbols, schedules, blocking, etc., and Omaha management generally had no clue. I believe that organizational philosophy dated back to the Harriman era. I suppose it all went away in the post-MoP-UP era (after my time).

Best regards,

Rob L.

LHN [Lloyd Nations] said, "If you want the instructions changed, comply with them 100%."