Eastern Railroad Discussion > csx reducing freight operations to 6 days per week

http://cs.trains.com/trn/b/fred-frailey/archive/2015/03/26/csx-39-s-brand-new-thing.aspx

http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?2,3700604

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Under this plan, CSX trains may well be able to connect with each other, but what about foreign road connections? Or are entire manifest trains not interchanged?

Six starts per week vs. seven starts per week. It is not like CSX is going to take Sunday off. Many manifest trains are "simply" going to operate every 28 hours instead of every 24 hours.

It does not apply to every train, either. Just many of the manifests in the 300, 400, 500 and 600 range. Not included are automotive trains, intermodals, locals, or commodities and express. Those manifests which interact with Amtrak on divisions that lack sidings, those that have "hot" cars for scheduled foreign connections, and such like will still operate on a 24 hr. cycle as well.

The idea is to deal with the locomotive shortage until enough power becomes available later this year.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 03/27/15 10:47 by NYC6001.

idea behind this is, on paper will create 15% more loco's for the freight service, csx doesn't have enough loco's. friend in management in jax said it's just window dressing for wall st, sounds good that we're taking 1/7 of our cost out of the freight operations, but will cause major problems in operations.

And how does this affect  crews? Less number of crews, more hours?

wabash2800 Wrote:
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> And how does this affect  crews? Less number of
> crews, more hours?

Lots of recrews.

Posted from iPhone

1 Wrote:
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> http://cs.trains.com/trn/b/fred-frailey/archive/20
> 15/03/26/csx-39-s-brand-new-thing.aspx

Yeah. Welcome to yesterday's news today. 
Scroll down much??

I read Fred Frailey's blog. Q410 is a train I am familiar with as it passes thru here. Waycross to Selkirk; one of the greatest distance thru freight trains on NS or CSX. Since the loss of the old 'Bullsheet' condensed schedules I've few resources on CSX schedules. The few CSX employess I know at CSX are too busy and stressed out with their jobs so I do not ask them for schedule info. But Q410, like its SB counterpart Q409, work at least four places enroute, maybe more. On Q410, only a handful of cars are in the Selkirk block from Waycross. Never a full train. and the older schedules had Q410's dwell time in Acca Yard about six hours or more for work. If that goes quickly some days or nights, does that mean Q410 will catch up to its old schedule? Actually where I live Q410 is a very unreliable train; it can come anytime. Some days it has 50-60 cars, others 120. It carries a lot of steel from the south, but a friend says that comes from Newport News and is added at Richmond. And Q410 often uses one crew Richmond to Philly, and is often re-crewed here.   

Many CSX carload trains work at several destinations enroute. I know at Wilsmere, DE if a train has to stop and work here (q370,q373, q406 now, sometimes q405) it is a kiss of death. Most often the crew will die on the law. As i mentioned in the previous post, it has to do with lack of communication, difficulty with radios, or waiting on 'higher priority' Q100 and 200 and even trash trains if they have short time crews. 

I think the 28 hour system might work between long distance OD pairs with solid traffic volme and no intermediate work. Maybe even some shorter O-D pairs, using only one big AC loco, which CSX has a lot of. One AC in may O-D pairs can haul 6000-9000 tons or more at track speed.  IMHO. 

Where I don't see it working is daily trains that consistently operate with well over 100 cars.  Maybe they will apply it to services on a case by case basis and keep frequencies up where they need them.

 Conrail tried this for a short period of time in the 80s, but
the schedules soon reverted back tof normal.  The VP that
pushed for this had the initials DAS.

You mean D A Swanson, or his nickname, "neutron Don'. The buildings were still there, but the men were gone