Passenger Trains > CSX to decentralize dispatching

The Florida Times-Union
June 30, 2007
CSX shipping 300 jobs out of Jacksonville

By URVAKSH KARKARIA,
The Times-Union

CSX Corp. plans to idle up to 300 local jobs as it shunts the majority of its train dispatch operations outside the state.
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The Jacksonville work will, over the next two years, be moved to existing offices in Baltimore; Nashville; Huntington, W. Va.; Cincinnati; Florence, S.C.; and Atlanta.

Once the transfer of work is completed in August 2009, the Jacksonville operation will employ about 54 train dispatchers.

Jacksonville-based CSX has four dispatch centers, located in the Midwest and East Coast, responsible for routing trains along its tracks. Most dispatchers have been concentrated in Jacksonville since 1988, when the company established a centralized operating facility that oversees the entire network.

The relocation will improve the productivity and efficiency of train dispatching operations, CSX spokesman Gary Sease said Friday.

"We're taking these dispatching functions out of headquarters," Sease said, "and putting them into field offices, closer to where the train operations occur."

The realignment will result in more effective and efficient decision-making, improved system reliability and improved train performance, CSX said in a notice to train dispatchers.

While train dispatchers - who, on average, make nearly $35 an hour, or almost $73,000 annually - will be mostly affected by the relocation of work, about 25 local signalmen would also see their jobs moved. Signalmen, among other things, maintain the dispatching equipment and respond to problems with railroad crossing signals and gates. About 10 percent of the affected workers are in management.

Workers will be offered jobs in the new locations, Sease said.

urvaksh.karkaria@jacksonville.com,

(904) 359-4367

This story can be found on Jacksonville.com at http://www.jacksonville.com/tu-online/stories/063007/bus_181031127.shtml.

This completes what CSX started several years ago. Hopefully dispatchers who are more acquainted with their railroad.

Ten years from now some new hotshot manager will decide that having them all in one spot is a great idea and move 'em all back

If centralizing dispatching for such a sprawling railroad wasn't a bad enough idea, they did it in Jacksonville, one of the worst places on the planet for thunderstorm strikes.

They moved an office to Calumet City several years back; didn't see it on the Gene's list. Is that place finished?

Yes. The RA, RB and the IHB East and West dispatchers have been in Cal City for a while now.

<one of the worst places on the planet for thunderstorm strikes.>

Haven't they had some problems with Hurricanes too?

Existing dispatch offices are at Jax, Calumet City, Albany, and Indianapolis. I suspect the latter three weren't mentioned because no jobs currently in Jacksonville are to be moved to those offices.

So how many hundreds of millions have been wasted with all the Centralizing and De-centralizing
How many great dispatchers have been lost because they would not relocate to places like Schaumburg, Omaha, Jacksonville, and Ft Worth, what if in a few years some new CEO decides to re-centralize all over again? my father is right "those who won’t learn by history are doomed to repeat it"

I believe they've always had a desk in Chicago (for the B&OCT). They did combine
the IHB and CSX dispatchers in the mid 90's to Calumet City. They've since added
desks (RA and RB for CSX, IHB East and West for IHB), this was due to both the
Conrail split, and the closing of alot of the towers that both used to have. The
ones moved recently (last year) were the ones that control the lines radiating
out of Chicago (ex-C&O in Michigan, B&O and Monon in Indiana, and C&EI in IN/IL. Not
100% sure on the C&EI, if that one is done out of Cal City or not)

I was on a very late Amtrak on the South End sub the night they put Jacksonville on line. What a mess!!!