Western Railroad Discussion > Miscellaneous Roseville (INPOA, Pool Power)

I went to Roseville last weekend (first weekend of March) to try to catch the UP 1996 coming from Oregon, and to try my luck at catching SPMW 207 (Rotary) coming back from Truckee. I did catch the UP 1996 leaving Roseville (trailing), but I missed the rotary as it did not depart Truckee until next morning, where BoilingMan has posted more great reports from "The Hill" (a nickname for Donner Pass).

Instead, I got to witness a little "Precision Scheduled Railroading" or PSR at Roseville. INPOA (the demoted ZNPOA) arrived as an intermodal train mid-morning, and tied down on Main 2 at Atkinson (crew change point near the yard office). The inbound crew uncoupled the power from the train, and took it into the yard somewhere.

Locomotive-less INPOA sat on Main 2 until the outbound crew showed up, who came back with additional ~3100' worth of train from the yard, and coupled that to the rest of INPOA. The whole process probably took about 2 hours.

In the long video (5:58 long), I caught the INPOA departing Antelope (west end of Roseville Yard), and the entire train is shown. It looked like MRVOA + INPOA. End of the MRVOA section is 2:50 in the video.

I was informed elsewhere that MRVOA is no longer running. However, after talking to friends in SoCal, UP management has been flip-flopping on changes down south, so things can change back. 

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Warning! The following is a PSR post. It may irritate some on here. If so, oh well then move along. This post isn't for you. Feel free to stay in fantasy land elsewhere.

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Maybe I'm confused, but I don't understand how it is precision to hold a stack train for 2 hours to pick up 3100' feet of manifest. Those stack cars could have almost been in Oakland by the time they finished the pickup in Roseville. I realize they are not the highest priority cars out there, but they are still customers cars nonetheless. Where do we draw the line as far as delaying an entire stack train a couple hours to move 3100' of manifest sooner?

Not to mention the fact that this move ties up a good chunk of the mainline at Roseville for the entire time it's there, rendering the terminal single track.

I followed UP 1996 + 2 SD70Ms moving around in Roseville Yard, and ended up on the east end at the "railfan gazebo." While driving around the yard, I noticed a unit train of covered hoppers, with interesting mix of pool power (soy meal train empties, as I was informed later). It looked like that train was going to depart ahead of UP 4089 (MRVPW, with UP 1996 trailing), so here's a video of it running by the gazebo. Entire train is not shown.

UP SD70M, BNSF ES44AC, CN SD70Ace, CSX scheme GECX C40-8W, and BNSF ES44C4 are the locomotives up front. I'll post a separate report for the UP 1996 (and UP 1995, which I caught Friday in SoCal).

I also caught "Metro Ports" KLWX 5150 in Roseville that weekend.

That's it for the quick Roseville sampler.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/11/19 22:58 by cchan006.

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cchan006 Wrote:
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> I also caught "Metro Ports" KLWX 5150 in Roseville that weekend.

That unit is going to Metropolitan Stevedore at the Port of Stockton. It will replace ex-UP C30-7 474. Is it me or does the 5150 seem to have a bowed frame?

https://alankandel.scienceblog.com/2017/08/26/stockton-rolls-out-electric-buses-cleaner-locomotives/

Thanks for the post Charles!

ble692 Wrote:
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> Not to mention the fact that this move ties up a
> good chunk of the mainline at Roseville for the
> entire time it's there, rendering the terminal
> single track.

MRVWS that day had issues with the second unit, so it had to maneuver around the INPOA to grab another unit, and departed after the INPOA. INPOA blocked my view, so I didn't document it, but there was a short PSR-style eastbound (led by UP 7439 + 3 GEs, on March 3rd) with 40' doublestacks and mix freight that went into the yard.

ble692 Wrote:
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> Thanks for the post Charles!

You're welcome. The 5150's frame definitely looked bowed to my naked eyes. 

Great video Charles. Looks like a P5 horn on CN unit which is odd for such a new locomotive.

Regards, Jim Evans

ble692 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Warning! The following is a PSR post. It may
> irritate some on here. If so, oh well then move
> along. This post isn't for you. Feel free to stay
> in fantasy land elsewhere.
>
> ****
>
> Maybe I'm confused, but I don't understand how it
> is precision to hold a stack train for 2 hours to
> pick up 3100' feet of manifest. Those stack cars
> could have almost been in Oakland by the time they
> finished the pickup in Roseville. I realize they
> are not the highest priority cars out there, but
> they are still customers cars nonetheless. Where
> do we draw the line as far as delaying an entire
> stack train a couple hours to move 3100' of
> manifest sooner?
>
> Not to mention the fact that this move ties up a
> good chunk of the mainline at Roseville for the
> entire time it's there, rendering the terminal
> single track.

The only thing PSR has for customers is bad service.  You're confused because you are using your brain and common sense, both are things that no one in UP's upper management poses - they are only driven by greed, acting only on their animal emotions incapable of intelligent thought.  PSR is ALL ABOUT processes and operation that look like they will cut costs - pure and simple.  This example looks great on paper - with their new big train operating plan, here they have two moderate sized trains, so let's just put the two together and make one big train, and save a crew start!  Well, hopefully the delay will result in delays to other trains, maybe to the point they have to be dog caught (ie another crew start!), and hopefully these crews got paid a bunch of over time for the delays and additional work.  In the end, it very well could have costed UP more money in the end - but they are too stUPid to realize it!

Ooops.  Sorry, forgot the warning "another PSR rant"...

I see absolutely nothing wrong with what management did here. The author indicated it was on a weekend , probably Saturday; In any case the “hot’’ section of the train were the reefers . The are meat products destined to the Port of Oakland.They must be available for unloading ie spotted by Monday for ship loading. Even if this was Sunday, they would make the guarantee as even the slowest train would make down the CalP’s two main CTC equipped trackage to Oakland in a few hours. As for the rest of the train(containers) the UP ramp at Oakland as well as the Port’s ramp used by BNSF has limited hours ,making the nessessity of getting the I/M part of the train to Oakland with any high speed is debatable.
Look, I’m not here to defend the new system UP is implementing.Like anything ,it has positive as well as negative aspects and hopefully UP management we’ll be able to keep the good and jettison the bad.What I am advising is if you are negative on the system,pick examples that are clear losers. In my opinion this clearly was not one of them.