Western Railroad Discussion > Yard 5 at Proviso - Track 45 thru 66 GONE !

Dateline PROVISO - Yard 5 (The Hump Yard) - Tracks 45 thru 66 GONE !

April 20, 2020

---

Is this Utah???

BobP Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Is this Utah???

LOL, Provo is in Utah, Proviso is Union Pacific Yard in near west side suburbs of Chicago.

Bob

Tomorrow they will probably rent some space to store rail cars.

Once upon a time the largest yard in the world.

TAW

Will this area all be for truck parking, or will they be reconfiguring the ramp trackage? 

Bruce

TAW Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Once upon a time the largest yard in the world.
>
> TAW

They are soooo going to regret this......

Txhighballer Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> TAW Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Once upon a time the largest yard in the world.
> >
> > TAW
>
> They are soooo going to regret this......

Probably somebody else will. The guys who did it will have taken their cash and run.

TAW

TAW Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Probably somebody else will. The guys who did it
> will have taken their cash and run.
>
> TAW

Ding!!..Ding!!  We have a winner......

 Proviso---for a foreign carrier a great place to make 12 hours!

NS1000 beat me to it.... TAW for the win.

Posted from iPhone

ghemr Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>  Proviso---for a foreign carrier a great place to
> make 12 hours!

You hired out a few decades too late. In the 70s, round trip from Barr was less than 12 hours...usually around 10 if I remember correctly. While the others were in line on Harbor Hill (where in the 16 hour days, a train could be relieved twice without moving), we went via the main line Kedzie to Melrose Park, direct around the yard to Yard 9, pull a track, get the cage, and head for home.

To make that work, 203 had to be at Kedzie at a certain time to follow a scoot that had a long headway behind it. We couldn't get there early, though, or the train would have been all empties leaving Kedzie. I made sure the Can Job left the third main clear every day. 203 would head in the third at 75 and wait at 49 for the Exact Right Time. It took a lot of diplomacy to get by Brighton, Ash, and 26th nonstop...and giving each of them the exact time that 203 would be there. It certainly wasn't the B&OCT of your experience.

TAW

So, are these tracks that have been removed part of the bowl or receiving yard (I assue bowl with those numbers)?

Is the area going to be used for expansion of the intermodal area?
 

Railbaron Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> So, are these tracks that have been removed part
> of the bowl ...
>
> Is the area going to be used for expansion of the
> intermodal area?

Proviso's Yard 5, the Hump Yard, was never referred to as a "bowl" until the silly managers of the new landlord Union Pacific came to mismanage the place in 1995. 

It is a Hump, over 620 feet above sea level and down hill all the way to Lake Michigan.

It is in no way a "bowl."  UP Management's casual use of that silly term resulted in more than one new Yard employee (and there have been HUNDREDS since the UP acquisition in '95) not properly securing cuts of cars in the Hump because they thought they were working in some non-existent "bowl" of a yard. Derailments and injuries ensued.

Proviso's Hump was constructed in 1927, and was elevated far higher than the efficient marshalling of cars required, resulting in decades of maintenance problems on the overworked retarder system. The over-elevation of the Hump itself also required the presence of Skatemen who were charged with keeping the free-rolling cars in the 69 receiving tracks, since the use of in-track stationary retarders proved futile. Injuries and many deaths resulted from this flawed system.

After the Union Pacific acquired the property, they spent over $14M in drainage and track rehab JUST in Proviso's Yard 5.

And now, some NEW bosses, intent on maximizing shareholder value, have decided to turn the South side of the Hump Yard into a part of the failure of an intermodal yard the C&NW so glamourously dubbed "Global Two."  That would be the intermodal yard those geniuses of MidWestern railroading built with the working lead of a very busy pulldown operation out of the Hump Yard that pulled long, doubled- and tripled-up tracks from the Hump into Yard 2 to the East for headroom, then shoved them to the County Line air spots to the West - - the system designed in the 1920s and still working well into the 2020s. The intermodal yard that came to a griding halt every time a pull came out of the Hump - about every twenty minutes.   The UP is going to try THIS as some sort of late fix on another C&NW blunder.

And that "shareholder value" nonsense.

I think they really don't have anyone with a plan at the Mother Ship.

Thank you for your response.

As far as "bowl", I am ex-SP and worked the Eugene Hump and we always called the area below the hump as the "bowl" so it wasn't just a "UP thing" to refer to that area as a bowl. If it matters, very quickly after UP took us over they closed the hump here opting to keep Hinkle instead even though Eugene routinely put more cars through the hump than Hinkle did. 

Railbaron Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

>
> As far as "bowl".......................

I trained new employees for about my last decade on the C&NW-UP, and I found proof that casual, non-thinking use of generic terms for ANYTHING on the rails leads to mistakes, injuries, death.

At Proviso, there ARE two yards that are actual "bowls," Yard 4 and Yard 9. Yet the stupid UP bosses do not call THEM "bowls," but call Yard 5, the Hump, by that term.

Non-thinking, ignorant use of terms that lead to mistakes, injuries, death.

Words have repercussions.

Plowhandle Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I trained new employees for about my last decade on the C&NW-UP, and I found proof that casual,
> non-thinking use of generic terms for ANYTHING on the rails leads to mistakes, injuries, death.
>
> At Proviso, there ARE two yards that are actual "bowls," Yard 4 and Yard 9. Yet the stupid UP
> bosses do not call THEM "bowls," but call Yard 5, the Hump, by that term.
>
> Non-thinking, ignorant use of terms that lead to mistakes, injuries, death.
>
> Words have repercussions.

Interesting. So since "Non-thinking, ignorant use of terms" is not allowed in your world, how do you reconcile that with your generic use of "hump" for the entire yard? In my world "hump" is a specific location, "bowl" is a specific location. I resent you trying to talk down to me and yelling at me in your first response to a simple question. 



 

Thank you plowhandle !!

Words and terms in an industry do have meanings.

Been there seen that.  You know things are going downhill
fast when managers with ZERO knowledge land on the property
and discard 100 years of operational experience and
knowledge in order to remake the property in their briefly
appearing image.

If they cannot understand how something works they will rename
it or destroy it.  Part of being a good rail is to understand that
different locales have different names for identical things.  Earn some
respect by learning something from the guys that have pounded the
cinders for 40 years. Nobody at Proviso cares that some clown had
been a hero at North Platte.  Show what you can learn and do at Proviso.

I can only imagine the horror when they found out that you called
certain yard runners "Mains"!!!

Every property can improve with a fresh set of eyes.  Sometime the stale,
incestuous, old boys network needs to be shaken up but these modern 
clowns are only interested in overturning the established order.

BTW,  any rookie could make 12 hours on a transfer to Proviso.
The real artist could make another 8 hours tow-in by evading 
the DUI crew vans sent to retrieve him.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/21/20 08:08 by Englewood.

Just maybe in a few years, they will ask for CREATE money to restore what they removed.
Sort of like what's happening at Pullman Jct.

Latest news today is that Union Pacific front office execs will be eating a 25% reduction in their wages for the next 4 months - and that all other, non-agreement employees will be taking ONE WEEK OF UNPAID LEAVE IN MAY, JUNE, JULY, AND AUGUST.

Amazing how Lance Fritz could totally tank the company in  the short time he's been at the helm.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/21/20 11:21 by Plowhandle.