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Western Railroad Discussion > Stopping for BeansDate: 01/28/25 23:08 Stopping for Beans Author: RailDawg Need some education on Beans and Railroading.
Are crews allowed to stop for beans if there's time? What are the restrictions these days isn't beans a time-honored tradition that should be respected? Chuck Date: 01/28/25 23:55 Re: Stopping for Beans Author: timz Define "if there's time".
Date: 01/29/25 00:31 Re: Stopping for Beans Author: Texican65 In the yard yes…a 20 minute lunch is what has been agreed upon for an 8 hour shift.
However, late lunches and no lunches happen everyday. A late lunch is an extra $12. A no lunch is an extra day’s pay. Hostlers are required to bring a sack lunch with them and eat on the go. Extra transfers are allowed to stop and observe a meal period, but it has to be requested over the radio and approved by the dispatcher. That being the case, I’ve never heard of one being approved. A through freight road crew trying to stop for lunch….? They’d be terminated on the spot. Date: 01/29/25 03:46 Re: Stopping for Beans Author: Englewood Like a lot of things in agreements that have gone wrong, the penalty payments
were to pressure the company to provide some humane breaks in the work day. At some places crews believe that it is part of their daily rate. Date: 01/29/25 05:01 Re: Stopping for Beans Author: RSD5 No lunch is a whole days pay? Wow, I work in an Emergency Room and we rarely get 30 minutes to go off the floor and eat. I always pack sandwiches otherwise its very likely you will work 12 hours with no food.
Dave Date: 01/29/25 05:52 Re: Stopping for Beans Author: Redwater I think it depends on the Union agreement at a specific location with the specific railroad. In Denver BNSF yard, if the yardmaster didn't give you a meal break after 6 hours, the railroad was penalized a half hour's pay. Of course, that only applied to jobs which originated out of the Denver yard. Road jobs were not the same.
Date: 01/29/25 05:56 Re: Stopping for Beans Author: MILW86A Back in the 90s CNW Illinois Division Crews leaving Clinton to Proviso would always request "Beans Enroute" to the DS when leaving Clinton.
The DS would come back either yes or no. MILW86A Date: 01/29/25 06:17 Re: Stopping for Beans Author: zr190 When I was braking out of South Pekin, it was the same...ask for beans en-route.
Only thing was that on the St. Louis line, there were very few places to go to beans! The Cotton Belt had an agreement on the crews working from Pine Bluff to Memphis. They had a menu set up by number and they radioed the opr at Brinkley. He would relay it to the hotel next door and then bring it over to the depot in a bag for each end. The opr would hand the bags up to the crew and they pulled around the connection onto the Rock Island. (SSW ran on RI trackage rights Brinkley to Memphis.) zr190 Date: 01/29/25 06:35 Re: Stopping for Beans Author: BigSkyBlue RSD5 Wrote:
------------------------------------------------------- > No lunch is a whole days pay? Wow, I work in > an Emergency Room and we rarely get 30 minutes to > go off the floor and eat. I always pack > sandwiches otherwise its very likely you will work > 12 hours with no food. > > Dave Respect to your job, but in spite of what a few trainmasters may think, switching freight cars is not an emergency. The agreements on most railroads allow a switch crew 20 minutes for lunch between 4 1/2 and 6 hours on duty. If lunch is "late", for any one of a number of operational reasons, then the crew gets 20 minutes at overtime rate. BUT, the crew still gets that lunch period, it's just late. Should be the end of story. However, if the crew is not allowed any lunch period at all, now there has been a violation of the lunch agreement, and since there is no set remedy, a basic day payment is claimed. This practice is frowned upon by management and all but the most greedy crews. The idea is to incentivize the carrier to provide a brief lunch period during a crew's shift. Not a big ask in my opinion. BSB Date: 01/29/25 06:45 Re: Stopping for Beans Author: 3rdswitch Personally, on Santa Fe and eventually BNSF, on yard jobs in Los Angeles, which were the only jobs the "bean law" applied, I ALWAYS brought a meal. If we didn't get an official beans fine, I'll take the extra pay. I don't know where the extra days pay came from? We never got that. As mentioned, late beans twenty minutes overtime. No beans forty minutes overtime. On the pools under eight hours $4 over eight hours $8.
JB Date: 01/29/25 07:11 Re: Stopping for Beans Author: splitreduction Congratulations, maybe people on ERorders.com will be sympathetic with you.
RSD5 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > No lunch is a whole days pay? Wow, I work in > an Emergency Room and we rarely get 30 minutes to > go off the floor and eat. I always pack > sandwiches otherwise its very likely you will work > 12 hours with no food. > > Dave Posted from iPhone Date: 01/29/25 07:31 Re: Stopping for Beans Author: AndyBrown My friend Russ and I were surprised on our western trip in 2017 when this eastbound pulled up and stopped at the Highway crossing in Wellton AZ. The cond. got off and said, "Sometimes you've just gotta stop for a root beer float!" And went into the little cantina next to the tracks. We got a laugh out of it; don't know if the crew had permission to stop or not.
Andy ![]() Date: 01/29/25 08:03 Re: Stopping for Beans Author: dan crews and dispatchers would often discuss traffic and where would good be places to stop
Date: 01/29/25 08:37 Re: Stopping for Beans Author: ts1457 dan Wrote:
------------------------------------------------------- > crews and dispatchers would often discuss traffic > and where would good be places to stop My recall is that the ex-Wabash crews on N&W Between Moberly MO and Kansas City could take beans after five hours by contract. The way to piss off a Santa Fe dispatcher was to pull up for beans on their joint trackage. The dispatchers could find ways to retaliate so N&W management did everything they could to discourage the crews from taking beans while under control of the Santa Fe. Date: 01/29/25 10:59 Re: Stopping for Beans Author: JGFuller "A through freight road crew trying to stop for lunch….? They’d be terminated on the spot "
They might be removed from service for insubordination, if violating specific instructions. But "termination" requires an Investigation. RR employees are protected by the Railway Labor Act and Agreements from such "arbitrary and capricious" acts by Management. Date: 01/29/25 11:11 Re: Stopping for Beans Author: TAW Texican65 Wrote:
------------------------------------------------------- > In the yard yes…a 20 minute lunch is what has > been agreed upon for an 8 hour shift. > > However, late lunches and no lunches happen > everyday. A late lunch is an extra $12. A no lunch > is an extra day’s pay. I presume there is no running the beans for a quit. (Yes, that used to be a thing.) > > A through freight road crew trying to stop for > lunch….? They’d be terminated on the spot. It used to be a regular thing. If circustances allowed, the could get permission, especially if it had been a bad trip. But there were abusers. I rode a trip to Vancouver BC and back. I was in the locker room in Vancouver with the crew, just coming to work.They had the audacity to be discussing the trip and where they were going to eat and die . . .with a dispatcher standing there and listening. Maybe it made a difference that they knew me as an operator at Bellingham and I knew how it worked. There were some guys who would use going to eat as a threat or punishment. None of us took that too well. In my SP days, I had a detector going bonkers and had a maintainer out fixing it. A freight train out of Roseville to LA got a flashing yellow (for the permit two signals away). They told the Stockton operator to tell me if I did that again, they were going to go eat. Then they got the yellow and told Stockton to tell me that's it, we're going to eat. The maintainer got it squared away just after that. I got the permit back. I had hoped to get them to Fresno before the morning fleet of Forwarder, TOFC and Perishables that was headed east every morning. That's what they hoped for too. They headed in at Covell. The conductor came to the phone and asked what they were in for. I said to eat. He said, yeah but what are we meeting? Nothing, you said you're going to eat. Go eat, I'll see you in 30 minutes. Yeah, but we'll be stuck for the fleet. We'll go to Fresno. Uh . . . nope. Not after what you just did. I'll see you in 30. The GN agreement had a rule that prohibited stopping to eat on mail, circus, and livestock trains. Seattle-Wenatchee used to be 6 hours on duty to tie up, around 8 for a helper train. One guy had to wait extra long for his Tacoma connection for No 4 (ZSSECHC). He said they will eat at Sky. I told him no. He said the agreement allows, they're stopping. I told him what the contract says. He rhetorically asked in surprise You read our agreement? There was a Seattle-Portland conductor and engineer that individually were a pain in the (#2 end). When they were together, they were insufferable. I had the usual (probably not any more) traffic jam and single track between MP 111 and Ostrander. The conductor informed (not asked) me that they would stop at Kelso to eat. I didn't have anywhere to put them even if I wanted to (and especially since after they got out of the yard, it had been a nonstop trip). They knew it. I said nope, Tacoma. There was an exchange, let's say. I asked the conductor YOU want to go eat, right? He replied with That's what I said. I replied with, by your agreement, you're not entitled yet. The engineer said, yeah, but I am. Right, but you didn't ask, the conductor did. You'll go eat at Tacoma. There was a long silence, followed by the conductor saying That's ok, we'll go to Seattle. On the other hand, we knew about the ice cream at Gold Bar and Baring, and the restaurant at Sky. If a train was going to sit at Monroe or Scenic for a standoff meet, we't tell them to stop at Gold Bar or Baring or Sky until . .. (time to go for a good meet). Don't know if it's there any more, there was a bar with good food in Wilson Creek. We'd do the same for a standoff meet at Gibson or Adrian. All that whether they were entitled or not. I'm sure those days are long gone. TAW Date: 01/29/25 11:31 Re: Stopping for Beans Author: dragoon TAW Wrote:
... Don't know if it's there any more, there > was a bar with good food in Wilson Creek. We'd > do the same for a standoff meet at Gibson or > Adrian. All that whether they were entitled or > not. > > I'm sure those days are long gone. > > TAW > very much appreciated. every day that goes by, we lose someone with your kind of experience. if i was religious, i would say it's a blessing we're getting this kind of reminiscesnse. Thanks! Date: 01/29/25 11:32 Re: Stopping for Beans Author: symph1 Pardon an uninformed question. Are you allowed to eat while operating the train?
Date: 01/29/25 11:40 Re: Stopping for Beans Author: M-636 Back in the more civilized days, the Western Pacific crews working the Third Sub would place their orders with the dispatcher, and pick up box lunches at Paxton prepared under contract for the WP by the Paxton Lodge.
Date: 01/29/25 11:44 Re: Stopping for Beans Author: RSD5 splitreduction Wrote : Congratulations, maybe people on ERorders.com will be sympathetic with you.
Who said anything about wanting sympathy? Dave |