Western Railroad Discussion > Longest time on a train (After hogging)

Most time that I made on on a run was 19 hours and pocket change. Things were so backed up on the UP Jefferson City Sub that we tied our train down and waited another 5 1/2 HOURS for a ride! Then it was another hour and a half in the van to get to Jefferson City! Bad thing was, was that the train we parked next to (Double track main line) had been there for 2 hours before we showed up and was waiting for our van to show up! The 23.00 bucks I lost in poker was made up and then some in tow-in pay! The engineer from the other train who won the most was kind enough to buy us all breakfast on the way in. Needless to say, When I got to the hotel it was LIGHTS OUT! (Yeah I could have closed my eyes for a bit while waiting but the game made time fly) No rested crews. no rested Renzenberger drivers, needless to say we all took undisturbed rest!

Sounds like NLR. We made it from Van Buren to North Little Rock in 7 hours, but was held just outside of NLR for 6 because of too much traffic andtoo little vans. Several trains had to wait for some hump engines to hump a train to clear a rail. my engineer was extremely pissed off. I slept, read newspaper, and watched the fishes in the creek while we waited. My patience grew thin after while though.

Heck that's an everyday occurence trying to get into the Alton & Southern yard in E. St. Louis. Get clear signals all the way to Grand Ave then wait 5 hours to get in the yard. A&S gets trains from 3 railroads (UP, BNSF, NS) from 3 different directions. Then when it is finally your turn you ALWAYS have to dousle or triple your teain in! Yard was built for the fifties!
Brian

Railtrekker
With UP now sending some trains from KC and NLR into the TRRA, has this improved any? Do they have more capacity to take trains?

I've noticed that there are usually 2-3 trains taking the DeSoto sub as well, sometimes the the grain empties, auto racks and even a couple of manifests lately.

Thanks

Spent about 17 hrs on one out in the coal fields in '99, was ordered to violate and everything to clear the main. This dispatcher with the initials RED was working, he was a known train killer, and he screwed up worse than usual, killed us on the main outside of Lusk, WY. We wound up tying the train down at about 13 hrs old after getting the corridor manager's name, and sat there for another 3 hrs. before somebody showed up to get us. I know personally of guys that spent over 24 hrs on duty after the UP took the CNW over, leaving Des Moines, IA they would make it to the siding at Cambridge, (less than 20 miles) and die. Nobody would ever show up to get them either.

BN had a mini meltdown in 1994 after the Wishram runthrough agreement was implemented. The dispatcher lined me in behind two dead trains at Ostrander which is just Norh of Kelso on BN's 4th sub (Now Seattle Sub). There wasn't anyway to get to us so we rotted and ended up being on duty for a total of 22 1/2 hours. The paycheck was good but my neck and back were sore as heck.

I was on a train for 21 hours one time. I heard a story in about 1997-98 about a UP crew that died on the law at Victorville and were forgotten. They had about 36 hours under their belts before being relieved. Survived by going to the AM/PM for food.

One time I was on an eastbound, we were second out on the south track at Swarthout Canyon road with eastbounds on both the north and south tracks. Then the DS made a mistake and let a westbound out of Summit on the north track. He got to Cajon and now we had multiple trains headed east that were too heavy to go up the south track. What a mess! We only had 19 hours on this one. My conductor went out exploring and found a turtle in the stream by the signals just west of the crossing.

Back in the 70s, when we started running through Santa Barbara to LA from SLO, we put in many a long day. They had just gone from 16 hours to 14, to 12 hours and the dispatchers could not get trains over theroad. One of the SPs best tricks was letting you die out on line AND THEN, deadheading a patch crew to get the train, by train, with the dead crew having to ride the train on in. Many a 24 hours sitting on the train was not unusual. It was a jerk Tarinmasters idea and it created a lot of warm fuzzy feelings for the guy and management. It went on for over a year before we finally got it stopped. If you were on duty for 4 hours in LA and had not departed, they releived you and if you were an SLO crew, you deadheaded home.

The worst trip I can remember was being called on duty in Roseville and was 7 hours getting out of town. I took the train to Sunset-Whitney, the first siding outside Roseville and was told to tie it down and they would send a carryall to get us. Well, we were still there after being dead for 2 hours when the dispatcher called us and said to stay on the train and go on to Dunsmuir with the new crew. When we finally got off the train at the Craigs, we had been on that pile of iron for almost 26 hours.

Nudge

It's interesting how the problem has changed over the years. Now crews seem to die in the middle of nowhere, and wait forever to be rescued. In the bad old days of the 16 hour law, my time book is full of 15 hour 59 minute "days" followed by 8 hours off and then back to another 16 hour double switch engine shift. Either way one of the skills you learn is getting comfortable in an engine cab. I seem to remember the old F's were nice because they had big seats, you could put your feet up on the dash, and the rumble of EMD's would lull you to sleep.....

JBW

In a sidebar to his article in Trains on running a train "14,000 tons, Hell", an GM&O engineer reported taking a Southern detour train with the Southern crew still on the train after 3 days.

In the last year, my personal best was 23 hours on s switch engine in Omaha to include my deadhead to home terminal and back again, I know of 1 crew who had 30 hours on duty from KC to Lincoln, I know its common for crews here to get 14 -16 hours. (This includes the deadhead times)

The longest for me was about 21 hours. Short turn around job out of Richmond CA, switching at North Bay (UPS Faculity). Last move we took the baretables (empty intermodal cars), out to DuPont (about 40 miles away), and stuffed them in the small yard there where we went DOL. The dispatcher did not want to put a crew van on the road in the thick fog that had set in, so he was going to have the next Westbound train pick us up. Unfourtunatly they struck an automobile several sidings before reaching us, this we didn't know as we were asleep by then. The next train through did pick us up though and we were on our way. The train we were riding had a track warrent to meet another train at Pittsburg Siding. When they got there it was blocked with cars. I think that this was the first time I have heard a Train Dispatcher actually cuss over the radio! Our train had to cut off light engine and run through the Pittsburg Hill Yard and associated tracks looking for a clear track, the fog was too thick to see if anything was clear. We were able to find a clear alley and got it all lined up. We came back against our train and pulled down the main and the opposing train ran through the yard on the tracks that we lined them up for. After all this we had a couple more meets enroute to Richmond and a setout at North Bay. While the train was being yarded our pagers and phones started going off. Page from the Crew Office on my pager, my wife calling me as well. My wife was pretty upset as the crew caller told her that I should have been tied up many hours ago, and she argued with her as to wether I was home or not, as they were trying to call me to go to work! The brakeman was noiw talking to the crew caller and passed his phone to me. The caller apoligized to me to which I told her that It wasn't me but my wife who needed the apology.

That was some big money day, but there is only so much "rest" you can get on a locomotive.

Brian

Seems like I remember a story that because of some problem, the dispatcher had a crew take their train down a industrial siding to which after a while he would have them back out and proceed. As I remember it a familly member of one of the crew called in 2 days later looking for their family member. The DS had forgot about them. They reached their hours and something about flagging down a cab and spent the rest of the time sitting in a motel room on the clock.

Any one remember this and what are the details?