Railroaders' Nostalgia > A Christmas Story....

Scene: Fall or early winter, 1988 or so. I am still working as a trainmaster for Santa Fe at Barstow. Running the yard from the tower meant that I frequently talked with people who outranked me by many levels...."Hi Norm..How's the yard today?"
In one of these conversations, the Assistant General Manager in Los Angeles mentioned the urgent need to keep expenses to a minimum since we were in a recession period. Now that year, Christmas was to fall on a Tuesday if I recall right, so I suggested to the AGM that we create a plan to only operate the high priority trains in the five days or so before the holiday, and the same for New Year's Day too. For example, a manifest train approaching Barstow from the East on Friday the 21st of December, wouldn't get humped and made into outbound trains in time for the cars to make delivery before the holiday. Perhaps with careful planning we could "slow down" the railroad a few days, run fewer trains and save a lot of money.
Those comments turned into a week-long special project for me to analyze and count trains and crews to plan an orderly means
to reduce expenses without impairing our service commitments. Of course, we had to run thru on schedule nearly all the intermodal trains right up to Christmas eve, especially since LA would originate their usual fleet of "hotshots" but they had to have power and crews for those trains. The manifest and hump trains could be held and run later but not the Z trains.
The study and plan we devised ( the three chief dispatchers, the power bureau in Chicago, and the trainmasters at other major points i.e., Bakersfield, LA, San Bernardino, Needles, etc.,) were in on the plan even though some folks weren't full supporters.
Bear in mind here that there are no road crews home at Barstow. The crews all work to Barstow from LA, Needles, or Bakersfield.
Any plan to hold trains had to be set up to assure there were sufficient crews at Barstow to run all the trains we planned. A few tweaks to the plan indicated we could also get nearly all the roads crews home for either Christmas eve or Christmas Day.
Barstow would have to regulate the number of manifest trains headed our way to avoid plugging the yard with trains that would hold for a day or two. Some trains would have to linger at Needles or Bakersfield for a while, since Barstow didn't have room to hold over 15 trains. The estimate was that by carefully watching the train flow, we could save over $750,000 over the holidays without any service complaints. The plan got the blessing from the top, and here we go!
By Christmas eve, the plan seems to be working well. No priority trains have been delayed, and we are holding one train less than planned at that time. The hot line phone rings. It's the General Manager in LA. He wishes me and my family a Merry Christmas, and then says " I told the chief dispatchers to tell all the train crews that they can go home for Christmas..just so they return to Barstow by late Christmas night. And I don't want any crews deadheaded to Barstow after Christmas either Norm. You'll just have to work thru this congestion until things smooth out after New Years."
The following week was the longest of my career. We had to accept all trains forced on us so we could have crews (when rested) for the trains that were filling the tracks we needed for the trains coming. Many times, a hump train would follow the switch engine down a track as there were no other clear alleys. Wow - how to destroy a good plan with the best intentions!

TIOGA PASS

Norman Orfall
Helendale, CA
TIOGA PASS, a private railcar

aronco Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The hot line phone rings. It's the General
> Manager in LA. He wishes me and my family a Merry
> Christmas, and then says " I told the chief
> dispatchers to tell all the train crews that they
> can go home for Christmas..just so they return to
> Barstow by late Christmas night. And I don't want
> any crews deadheaded to Barstow after Christmas
> either Norm. You'll just have to work thru this
> congestion until things smooth out after New
> Years."

If that's the General Manager I think it is, he came from the Milwaukee Road Western Extension, where the word "congestion" was not part of their vocabulary!

No, the GM was his predecessor - QWT got the job when the GM retired.

Norm

Norman Orfall
Helendale, CA
TIOGA PASS, a private railcar

Norman's Barstow Xmas story reminds me of one of my own from about the same time frame. I don't recall the exact year but it was after the implementation of the LA-Barstow run thru and at the time we (the engineers) were home terminaled in LA and running thru San Bdno by virtue of an arbitrated agreement but the trainmens' move was still pending and they were still trading crews at San Bdno.
Anyway, I owned a turn in that pool and come Christmas Eve I stood for mid-morning out of LA and the word from on high was that they planned to deadhead everybody back home for Christmas day. Well, as usual, the plan starts falling apart and it's now 2 PM when the phone rings and it's a call for a LA-Chicago hotshot on duty at 5 PM and the last thing they're gonna run east. I inquire if the plan on the Barstow end still stands. The response was a definite "Yes", deadhead home on arrival. Perfect!!

Upon my arrival at Barstow I smell Murphy's Law setting in. I ask where the LA deadhead wagon is and I'm told it just left. I call the crew office, "Go to the hotel, they're working on it". Come very early Christmas morning I'm sitting by myself in an otherwise empty hotel and on the phone to the caller. He says, "Let me talk to the chief". About 30 minutes later he calls back and instead of a call to DH he says, "The chief says that they have everything tied down until 4 PM and you're first out". He also said they planned to start deadheading back to Barstow at about that same time. I says to the caller, "Call the chief back and tell him that when he lines up the east deadheads to figure on calling one more, 'cause I'm going home sick". And that's exactly what I did.

That was the last time I ever took a call to go to Barstow on Christmas Eve. After that I would call in an IOU I most always had with the crew office and laid off, took vacation or some other trick.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/08/14 18:05 by Chico43.

aronco Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> ... He wishes me and my family a Merry
> Christmas, and then says " I told the chief
> dispatchers to tell all the train crews that they
> can go home for Christmas..just so they return to
> Barstow by late Christmas night. And I don't want
> any crews deadheaded to Barstow after Christmas
> either Norm. You'll just have to work thru this
> congestion until things smooth out after New
> Years."
> The following week was the longest of my
> career. We had to accept all trains forced on us
> so we could have crews (when rested) for the
> trains that were filling the tracks we needed for
> the trains coming. Many times, a hump train would
> follow the switch engine down a track as there
> were no other clear alleys. Wow - how to destroy
> a good plan with the best intentions!
>
> TIOGA PASS

Just the usual, "No good deed goes unpunished." They saved $750,000 on your back!

mapboy

This post was really intended to illustrate how any huge organization can change plans suddenly. The GM in LA might not have even known of the plan to curtail operations over the holidays. Even if he did, his intentions to get all his crews home for some time around xmas was a noble gesture. Please also be assured that I supported the plan. As an employee and manager of this company, I always believed it was my duty to operate the company as efficiently as possible. It always seemed to me that a well-run railroad produced the best results for employees, stockholders, manager and the public.

Norm

Norman Orfall
Helendale, CA
TIOGA PASS, a private railcar

As to the previous GM..we don't want to tip the 'scales'...

aronco Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> This post was really intended to illustrate how
> any huge organization can change plans suddenly.
> The GM in LA might not have even known of the plan
> to curtail operations over the holidays. Even if
> he did, his intentions to get all his crews home
> for some time around xmas was a noble gesture.
> Please also be assured that I supported the plan.
> As an employee and manager of this company, I
> always believed it was my duty to operate the
> company as efficiently as possible. It always
> seemed to me that a well-run railroad produced the
> best results for employees, stockholders, manager
> and the public.
>
> Norm

Absolutely a GREAT attitude, Norm. Would be a better world if more people shared it, and didn't view everything as adversarial. (this includes management) Good story, thanks for posting it.
C.L. Dillon
Green River, WY