Railroaders' Nostalgia > That's the same superintendent...

Well, I opened the door. I'll close out on this particular Superintendent of Transportation.

In Managing Railroad Transportation, I used a crew planning example that involved cross deadheading. Cross Deadheading is deadheading crews n both direction over a crew district in one day. Conventional Wisdom tells us that Cross Deadheading is Bad. Sometimes the hallmark of Conventional Wisdom is that it is only conventional. Sometimes, the solution to a problem involves what is now called out of the box thinking. People who think out of the box are considered by those who invoke Conventional Wisdom to be wrong, kooks, idiots, not a Team Player (typically considered a heinous crime - a felony), etc. The attractive feature of Conventional Wisdom is that it doesn't require thinking. In fact, Conventional Wisdom is intended to be used in lieu of thinking.

In the early 80s, BN between Minneapolis and Seattle/Portland looked a lot like GN did. There was not a lot of traffic. The same trains ran just about every day and at just about the same time every day. Crews were almost always naturally balanced. Deadheading between Seattle and Wenatchee, for example, was rare. Boob Time (a Bakersfield office term meaning some boob left the crew in town too long and they got paid) / Alimony / Held Away from Home Terminal pay was also rare.

On this occasion, I was the day Pacific Division chief. The same Superintendent of Transportation who would figure in http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?18,3939796 was the boss. He was a firm believer and practitioner of Conventional Wisdom. That put me at odds with him a lot.

There had been a traffic interruption of some sort. All of the usual trains were coming west, just with a 16 hour gap in the sequence. All of the usual trains were going east. There were exactly enough crews in Wenatchee. Everything was fine...except everybody was rested or would be and everybody would wind up with 8 hours HAHT before their train showed up. I kept working at the problem. The first train to me was No 3, the UPS/mail (mmmm ZCHCSSE9 or some such nowadays). I counted back for days of traffic. I gave up at 52 crews getting 8 hours of boob time at Wenatchee. It was going to go on and on and on. I had to break that. I worked it out - I needed to get two crews out of Wenatchee. Everybody would fall in line with the coming traffic, except for the first two. If I took two crews out, I wouldn't have a crew for No 3 or the train behind him (that was an important train too, probably 97) without holding for rest. If I left the first two crews in Wenatchee and deadheaded behind the second train, I would have fixed almost nothing. At least the HAHT would be reduced and every crew would be paid, just not eight hours. It would still be expensive.

On I went with more pencil work. If I get rid of two crews at Wenatchee, I break the cycle but won't have rested crews for the first two trains. Nobody behind the first two crews had sufficient time to work back to Seattle. After over an hour of figuring, I came to the conclusion that if I deadheaded two crews west from Wenatchee at the very same time that I deadheaded two crews east from Interbay (Seattle) to Wenatchee, I would save a unit train of money, and then some. I would have a crew for every train and nobody would collect HAHT. I called the board at Wenatchee and the board at Interbay and let the calls.

The next morning, the Superintendent of Transportation called me to his office.

Smacking the report on his desk, he said You cross-deadheaded yesterday. What's wrong with you?

Nothing. I saved you a ton of money.

I explained the whole thing in detail and the enormous cost as opposed to the cost of a couple of van runs (in those times, they were company employees on light duty for one reason or another, so the cost was virtually zero). He was screaming that it made no sense. Didn't you ever learn that you don't cross-deadhead. This was a real bonehead move.

Uh...I saved you a ton of cash.

No you didn't. You cross-deadheaded. That costs money.

Uh, no, it saved money. I told you how I worked it out.

...and I didn't understand it at all! Cross-deadheading is wrong; it costs. That's all I need to know. If I don't understand it, don't do it! Get out of here.

Ultimately, we got rid of him, or rather, he got rid of himself.

Until his reign in Seattle, the train dispatchers were expected to read and mark up the timetable proofs. For the first timetable issued under his reign, we were told that it was none of our business (see my comment about treating train dispatchers as labor http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?18,3939796 Date: 01/20/16 09:59). The timetable came back from the printer the day it was to take effect. We couldn't believe how bad it was. There were errors in the special instructions, there were milepost errors, distance between stations errors, station name errors, and...dark territory that showed as ABS and even single track that showed as double track. It would have been easy to mark up the previous timetable as the base for the new one. This one looked like it was started from scratch. I was working the day Coast Line job (Everett-Vancouver BC, Anacortes-Concrete, Sedro Woolley-Sumas) that day. It also had been assigned the Grays Harbor branches (Centralia-Moclips, Olympia-Gate, and others). I went to the Chief and complained that in 12 hours this garbage was to take effect and it was wrong. I pointed out that the train dispatchers had never been shown the proof. The response was he same that we heard many times over the ensuing years, it was none of our business. He told me that things change and get used to it; the timetable is right. I turned to the Centralia-Hoquiam line and showed him the double track ABS segment where the line was dark single track. This is going to be in service at 1am tonight, right? That made my point and got his attention. I went through more and one of the other guys joined the discussion.

We spent a big part of that day correcting the timetable in a lot of train orders. By timetable change at 1am, it was ready to go: train orders superseding most of the timetable. Printing timetables costs big bucks. This timetable issue went directly to the can and shortly thereafter, we had a new Superintendent of Transportation.

TAW

 

Where did he go?  Did another railroad recognize his genius and make him VPO ?

Tom:
Your remarks about proofreading the timetable strike a resonant chord.
Grant Lien, a TO's member, and I were called to DH from Vancouver to Interbay on Amtrak. A new timetable had been issued and was to take effect
within the week. Grant and I sat in the same seat and decided to compare the old with the new. We did this all the way to King Street and came up with
many, many errors. When we got to Balmer yard we looked in Jim Kime's (Road Foreman of Engines) office and not finding him, Grant and I headed upstairs
to the conference room. We entered the room where we found Jim and the local safety committee busy at work.

Grant spoke first.

Charlie and I just came up from Vancouver and we were looking at the new timetable....well, you tell 'em Charlie.

Now all eyes are on me as I explain some of the more glaring errors. I'm somewhat embarrassed that we have totally disrupted the meeting so I just
mentioned a few. Jim Kime, ever the diplomat, thanked us for our efforts and asked me to write down all the errors and contact him. I told him I would be happy
to do so and would email when I had completed my list.

I went home and really went over the timetables, old and new. I came up with over 60 items and emailed Jim the next day. Kime returned the email, thanked me
for my time and explained that he would be forwarding these to the Assistant Superintendent-Administration for his consideration. For the life of me I can not remember
the man's name but remember that he had spent most of his career around Portland and that he played music in a group in the Portland area. Perhaps that will ring
a bell.
To my complete surprise and chagrin, Jim forwarded the AS-A's response to me. I think Jim was just as upset at the response as I was, after I read it. The admin guy
pointed out that these timetable changes had been reviewed by many people including the engineer's training school at Overland Park and that all had approved the changes.
What the admin guy didn't recognize was that I was pointing out errors that had been long standing and had been allowed to remain un-edited over many years.
Bottom line message: Don't bother me, there are smarter people than you looking at these matters; I don't need any help from you.
Interestingly, when the next timetable was issued every one of my 60+ issues had been corrected. Maybe he did.

Charlie
 



 

Having put out a few employee timetables I can say that asking supervisors in the Transportation
Department to check it for accuracy is a losing proposition.  First they couldn't care less and second
they have no idea what is in the timetable to begin with.

And when the 60 or so items got corrected, he probably got some pat on the back for correcting it.

John

The UP didn't know how to spell Alturas.  It was spelled Altrus for at least three timetables.
G

As for the deadheads... been there, done that. I remember being in Yermo, already on HAHT and still fifteen times out. I called the crew balancer and pleaded for some deadheads home. "Nope, I can't do that. I've got fifteen crews and fifteen trains coming so I can't let you go." "Well then", I said, "Perhaps you could go over the lineup with me and show me what trains you're talking about be cause, apparently I'm looking at it wrong." So, he went over it with me and he did have fifteen trains but the last one had just left Cheyenne! I figured that, if every crew along the way had an awsome trip, I was going to be there two more days! It took crew balancing another 24 hours but they finally figured it out.

What crackerjackhoghead said. I remember collecting dust in Yermo before finally getting the call to go back to L.A. Then 6-1/2 hours after I got home the phone would ring and I'd be back on the road to Yermo where we'd rot away some more.

This cycle would sometimes go on for weeks. My girlfriend became a stranger, my neighbors at the Huntington Beach apartment complex I lived in thought I was up to some nefarious doings, and the food in my fridge at home turned into a biology experiment. At first, the held-away pay was nice. But after a few weeks on the treadmill and Huntington Beach effectively becoming my AFHT, I would start to go bonkers.

Just about when I was ready to lose my mind I'd get caught in a cycle of Extra Pedro calls, usually coal, which kept me close to home for a few trips. But eventually, the Yermo cycle would find me and suck me in. Finally, someone got tired of paying held-away so they started deadheading us home, usually with the call to start the DH one minute before held-away would have started and we still turned at home in six and a half, which usually allowed us to get a couple extra trips in per half.

Reading these stories made me think of the cartoon Dilbert.  As the old saying goes, "you just can't make this stuff up".  On the BN in Lincoln in the early eighties we had a road foreman on the west end cut from the same cloth as the superintendent.  At that time  none of the BN locomotives had air conditioning.  It was summer, so of course the cab windows would be open.  The horns at that time were placed on the top of the cabs.  We were taking a hotshot west to Hastings with a crew change at the Lincoln depot.  Said road foreman came up on the engine to check on us. I had foamy ear plugs in and he comes unglued. "THE JOB TOO LOUD FOR YOU BRITTON?  I don't know when they became required, but I guess I was ahead of my time.

Kennard Britton
Bedford, TX


 

kennbritt Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
, "you just can't
> make this stuff up".

There's a phrase that can be heard over the radio daily, usually following some yardmaster's or dispatcher's request.

crackerjackhoghead Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> kennbritt Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> , "you just can't
> > make this stuff up".
>
> There's a phrase that can be heard over the radio
> daily, usually following some yardmaster's or
> dispatcher's request.

Like the DS that asked, "Can you cut that [loaded] rail train for a crossing?"

mapboy

crackerjackhoghead Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> kennbritt Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> , "you just can't
> > make this stuff up".
>
> There's a phrase that can be heard over the radio
> daily, usually following some yardmaster's or
> dispatcher's request.

Oh...how about all of the train crews that told me that if I let them go they could be in the clear at the next siding (20 miles away) for the train that would be there in 10 minutes....or pick up two tracks of 10 cars each in 5 minutes?

TAW