Railroaders' Nostalgia > Havre West Track Car Lineup Jan 29 1980

Another that I came across while looking for that something I didn't find.

Jan 29 1980 was a Tuesday. Something unusual was going on, I can tell by the 501p Havre-Whitefish lineup (meaning all hands were still out working) but I don't remember what, or why I asked the Havre operator for a copy (in those days, I typically saved such things for defense, not historical interest). High temperature in Havre (Thank you Weather Underground) was 4 degrees F. The low was -21 F. Cut Bank was -9 / -27. There are no records for Summit, but I'm sure that it was colder yet.

When I did the figuring, it was just before 5, hence the effective time of 501p. It took an hour to transmit the lineup.

I've ever been a fan of phantom trains filling the lineup to protect somebody's lack of planning. It takes two hours to call a crew and an hour to get out of town or so, that's three...and they say that then can't tell me when they will run trains for a five hour lineup? But there might be an emergency. We might need the hook. ...but the rule book provides for that and you wouldn't be running trains behind it anyway, there is no need for bogus trains on the lineup. So those trains with no engine number are real. It appears that traffic is backed up or I would have had symbols for them, or I was planning on reducing trains for cold weather and running pickup jobs to get the remains (or both).

Running times are all normal track speed, so it doesn't appear that there has been recent wreck damage to the track.

It does look like there may be heavy snow coming down between Whitefish and Cutbank. That last work train on the lineup Whitefish - Cutbank after 801p looks like it must be a snowplow. That means this lineup could have been for snowmen (gandys transporting on trains to places they were needed, managed by the dispatcher - I've described the procedure before, if I remember correctly), but there was no snow at Cut Bank or Havre (which doesn't eliminate a snow dump west of Browning).

May be a helper train - depends upon how cold it really gets to be: rolling resistance and pushing snow even if the train is short enough to keep the air up.

A track car lineup is movement authority. Regardless of CTC, on the Montana Division, anyone anywhere could use the lineup as authority in CTC without a permit. A single lineup for 256 miles is ridiculous and dangerous, but management insisted. It was easier for management and the gandys. As you can see in the timetable, the territory is mixed CTC, current of traffic ABS, and bi-directional ABS. Since it is movement authority, the times protect the gandys from trains, which means that if spatch lets any train run ahead of any of those times, there's time off if nobody was hurt and nothing was bent with the possibility of being fired if either of those occurred. I have worked with several who didn't take the lineup seriously enough and did time for trains not on the lineup and trains outrunning the times. Some of those folks thought it ridiculous that I would stick out train order waits and CTC blocking before transmitting the lineup. I always took too long. I also didn't do time for a lineup.

Works all tracks means Eastward, Westward, Main 1, Main 2, and siding.

Here's the office https://cdn.trainorders.com/attachments/fullsize/1103000/hv_ctc.JPG

The machine on the right is Pacific Jct (west of Havre) - Teton (west of Shelby). The machine on the left is Blackfoot - Marias (west of Summit) CTC, Java east and west, Pinnacle, Paola interlockings, and Red Eagle - Conkelley CTC. Whitefish is about 10 miles west of Conkelley, on the Spokane Division.

In the timetable 6-A column, O stations were non-continuous (generally 1st trick only) train order offices (just an agent) and C were 24 hour offices. Essex was 24 hour in winter except when telegrapher control didn't bother filling the job https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?18,4410571,4410571#msg-4410571 3 parts

Radio consisted of a station on top of the Sweetgrass mountains north of Shelby that could cover roughly somewhere around Ethridge (between Summit and Cut Bank) sometimes to Havre, but also competed with Havre East, the Sweet Grass - Great Falls line, Havre, Shelby, and Cut Bank yard operation. The operators at Cut Bank, Summit, and White Fish had radio. There was a radio covering Blackfoot - Summit that was connected to the dispatcher phone. When a crew pushed the "panic button" (dispatcher call), the radio would come on the dispatcher phone regardless of what the dispatcher was doing. It would interrupt train orders, lineups, CTC permits, and any other minor duties that the dispatcher was doing instead of talking to crews. There were three individual stations arranged like this. Crews found out that if they held the call button for a long time, more than one of them would eventually connect to the dispatcher phone simultaneously and set up a feedback we couldn't work through. That was used for punishment if we displeased them. The dispatcher phone ringer pulses that turned those stations on and off sometimes couldn't overcome the feedback and we'd need the Havre Wire Chief to intervene.

Folks working that territory in 2018 don't know how easy they've got it, the "modern" amenities and distractions and resulting workload notwithstanding.

TAW



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/10/18 11:54 by TAW.

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Another excellent TAW discussion, please keep them coming.

SuperChiefDon

Good stuff as usual!

I'm confused by some of the symbols. Not exactly sure what "GN" stands for (ie. 2/197-GN-27). I see there is an 83-GN-27 and an 83-27.



Allen



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 06/11/18 08:24 by bradleymckay.

bradleymckay Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Good stuff as usual!
>
> I'm confused by some of the symbols. Not exactly
> sure what "GN" stands for (ie. 2/197-GN-27). I
> see there is an 83-GN-27 and an 83-27.
>
>
>

GN is originating at Minot (Gavin Yard). The Gavin hump had been closed for some time. The GN method was put a hump yard in the middle and run mixed trains from the ends to the middle and blocks from there. The NP method was run mixed trains all the way across and hump for distribution at the ends. Minot was closed and part of the result was that Pasco had to work 12 hours a day east and 12 west to have enough class tracks.

With the number of Minot makeup trains on the lineup, full trains from Northtown were probably being split at Minot because of weather, on top of the additional ones it looks like I was planning to make up west of Havre (the day shift people never seem to realize that it will get colder after they go home...or more likely, didn't care).

TAW

TAW