Railroaders' Nostalgia > Weekend Dispatching

Did this just happen where I worked? Or maybe everywhere? Seems the RR was a well oiled affair Monday thru Friday; meets were made, sometimes sliding,
everyone seemed happy! But come the weekends, all hell broke loose. Bad line-ups, meets that sometimes took hours to fulfill, dispatchers with unfamiliar voices
that just didn't seem to have a clue; well you name it-the weekkend on the RR could be less of a picnic!. I've met some pretty sharp female operators handling train
orders etc. Some of them were wonderful and it's always nice to talk to one over the radio. She toook care of you. Real Good if you what I mean!!
But when it came to dispatching things were not smooth. Just where I worked? How about your experience?

i worked after the "train order era" on track warrant and ctc jobs.  i loved working weekends as there was less m.o.w. to deal with so things were usually a lot more fluid..........

66

Just depends.

I’ve known some spatches that owned a trick job that couldn’t dispatch the C&FW (Hooterville Canonball), and the relief/Xtra board trick was 100X better.

Regards

Posted from iPhone

i've experienced that too..........

66

It was common on most roads to have more dispatchers on duty on weekdays and a reduced dispatching staff on weekends, doubling up dispatching territories per dispatcher. 

DIspatcher phone lines opened for two territories made audio quality worse and audio volume weaker. Where I worked in the early 1970s, one of the operators had hearing that was not-so hot-so, and he couldn't hear the DS on weekends. The DS had to dictate the orders and clearances over the phone line.

As you say, dispatchers would be working added territories they did not work on weekdays.

Best regards,

Rob L.

Pretty sure nowadays all trick jobs have staggered off days, so every job is covered 7 days a week. Occasionally we get an extra person but they are supposed to be qualified to dispatch us....sometimes they ask a lot of questions which we have to roll our eyes over...but we tell them the truth because they will find it out one way or the other, Nights and weekends are sure easier for dispatcher and train crew....