Railroaders' Nostalgia > Night operations

Regional & Shortlines

Over the last few years, my vacation have incorporated a bit more train watching. Or at least, I've tried to. I've run into an unusual roadblock - the preference of the destination railroad to run at night. I get running at night if your host railroad is running passenger trains all day and you can work around the fewer trains at night. 

But if you are running your own railroad, with no passenger/commuters to deal with, what's the point? As a worker, working in a "hazardous to your life" field, I'd rather have the daylight to help see, rather than just a flashlight. And weather happens day or night, so that's not a issue. As I've done research before a trip, the common answer is XYZ runs most trains at night. New England Central back in 2021 and still now, is one example.

So why the night? Thanks.

There's a couple of reasons why night operations are preferred. 
You can focus on track maintenance during the day and not interfere with operations
Customers are loading/unloading during the day, so you don't interfere with their operations
Less road crossing traffic to worry about
Maybe their interchange partner does interchange during the day.
Helpful in some hot summer climates

The only real downsides are it is a little less safe working at night and can be harder to get crews to work nights.

Thanks. These make sense.

Some guys actually like working nights. I am not one of them however. My nights started in high school at an all night gas station and continued off and on all the way to my early sixties. Track work  is good reason as stated before , but also that was  an excuse or reason some trainmen preferred nigthts, no Form "B" s and less supervision. Bill Webb

When I was an engineer, I always kinda liked working at night, the signals are easier to see, lantern signals are easier to see than hand signals, the weather was cooler in the summer. Less street traffic, The worst thing is at dusk or dawn with the sun in your face, trying to decide if the signal is yellow or red, or "what was that last signal"  because of all the distractions you notice along the way that you don't see at night. But working nights is not without its own problems, like being up all day, getting call for something around bedtime and fighting sleep all the way, and having the rising sun in your face, getting tied up and checked into your room, and your body starts saying "hey, it's daytime, you can't sleep now", so you stay up most of the day, and get called to head home about bed time again,  done it a thousand times.

I mostly agree with ‘Locopilot’. But during a hot summer, working at night was often a blessing. Especially when your lead unit didn’t have working AC…

Posted from iPhone

Recently during my NS days a local changed from nights to days. We had been trying for a long time to get it swapped but the customers were screaming about not wanting to change. They liked the swtich at night unload during the day.  Then PSR gave them no choice. It became a day job, those hold out customers in less than 2 weeks figured out they loved a day switch better than a night switch.   So some times its the customers and the inabilty to convince them to accept change. Another reason for short lines to run at night is to excape heat, and the effects of heat on the rail. 

An old train master that I worked for always tried to schedule as much yard and local jobs as possible to daylight or afternoons as he could get away with from The Company. He always said it was safer working daylights when you could SEE things and it was better for the employees.

Imagine that.

RIP Mike.

Regards

Posted from iPhone

Personally I only worked nights out of necessity. The only exception was a 1900 to 0700 road switcher that had a caboose that was occupied from 2300 to 0400 hrs and another 0300 to 1500 hrs road switcher that also had a caboose that was occupied from 0500 to 0900 hrs.
JB



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/19/25 10:08 by 3rdswitch.

I am on a pool job so I get out any old time...

When I worked in Alaska it was fairly common to work in some light all night in the summer. Especially in Fairbanks. There were some nights that I never even broke out my lantern. I miss that.

trainjunkie Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> When I worked in Alaska it was fairly common to
> work in some light all night in the summer.
> Especially in Fairbanks. There were some nights
> that I never even broke out my lantern. I miss
> that.

Do you miss it being dark almost all day sometimes?

sf1010 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Do you miss it being dark almost all day sometimes?

Gawd no. I absolutely loved summers there.

Waybiller's response is pretty comprehensive. Also keep in mind that many shortlines that have enough density run jobs around the clock because it allows power to be shared between them and its also efficient for moving cars over the railroad from interchange to customers. 

Example:
-Shortline job A starts at 0700 works some local customers around their yard and ten travels to interchange with their connecting carrier, they return, and switch out their train in the yard and then marks off at 1500. 
-Shortline job B starts at 1700 using the power off Job A and works down the shortline's main line in the other direction from the yard, carrying cars brought from interchange by job A and doling them out to and picking up from the customers. That job teurns at the end of the line and returns to the yard and marks off at 0300. Power can be serviced and swapped out during this time. Cars brought back to the yard will be delivered to interchange by the next Job A which is marking up in 4 hours. 

This keeps cars moving over the railroad, and makes more efficient use of locomotives than if both jobs marked up at 7AM. 

A lot of guys working through freight prefer running at night. Less interference from maintenance in the way, Form B's, etc.

I prefer to see the sun go down, rather than the sun come up. During the winter months I've seen both events on the same tour of duty.

Posted from Android

I knew several workers that worked their entire careers working midnights. Some 40 plus years. I preferred afternoons or an early morning shift around a 5 am start.

Posted from Android

Drknow Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> An old train master that I worked for always tried
> to schedule as much yard and local jobs as
> possible to daylight or afternoons as he could get
> away with from The Company. He always said it was
> safer working daylights when you could SEE things
> and it was better for the employees.


One I worked with did that for the unspoken reason that if there was no activity at night, nobody would call him.

TAW

Another reason for working nights on road switchers is a lot of your customers work their railcars on day shift, then waybill out empties and put in calls for cars in yard to spot plus what the daylight crew switches out for the pending second and third trick jobs to their customers on their runds.  When I was a switchman on the Santa Fe at North Wichita we had interchange cars for Frisco, Rock Island, the MOP and WTA.  We had a second trick job that went to South Junction and dis local switching pulls/spots at adjacent industries, ate dinner down there, and then returned to North Wichita.  The third trick version of the South Yard Job switched Southwaest Grease which required lining up the spot cars at South Yard going over street running to Southwest Grease and spotting and pulling in their small facility.  Then we took time out for a game of pool in their employee lounge, a drink and back to south yard.  We took the rest of our spot cars out on the Pratt line to West Wichita, switched the team track, stopped at the airport and walked over to Denny's for breakfast with the drunks and the cops/sheriff officers, then back to work switching the Coors Distributor, 84 lumber and a gravel pit.  We made a Dutch Drop at the gravel pit to get the engine on the east end of our "train" to head back to South Yard, pick up our pulls from Southwest Grease and head back to North Wichita.  The second trick job was 6 to 7 hours, the third trick job was 8 to 12 hours.  The night work is typical in any industrial area whether its Class 1 or Shortlines.

Jim Wilson

I work as a pool freight conductor.  The question of days vs. nights comes up fairly often in the cab.  Generally, we mostly prefer nights.  The radio is quieter, the track gangs (Form B's) have all gone home.  The signals are easier to see.  BTW, night trips tend to be a little quicker where I work
mainly because of not having to wait for track gangs, track inspectors riding track out in front of you, etc.  I'm getting to an age, though, where I can't work too many nights in a row...just to hard on the body.  So I gotta do some days here and there.