Railroaders' Nostalgia > Mad Dog Chronicles # 43: Preparing for the Morning Conf

The Dispatchers Office and the 7 am call from Houston.

Every morning at seven am, seven days a week, there was a conference call originating from the General Managers office in Houston. If the Superintendent was in town, he would take the call, along with the chief dispatcher. It was the job of the rest of us to assemble the information that would be used on the call. If Krebs was not in town then either Lampley or Walton would lead the call. Every once in awhile, I got to do it, usually on weekends.

To prepare for this call all of the Division level officers who were in town showed up at the dispatchers office at around six am. In my case, I had frequently been in the dispatchers office for the last 12 hours, working the night shift. My job for the night was over as soon as I updated the Superintendent on where we had trains set out, and what plans we had to get them moving again. In addition I would report to Krebs on what little extra moves we might have figured out to bypass a train or two at Gravity yard, in Pine Bluff.

What subjects did these morning calls cover? The power situation on the Division. were we short of locomotives and what was our plan to cope with the shortage. How many locomotives did we expect to be released from the Pine Bluff locomotive shop over the next 24 hours. An assessment of yard conditions at all of the SSW terminals was reported. A report of train performance for last 24 hours, including trains set out on line, was prepared. Reports of any reportable train accidents were to be given. Any major slow orders, along with the last days production of any big maintenance gangs were reported. The conditions at the interchange points, including the last time we had cleared the interchange was on the list of items to be reported. And, of course, any unusual occurrences were to be reported

I did not realize it at the time, however, I would spend the next twenty one years either helping to prepare for or participating in these morning calls as they became a ritual of doing business in the operating department on the SP

Slats Lampley had a very serious case of emphysema. He was not supposed to smoke at all. I used to watch him as we all prepared for the morning calls. Slats would bum one cigarette at a time from each of the smokers in the dispatchers office. Then he would look around and, if he had tapped everyone once, and he thought that no one was looking, he would reach in his side coat pocket, take out his hidden pack of cigarettes and extract one cigarette. Unfortunately for Slats, his emphysema finally got so bad that he could not walk from one end of the Superintendents office to the other without stopping and leaning on a wall to catch his breath. Slats finally retired on a disability in the early spring of 1972. The last time that I visited with him and his wife, he was towing an oxygen tank around his living room. He died not long after that.

W F (Bill) Reed was transferred back from the LA Division to take Slats place as Assistant Superintendent. Bill had been the Terminal Superintendent at Pine Bluff before his promotion to Assistant Superintendent on the LA Division, in 1970. WFR would ultimately replace Krebs as the Superintendent of the SSW when Krebs was promoted to AGM in Houston in 1975. Once Reed arrived, I did a lot less work in the field, since Bill did not need a legman. But I had a new task assignment by that time.

To be continued.

mdo

mdo Wrote:
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> Slats would bum one cigarette at a time from each
> of the smokers in the dispatchers office. Then he
> would look around and, if he had tapped everyone
> once, and he thought that no one was looking, he
> would reach in his side coat pocket, take out his
> hidden pack of cigarettes and extract one

I worked with a jerk like that. Took several times of guys sticking little pieces of this balsa from a gag shop in his own pack to get him to stop. Nicotine doesn't make for a good teacher, the jerk kept opening unwrapped packs and feeling through them for splinters of balsa wood.

http://www.magical-tricks.com/CigaretteLoads.htm

Morning conference calls!!

Oh, you mean "Stump The Chump," where all the officers circle around the weakest member of the team, peppering him for information he didn't have and berate him in front of others.

This is a GREAT management style still being practiced today.

ain't railroading fun!

In our darker moments we prayed that another division was worse off than us. If we had a two car yard derailment and they started "20 questions' it was like a miracle if some other division had a collision or something to get them off our back. Did someone say petty?

The game seemed to be to ask continually more subtle and detailed questions until finding the limits of the knowledge of the division officers.
If well done, of course the morning call really kept everyone informed on a real-time basis. It seemed to fall apart under Management By Objective, when each element being reported was tied to someone's performance plan and salary adjustment. That is when we began finding trains reported as departed (they hadn't), total cars humped (re-humped?), and the wonderful difference between trains stalled due to failed units vs. confirmed failed units. The superintendent was relieved of responsibility for trains that died when the locomotive would not pull the train, but the Chief Mechanical Officer only lost his statistical game if his forces "confirmed" the unit was truly dead. For example if it had shattered a crankshaft or frozen traction motor it was dead. But if his mechanics could breath life back into it on the shop receiving track (anything from reset breakers, new fuel filters, etc. that had killed it as a useful road locomotive) it wasn't a "failed" unit. Often the eastern lines (early 80s) would have a dozen trains set out on line due to failed power and about three confirmed failures. Then as now the field people laughed behind their backs.

My observation several years ago on a Class I was that Terminal Superintendents spent the first two to three hours of their day preparing for the call, an hour on the call, and a couple of hours getting answers to questions that were raised on the call. Then they went about the other duties they had, like safety observations, customer calls, and just plain moving boxcars. HMMMM. Wonder when they thought about improving the operation? Getting new business? Providing new services? Maybe short lines are more sucessful because they have fewer or shorter conference calls.

friscojoe Wrote:
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> Morning conference calls!!
>
> Oh, you mean "Stump The Chump," where all the
> officers circle around the weakest member of the
> team, peppering him for information he didn't have
> and berate him in front of others.
>
> This is a GREAT management style still being
> practiced today.
>
> ain't railroading fun!


yes the thread title made me shudder. God I hate conference calls.

Its not just RRing that suffers from such nonsense! It must be something they teach in MBA school. This kind of abusive micro-management has always been doomed to fail, but upper management types egos seem to get in the way. The biggest example is the late and not very lamented Soviet Union. Stalin basically invented this and all it does is create fear and false reports, then management starts to believe their own propaganda. Funny how US "capitalist" business is using Stalin as a business model! This stuff makes great reading! give us MORE!

The Western Division morning conference call used the PBx System in the Bay Area. It was clearly a major event on the daily calender, clearly very informative as to train activity and also a clue into the General Office way of life. Learned quite a bit about the positive side of daily status reports, gave me an idea when reports had been fabricated as opposed to useful information. In the academic sense, classic Case Study fodder. Also very interesting train stuff. Was wondering when this topic would come up on TO.

 The morning conference call on NYC/PC/CR was just about the same.  Although
I'm not the biggest fan of MBAs, this went on before the MBA types were much
of a factor.