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Watching that was like riding in a school bus when the driver hits a puddle and splashes water on cars in the next lane, but more 
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Dec 1, 2012 20:10
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I know the guy at :13 in this video. Even though there's snow everywhere and it's CN power shoving the plow, this is actually central Illinois.
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Dec 1, 2012 20:14
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Snowplows are cool as poo poo. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGYJRsiuHEM Rotary plows are fascinating, both big: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItdRfvYHPAY and small: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4gsUAulj4w and smaller: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTZQefUxhmw
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Dec 1, 2012 22:19
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I have a question. How far can the sound of trains carry / what else sounds like a train? Since we moved here sometimes I hear what sounds like a ghost train. Ie the unmistakeable sound of wheels on tracks and the right kind of airhorns. I live here https://maps.google.com/maps?q=finl...+Australia&z=10 and it sounds like it's coming from N/NE. Three years now and I haven't been able to figure it out. Maybe someone more familiar with everything than I can shed some light on this mystery.
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Dec 1, 2012 23:50
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General_Failure posted:I have a question. How far can the sound of trains carry / what else sounds like a train? Well, there's a right of way passing north of you, I'd have to say 30-40 miles, you can see it clearly between whitton and yanco. I'd have to guess that either it's still active, or whatever you're hearing is along it. Pretty flat terrain between your town and there, so I wouldn't be too surprised if you could hear it. e: appears to be another going northeast along highway 39, as well. Much closer to you. kastein fucked around with this message at 00:22 on Dec 2, 2012 |
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Dec 2, 2012 00:19
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kastein posted:Well, there's a right of way passing north of you, I'd have to say 30-40 miles, you can see it clearly between whitton and yanco. I'd have to guess that either it's still active, or whatever you're hearing is along it. Pretty flat terrain between your town and there, so I wouldn't be too surprised if you could hear it. I never spotted the first one you mentioned. The one running along the highway is closed however. I can attest to that. It's a part of the old pioneer railway. the station is now a museum and a fairly rare example of a pioneer railway station. Going south there is a line that goes as far north as Tocumwal, although where it comes from / goes to is a bit of a mystery to me.The line that goes through Cobram is closed. I think I mentioned that one a few pages back as the one that the council rebutted the petition with ripping up the tracks and putting a pointless street in its stead and building a skate park in the train station carpark. So it's possible that the sound is just carrying a long way? I'm okay with that explanation because it's sure as hell had me confused for a long time. It was a while before the issue even dawned on me because I've lived next to tracks, and a railway yard before so train noises are something I'm used to. But when I realised there were no trains here it had me wondering what's up.
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Dec 2, 2012 00:51
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General_Failure posted:So it's possible that the sound is just carrying a long way? I'm okay with that explanation because it's sure as hell had me confused for a long time. It was a while before the issue even dawned on me because I've lived next to tracks, and a railway yard before so train noises are something I'm used to. But when I realised there were no trains here it had me wondering what's up. There is a phenomenon called "ducting" that can happen if conditions are just right. Normally it is associated with light and radio waves, but it has been reported to occur with sound as well. You may live in an area that is just really prone to having the right atmospheric conditions along with a coincidence of geography that has the sound bouncing right to your house.
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Dec 2, 2012 02:40
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BrokenKnucklez posted:I have Sat/Sun off working days Sat/Sun off, 1801 start pusher service. 156 mile day. Local service rate of pay. 5 months on the same job so far. 
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Dec 2, 2012 03:09
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Shifty Pony posted:There is a phenomenon called "ducting" that can happen if conditions are just right. Normally it is associated with light and radio waves, but it has been reported to occur with sound as well. You may live in an area that is just really prone to having the right atmospheric conditions along with a coincidence of geography that has the sound bouncing right to your house. Yeah, sometimes I think the neighbors' meth lab exploded but it was just UP assembling a train at the yard on the far end of town.
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Dec 2, 2012 07:25
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Bad Angus! Bad!
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A bit of steam-porn for those of you who are interested. The full-quality images are available on the Imgur gallery here: http://imgur.com/a/V2hTX In early September, I got the chance to head up to York while visiting England. Shot a bunch of pictures at the museum, but the highlight of the trip was an afternoon on the North Yorkshire Moors Railway, a heritage railway that runs over some of the many rural branch lines that got the Beeching Axe in the early '60s. They had a whole raft of locomotives in various states of disrepair and restoration, including a Deltic that's apparently on loan from some other railway, though I failed to get a shot of it.     One of the old 'Quick and Dirty' War Department locomotives from WWII. Most of these ended up exported from the UK after we sent them over to help with reconstruction, but apparently this one found its way back.   I also took some movies of a few locos and carriages arriving at and leaving from Goathland Station. This is sort of the highlight of the line, being a 1920s-style station that's been kept largely as-is and maintained. It's at the top of a 1-in-49 grade. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRhw-VejgFU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5-doSwP_MQ ctishman fucked around with this message at 05:33 on Dec 3, 2012 |
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Dec 3, 2012 05:31
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http://www.wishtv.com/dpp/news/local/north_central/mayor-balks-at-plan-for-faster-trainsquote:MUNCIE, Ind. (AP) - A railroad's plans to double the speed of freight trains going through a central Indiana city to 60 mph is facing opposition from the city's mayor. Does the mayor here have a leg to stand on?
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Dec 5, 2012 04:02
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ijustam posted:http://www.wishtv.com/dpp/news/local/north_central/mayor-balks-at-plan-for-faster-trains I wouldn't think so, since railroads are basically private property, not public roads.
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Dec 5, 2012 04:10
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Not sure, but I hope barney fife tries to pull the trains over for speeding, because you know it'll end up on youtube.
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Dec 5, 2012 04:30
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Is it uncommon for guys who are mechanics or conductors(or whatever) to get promoted into management/supervisor roles? Say I wanted to be a Trainmaster(management trainee-transportation or whatever), would I make myself more competitive by having previously been a conductor? (or Mechanical and having previously been a freight car repairer etc)
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Dec 5, 2012 04:36
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Veins McGee posted:Is it uncommon for guys who are mechanics or conductors(or whatever) to get promoted into management/supervisor roles? Say I wanted to be a Trainmaster(management trainee-transportation or whatever), would I make myself more competitive by having previously been a conductor? (or Mechanical and having previously been a freight car repairer etc) Just so you know... pretty much all management is despised. Even with ground experience, your crews will still pretty much hate you.... In case you care to know, my company is roughly 96% unionized. If that tells you how little management is thought of. But we hire people off the street. Hell they just hired a 23 year old kid strait out of college. Poor guy already has a nick name, we call him Harry Potter. Hes making a big stink about having a nick name... the other managers have told him that's an easy name to live with vs what they could call you.
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Dec 5, 2012 06:04
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BrokenKnucklez posted:Just so you know... pretty much all management is despised. Even with ground experience, your crews will still pretty much hate you.... That's fine. I can live with that. I'd just like to get my foot in the door with a railroad and then move into management. Correct me if I'm wrong but, the pay is shittier(in low level management) but the job security is top notch and you still get RR retirement. As far as I know, Norfolk Southern has never laid off management.
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Dec 5, 2012 06:24
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Veins McGee posted:That's fine. I can live with that. You are so far from the truth its not even funny. Low managers are way underpaid, and if you want to talk about stress... wait till you have a superintendent with a bad attitude and is a chair thrower (this guy had a temper) and your 2nd track related derailment happen at 3 am this week. Before you know it its 24 hours later, you have had no sleep, and your trying to place a blame on some one just so you can go to bed. Then you have to go to investigation, find out that you don't have a leg to stand on and go back to your office feeling like a dumb rear end while your men respect you less and less. Being a railroad manager is like being a K car, there is quite a few of you, your quite disposable, and your just getting by. Your health care sucks compared to the crews, you make less money, and your getting constantly yelled at. Trust me, railroad management is bullshit. Its very militaristic, and because your the poo poo man on the totem pole, you will get rolled. Plus in our terminal when the economy crashed, we used to have 10 managers. We are down to 3, and they (UP) decided that current manager work force was sufficient. DO NOT ever think your immune out here. But again, you don't work here... wait till your in, then your hopes of being a manager diminish very quickly. If you want to be a manger, go work in the head quarters.... not in the field. Sorry this is cynical, but trust me, I have seen enough here to know.
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Dec 5, 2012 07:15
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CP's laying off management right now, the blood gates are open. Cutting 4500 jobs by 2016. That's more than one in five jobs.
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Dec 5, 2012 08:16
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Veins McGee posted:Is it uncommon for guys who are mechanics or conductors(or whatever) to get promoted into management/supervisor roles? Say I wanted to be a Trainmaster(management trainee-transportation or whatever), would I make myself more competitive by having previously been a conductor? (or Mechanical and having previously been a freight car repairer etc) If you really, really, really want to get into railroad management from the "outside," get an engineering degree from either the University of Illinois at Urbana or Michigan Technical University (those are the top two universities for railway research, emphasis on Illinois). Get affiliated with their railroad engineering programs, then apply for a management trainee position. Also you probably won't get hired unless it's a masters degree you're getting. Railroad management is no picnic. If you get hired as a management trainee (and positions in the transportation department are the most competitive), they'll move you around for a year to train you. Then you'll get assigned somewhere. Could be bustling LA, or it could be Bumfuck, Nebraska. More likely it will be the latter. And then, six months down the road, they might move you again. The class 1s aren't hiring too many managers right now. I know Amtrak hired a bunch over the course of several years, and still has some of them waiting around for full-time assignments to open up. The bubble on railroad employment has popped. For a few years there was a lot of talk that people were retiring in droves and that they couldn't fill the seats fast enough, but the reality is that the shoddy economy allowed them to eliminate a lot of those positions as they became vacant. Railroad HR is full of dicks just as much as any other big corporate entity though, so they're still saying "OMG! Need resumes! People retiring!" only so they have a nice big pool of applications to pick from. As I mentioned above, the best way at this point to get into management (from the outside) is with a master's degree in engineering with prior railroad internship experience. BrokenKnucklez posted:Your health care sucks compared to the crews, you make less money, and your getting constantly yelled at. Trust me, railroad management is bullshit. Its very militaristic, and because your the poo poo man on the totem pole, you will get rolled. Also if there's a labor strike, guess who gets to run the trains? That's right, managers! When you hire on (in transportation) you'll get a crash course in operating trains under the guise of "we want to make sure all managers know our operation from top to bottom!  " But if there's a strike, you're the one taking that 150 car loaded coal train across the rockies at 1:00am while it's snowing.
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Dec 5, 2012 08:46
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BrokenKnucklez posted:Being a railroad manager is like being a K car, there is quite a few of you, your quite disposable, and your just getting by. At least you're (probably) not going to develop a leak in your throat, and suddenly start spewing milk out of your neck.
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Dec 5, 2012 16:25
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seal it with a kiss posted:CP's laying off management right now, the blood gates are open. Cutting 4500 jobs by 2016. That's more than one in five jobs. This has probably been written on the wall for awhile, I know of at least a few divisions where the entire staff was asked to work from home for a little while so they can free up the office space. Sad, but that's "the CN way." If they didn't want it, they shouldn't have bowed to Pershing Square and put Hunter Harrison in. Rumour has it the offices are moving near the Alyth yards as well which would be interesting for the already-awful traffic in that area.
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Dec 5, 2012 16:32
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seal it with a kiss posted:CP's laying off management right now, the blood gates are open. Cutting 4500 jobs by 2016. That's more than one in five jobs. The DM&E\IC&E aquisition proved less than favorable. The DM&E was a 10MPH Railroad to start with and is still a 10MPH railroa. And the line that they really were after for access to the powder river basin is in horrible shape.... Basically the CP is saying... well, we hosed up, lets cut manpower and see if we cant get some one to buy this lovely railroad back.
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Dec 5, 2012 18:25
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I haven't really paid attention to railroad business since I was a teen, but I was curious, speaking f Canadian roads, how the purchase of the IC was going. I always got the impression they were a cut rate lovely KCS. Half their locomotives were still in ICG paint when the merger happened.
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Dec 5, 2012 19:40
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Ron Pauls Friend posted:I haven't really paid attention to railroad business since I was a teen, but I was curious, speaking f Canadian roads, how the purchase of the IC was going. I always got the impression they were a cut rate lovely KCS. Half their locomotives were still in ICG paint when the merger happened. From what I know, the IC has been a pretty decent boon for the CN. Lets keep in mind here about locomotives that are painted or not painted for their own road. Most RR's just put on a patch of the new unit number and leave the rest of the locomotive in their original paint. I know there is several Southern Pacific and CNW motors still plying the rails in their original paint with the new unit numbers. And the CNW merger happened 17 years ago. Most of the time power doesn't get repainted until it under goes heavy rebuild.
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Dec 5, 2012 19:47
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CN merged with the IC largely because they wanted Hunter Harrison. Hunter is a notorious cost-cutter. He's been behind many single-tracking projects, and also implemented a VERY unpopular policy of having road crews assemble trains in the yards before taking them out on the road. The goal of this was to maximize the use of labor, but in the process it meant crews would spend half their time in the yard, and then their hours expire out on the road, requiring a new crew brought in at locations which are not designated crew change points. Hunter would also randomly visit yards and facilities, and start firing people left and right. Rolling stock and infrastructure maintenance was also cut, leading to unreliable power and lower track speeds. Following the merger of CN and IC, the "new and improved" CN made stockholders happy, but the top-down style of management has made life hard for the labor forces, and also for small-time shippers. At one time, CN was demanding to any and everyone wanting to ship by rail that they be able to ship and receive every day of the week. If you didn't meet that quota, CN wasn't interested in dealing with you. (After they bought the Wisconsin Central - which had a ton of local traffic - most of it dried up because CN refused to deal with such small shippers) Now that Hunter has retired (and is currently busy loving things up at CP), CN has just sort of been waddling about like a chicken with its head cut off.
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Dec 5, 2012 20:04
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bytebark posted:CN merged with the IC largely because they wanted Hunter Harrison. Hunter is a notorious cost-cutter. He's been behind many single-tracking projects, and also implemented a VERY unpopular policy of having road crews assemble trains in the yards before taking them out on the road. The goal of this was to maximize the use of labor, but in the process it meant crews would spend half their time in the yard, and then their hours expire out on the road, requiring a new crew brought in at locations which are not designated crew change points. I admit it would suck to assemble your own train, but god drat, the idea of a $370 basic day then overtime after 10 makes me smile inside. I was seriously thinking of jumping to the CN, but I really don't want to start at the bottom of the roster... that an the lack of work rules really doesn't make me jump over yet.
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Dec 5, 2012 20:46
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I think there's other factors that make the crews hate it. The road power gets junked up a lot faster because half of the time it's being used as a switcher. And then who knows how long they'll have to wait for a ride once they die on the road. For example, CN has a daily southbound intermodal train which departs Homewood, IL (south suburb of Chicago, and CN's US headquarters) every night and travels southbound on the ex-IC mainline to a big intermodal terminal in Memphis. Theoretically this should be a one crew train, but if this is a train that needs to be put together beforehand in Homewood and it winds up taking a lot of time, then that crew might die before they get to Memphis. Turns into a bigger pain in the rear end for everyone involved. Funny story involving a CN engineer I know: One day he was assigned to run a train from point A to point B (somewhere in the Chicago area). Between these points, there was an overhead bridge which high-cube boxcars would not clear. Of course he knew about this bridge, and knew this train had high-cube cars in it. He proclaimed his objections to some CN manager, who told him to can it and operate the train as instructed. So to no one's surprise, cars hit this bridge and he was quickly fired. This was followed by a lengthy (6+ months) arbitration process through the union. While this was going on, he found work running trains on a short line. And the decision of arbitration was that he was fired unjustly; he wound up getting his old job back, with back pay.
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Dec 5, 2012 23:00
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NS is the same way as far as cutting costs to appease the shareholders at all costs, no? I remember reading IC had a decent program for crews to go out and back over two days, I'm assuming that's what CN hosed up?
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Dec 5, 2012 23:59
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ijustam posted:http://www.wishtv.com/dpp/news/local/north_central/mayor-balks-at-plan-for-faster-trains He can no more regulate the speed of trains on tracks than he can the speed of planes flying overhead.
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Dec 6, 2012 08:54
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Boomer The Cannon posted:Snowplows are cool as poo poo. Oh. My. God. They come in G SCALE!? 
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Dec 6, 2012 11:04
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Pretend I don't know anything about electricity... why don't those trains short out?
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Dec 6, 2012 13:10
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CharlesM posted:Pretend I don't know anything about electricity... why don't those trains short out? They probably run on rather low-voltage, and snow is a horrible conductor.
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Dec 6, 2012 14:55
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Further YouTubing says they're battery powered, so energized rails isn't an issue.
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Dec 6, 2012 15:51
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I watched the video of how to set up a garden railroad and they use 24VDC. I guess it's just the fact it's low current and snow is not a good conductor. I thought snow = water meaning short circuit but I guess not 
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Dec 6, 2012 21:33
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Snow is mostly air.
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Dec 6, 2012 22:54
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Boomer The Cannon posted:I remember reading IC had a decent program for crews to go out and back over two days, I'm assuming that's what CN hosed up? CN has this whole philosophy called "scheduled railroading," which on paper is exactly what it sounds like - trains run on a schedule, and everything else revolves around that schedule. Aside from pissing off some small customers, it seems like a good idea. However there are issues with trains actually running on these schedules because of other CN management strategies - deferred maintenance on motive power and track, crews dying on the road because they spent too much time dicking around in the yard, having to wait on other late trains in single-track territory which had been double tracked, etc.
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Dec 6, 2012 23:16
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bytebark posted:crews dying on the road because they spent too much time dicking around in the yard, The preferred term is floundering. And yes, when managers piss off the yardmen, especially the good yardmen, we can pretty much drag a 1 hour move into a 3 hour ordeal. Is it right? No, but we have the mentality, don't gently caress with us, we will get your poo poo done. gently caress with us? Well say good buy to your on time train bonus.
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Dec 6, 2012 23:36
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http://trn.trains.com/en/Railroad%2...%20service.aspx So according to trains magazine the Union Pacific is considering assisting a third party restoration group in acquiring, restoring, and running a Big Boy. It's hard to say from the article exactly how much UP would be involved in this process and, if it even happens, whether they have committed to allow this behemoth onto their rails again. I think the whole thing sounds a bit crazy as I was under the impression that truly giant steam locomotives like this beat the poo poo out of track work and while the UP might run the 3985 for publicity's sake they would never let something as huge, heavy, and track destroying as a Big Boy back on their system. If this is true however it's marvelous. I never expected to see one of the true giants under steam, and I would travel across the country in an instant to do so if I had the opportunity.
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Dec 8, 2012 01:13
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Disgruntled Bovine posted:http://trn.trains.com/en/Railroad%2...%20service.aspx This is huge (no pun intended). according to wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_Pacific_Big_Boy there are 8 including the one here in Holiday Park in Cheyenne on static display. I am guessing they will be first auditing to see which could be moved back to a track, and secondly which has the most viable boiler. With 8 on display, they should be able to find the needed rare and viable small and large part assemblies. This idea has been thrown around for years, and with railroad profits at record highs, looks like the time would be right. Since the actual UP steam program and steam program roundhouse are here in Cheyenne, I am just guessing the undertaking would be performed here. If it is performed by a separate company, it could take place anywhere though.
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Dec 8, 2012 05:03
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Why are Big Boys track destroying? Do they weigh that much more than a regular locomotive?
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Dec 12, 2012 05:06
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