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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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| # ¿ May 14, 2024 11:58 |
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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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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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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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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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Mr. Despair posted:I haven't gotten a chance to drive this yet but I hear it's the best thing ever (it's in a mine 4850 feet below ground). Be glad you're not working in Albania: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unhXEQQk8G8
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Dec 14, 2012 06:40
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The latest trains/destruction video to go viral: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yBr-H2yskM
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Dec 22, 2012 09:40
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Video detailing what happens when prolonged, high-speed wheelslip occurs on a steam locomotive: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E54HUQYeFNg&feature=share
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Jan 3, 2013 02:55
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Boomer The Cannon posted:You're not the guy with the franken-GG1 sig on RYPN, are you? No ... but I do kinda know him.
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Jan 14, 2013 00:51
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The one "advantage" listed there which I disagree with is "smoother ride." I've ridden a few rubber-tired transit operations (mostly those running at airports) and they're never smooth. A few years ago I went to Disney World and made it a point to ride the Monorail (rubber tired on a concrete beam) so I could compare it to the CTA in Chicago. Without a doubt the CTA (operating on a 100+ year old elevated structure in some places) has the better ride.
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Jan 14, 2013 01:05
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I like the new CTA cars too because they give off the same AC inverter sound as my Prius does in electric only mode.
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Jan 15, 2013 07:09
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Veins McGee posted:They sure do love talking about safety though. At the NS management interview I went to, they had a safety brief about exiting a room and designating people to perform CPR and/or direct EMTs to the emergency. Yeah this is typical with railroad management and engineering staff. Obsessing over fire drills and locations of first aid kits in the corporate office to promote a "top to bottom safety culture."
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Mar 9, 2013 04:26
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What's interesting is how 21st century millennials being hired by class 1 railroads though their management trainee programs are dealing with it. These are typically fresh college grads with financial, business, or engineering programs who get actively recruited and hired while still in school. After graduation they'll get an extended period of familiarization with the company, which could take a couple months up to an entire year, and may require lots of travel. After that they get direct placement into middle management in their field of expertise within the company. I know quite a few people who've gone this route, but only a few who are really happy with it. Some find they've run out of advancement options after >5 years, while others find that they don't want their employer dictating their lives with odd work schedules or moving them around the system every five years. From the corporation's perspective, perhaps the biggest issue here is that you've got brand new college grads plunked right down and working with baby boomers on the verge of retirement,* two generational groups which historically don't get along. Even with some of the most lucrative benefits you can find anywhere (very good health care, relatively stable employment, usually TWO pensions, stock options) lots of millennials are not sticking with these management trainee jobs, and wind up seeking work at more "progressive" entities. To a generation where the ideal workplace is something along the lines of what Google offers, a class 1 railroad seems like a combination of the Marine Corps with a pinch of extreme office politics thrown in. *It's never been explained to me why the railroads have this age gap in management, but I have a hypothesis: In 1980 the industry was deregulated, leading to large downsizing efforts which led to greater efficiency. At that point I'm pretty sure hiring into management became a mere trickle, and up until now it's been mostly the same group of baby boomers running the show.
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Mar 11, 2013 03:48
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BrokenKnucklez posted:
My understanding (admittedly mostly from the outside) is that the HR people are shoving these management candidates through the system. I've heard one Amtrak upper level manager say that "someone with a degree in horticulture could get in our management trainee program." And even if you get a degree in something rail related, that's no guarantee it'll be of any use once you get out in the field. A buddy of mine has spent the last two years in graduate school, doing research on rail ballast (mostly using a grant from a passenger railroad, with the research tailored to their needs). He's graduating soon, entering a management trainee program, and supposedly after that he'll be a roadmaster for a class 1 on a low-speed freight line in the rockies. I wish him the best but doubt he's going to last very long.
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Mar 14, 2013 23:19
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Interesting story + photos of two runaway locomotives going through an open lift bridge and into a river: http://nilesdepot.org/niles/wreck.html
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Mar 20, 2013 20:22
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A nice, slow derailment caught on video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Yr5EztEPJS8
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Apr 30, 2013 02:54
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Northern Illinois has been getting a ton of rain over the past few weeks. I took this picture this morning: that's ~3 foot tall foliage growing right next to the third rail at the UIC/Halsted CTA stop. Should be tons of fun in late July once things dry out and a train starts throwing sparks off its third rail shoes while pulling out.
bytebark fucked around with this message at 00:49 on Jun 27, 2013 |
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Jun 27, 2013 00:45
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For those of you who feel like blowing 13 minutes to watch a bunch of electric trains: The railway museum I volunteer at held its annual "trolley parade" last Sunday, which is where we take anything electric which will run and parade them past the depot, with brief narration for visitors. This year is the museum's 60th anniversary, so we had ~60 pieces of equipment in the parade, ranging in build date from 1903 to 1964: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KmUdJNfvf0
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Jul 9, 2013 06:30
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I saw a gigantic orange electric thing this weekend: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQFRHfSydlg
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Sep 3, 2013 04:13
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Yeah I know Jamie. He was running that thing more or less all weekend. I was going to go over and ask him for a cab ride in it today, but just before I did I noticed that there were others already in the cab waiting for a ride, most notably this fellow: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhYXNwvcl6A. This caused me to reconsider.
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Sep 3, 2013 05:27
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Disgruntled Bovine posted:Honestly I think that guy is just trolling... If he's trolling he's the best actor I've ever seen and never slips out of character (i.e., I think he's serious). In fact, he appeared to have his own posse of like-minded individuals!
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Sep 3, 2013 18:08
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In defense of IRM's mostly electric operations, it costs the museum a helluva lot less to give people real train rides using an assortment of old "L" cars / interurbans / streetcars than using diesels every day of the week (let alone steam). For some reason lots of filmmakers decided they wanted to film out at IRM this year. A new show on ABC called "Betrayal" shot a short segment there in May or so (a drama about people cheating on each other apparently - the trailer is on youtube, and you can see the scene shot at the museum). Then a chase scene for the next Transformers movie was shot there maybe a month ago, and the stuff being shot out there this week is a commuter train wreck for the "Chicago Fire" show.
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Oct 7, 2013 04:58
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Goons employed with the railroad: Do you know if the FRA (or any other governing body) has any specific rule prohibiting the hiring and/or continued employment of individuals with felony drug convictions? I know the railroads do a pretty good job of filtering out candidates like that through their own hiring processes but am curious if there's actually a rule somewhere from the feds saying "no, you cannot hire this person with a felony drug/traffic/etc conviction." (no, I am not a felon trying to hire on with the railroad...)
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Dec 13, 2013 00:48
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That CTA derailment the other day was in an airport station (O'Hare), so naturally there will be video cameras all around: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8X6b0tcQy8&feature=youtu.be&app=desktop
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Mar 26, 2014 05:01
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B4Ctom1 posted:A guy I work with worked for the Rock Island when it went bankrupt in 1980. He said you couldn't cash the checks, but you just had to keep working. Then one day the word came through that they had put some money in their bank account from selling off rolling stock and trackage and everyone ran down and cashed their checks and went away to work for other railroads. Lots of Rock Island people went to go work for Metra in Chicago, which was starting up right as the Rock was shutting down. A few years back, one of the TV stations here did a little retrospective of the Rock Island and its demise in the early 80s, and they actually interviewed the engineer who usually drove the morning train I took to work.
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Jul 19, 2014 02:12
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Skeeber posted:... one of the only railroads using a 1 man operation ended up blowing up a small town ... Mostly unrelated, but now the locomotive indirectly responsible (broke a piston in the engine) for that incident in Quebec is for sale, along with a lot of other MMA units. See: http://www.adamsauctions.com/servlet/Search.do?auctionId=302 and scroll down to item #116 (engine # 5017).
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Jul 20, 2014 17:54
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I know several people in their late 20s/early 30s working for class-1s in field management (foreman of engines, etc). Every single one of them is as crabby as someone twenty years older.
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Jul 25, 2014 02:30
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Theris posted:You know how in even railroad produced promotional/training films from that era all the equipment looks 30+ years old and seconds away from crumbling into a pile of rust? That was the least dilapidated stuff they could find. Half hour long documentary video on the Penn Central's deterioration circa 1974: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHmyYqfNYnc The first derailment is at 0:22.
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Jul 27, 2014 05:21
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Of possible interest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxMaokedlUE This is a late 80s promotional video produced by the Indiana Hi-Rail Corporation, apparently to showcase their services to potential customers. It makes the railroad look pretty slick and modern. In reality, Indiana Hi-Rail was an outfit run on shoestrings, and operated several disconnected lines throughout Illinois/Indiana/Ohio as well as contract switching services at large manufacturing plants. Much of their track was purchased at fire sale prices from class-1, to whom it was secondary trackage that hadn't been maintained in years. IHRC's own practice of deferred maintenance rendered much of the railroad economically impassable by the mid '90s (cost of dealing with derailments exceeded revenue). Some track was pulled up to salvage rail, which was sold to pay off debt. Other segments were bought by other operators, still remaining in the same (poorly maintained) state: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4VGbEz5E6E
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Jul 30, 2014 04:08
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Since winter is getting close: http://video.pbs.org/video/2365218614/ Good mini-documentary on rotary snowplow operations on the UP through the Sierra Nevada.
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Nov 14, 2014 02:32
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ijustam posted:I'd wager simplicity as that thing appears to be the economy/budget friendly locomotive. Along those same lines: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unhXEQQk8G8
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Nov 21, 2014 07:28
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Hey, look at that. A kinda rough 1947 Dodge sedan. Looks kinda worn out on the outside. Any better inside? Nope...  A view from above ... hey, are those RAILS under the car?  Well I'll be damned. It even has special flanged tires for those rails.  Backstory: This is a limo variant of a 1947 Dodge built for the Milwaukee Road railroad, and modified by their shops for use on rails rather than road. It was retired in 1961. After several years of sitting around it was purchased for $25 by a museum in Wisconsin. Fast forward to 2014, and after it had sat outside for many years (and was never operable), that museum wanted to get rid of it. So the museum I'm involved with picked it up earlier this year. A couple of our members run an unofficial museum blog with more details and pictures of the car. Supposedly the plan is to restore it and get it running again. I've been told that although it looks pretty rough, it was never exposed to salt (since it wasn't used on actual roads) so other than surface rust, the body is in pretty good shape.
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Dec 9, 2014 05:27
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I can think of one exception to the rule of thumb that friction bearings are gone from railroads - hot bottle tank cars (specialized tanks used to shuttle liquid steel between steelmaking facilities). Supposedly the heat from the molten steel can cause roller bearings to expand (and make the car immovable) in this type of application, hence the use of standard (friction) bearings. Video of this type of car: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbzKU3cxWkk Also, railroads often use old-as-hell equipment in MOW service which sometimes has friction bearings. There's a rule set by the AAR prohibiting the interchange of rolling stock with friction bearings, but it can still be used in captive service on work trains, etc.
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Dec 22, 2014 04:58
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They do intentionally put spare empty cars between the bottle cars to space them out. Unsure of the exact reason but I suspect it's either to more widely distribute the weight of the steel, or because putting the cars right next to each other might make loading/unloading more difficult.
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Dec 22, 2014 17:39
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ijustam posted:I took a shower on the Zephyr at 80 mph. The drain just emptying on the tracks so everything under me is just whizzing by. It was awesome. I noticed this too, when I took the Zephyr last year. The water pours right out onto the track. You can see light from the outside through the drain. This whole arrangement was only realized after I took my first shower (of a two-night trip) on the first morning I woke up on the train. The second morning, I made sure to time my shower with one of the smoke breaks the train makes in eastern Iowa. Just to make people on the platform think someone on board was taking a really long piss.
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Dec 25, 2014 07:02
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The latest "train asplodes" [turbocharger, specifically] clip to be making the rounds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8RvoppZT0Y&feature=youtu.be. Bonus foamer chatter in the background.
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Dec 29, 2014 19:13
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I was out at the museum yesterday helping to paint prep for a restoration project we're hurriedly working on (maybe I'll make a thread?) and happened upon this piston from a locomotive prime mover. Shoe provided for size comparison:
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Jan 1, 2015 19:16
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Train hits car somewhere in Kentucky (warning: you see it pretty drat well*): http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=616_1426435652 * The reason you see it pretty drat well is because it was some railfans who inadvertantly filmed it (from TWO angles).
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Mar 17, 2015 01:39
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NTSB report on on the cause of the head-on CTA collision a couple years ago (not the O'Hare wreck, but just as interesting): http://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/RAB1502.pdf I remember when this accident happened; it was the first day of the annual APTA (American Public Transportation) convention ... being hosted in Chicago.
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Apr 16, 2015 23:17
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| # ¿ May 14, 2024 11:58 |
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Preoptopus posted:Has someone made a drone that follows the rail road autonomously and scans for cracks/breaks and obstacles. If not ill take my million dollars in $2 bills please. When I was in college, I worked as a research assistant in a department which did railroad engineering research. One of the projects they were doing (which I was not assigned to) was a special camera mounted on a cart which would "read" track defects which would be automatically identified, in lieu of a human eye. Except they were never able to perfect a program which could read the video imagery and discern what the defect was, etc. So aside from them building a fancy cart out of rollerblade parts and someone probably writing a paper on the subject, the project never went anywhere.
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May 20, 2015 08:27
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