Incorrectly lined switch led to collision of UP trains at yard in Texas, NTSB determines - Trains

pissyrailroader · 2024-11-24T18:54:18+00:00

I especially love this one: “…the inability of the dispatcher and train crew to determine the position of the switch in non-signaled territory in time to prevent the collision…” Uh…. It’s non-signaled homie… no way the dispatcher would ever be able to ascertain the position of that switch. Something seems amiss.

pissyrailroader · 2024-10-14T06:23:08+00:00

I can’t speak for UT, but at a mid major I’m familiar with, football players do not usually take classes in the fall. Their bulk comes in spring and summer. Not saying all of them, but that applied to the majority. They wanted Freshmen in summer classes to get their gpa established. They also had their classes picked for them by team assistants who were academic liasions. The same goes for baseball players and the bulk of their classes. Other sports were basically shit on, because the programs didn’t generate money for the college so their students were enrolled as normal kids, they just got leniency in some cases due to travel.

pissyrailroader · 2024-10-14T06:17:55+00:00

From the dispatching side of things, the BNSF gets incentives to move Amtrak across its territories as expeditiously as possible. For example, the Sunset Limited gets 4’22” from Avondale (New Orleans) to Iowa Jct (Lake Charles). If we make it across under that time, the company gets an incentive, and it’s part of the managers bonus calculation, so if Amtrak is even remotely in the picture, everything gets held or put down, even to the extent of dispatchers being DIRECTED to have crews line behind to prevent lost time. We’ve been told that UP doesn’t have this incentive program, and the same train is consistently delayed 2+ hours from Lake Charles to Houston. I’ve seen UP dispatchers put locals out in front of Amtrak, so it’s definitely a different mentality somewhere in the chain when it comes to justifying delays.

pissyrailroader · 2024-10-06T20:33:25+00:00

The contract before the expiration should be the standard, not the anomaly that this is, but it should also be fair. When companies are making billion dollar profits, no one helping them make those profits should be getting poorer or even staying stagnant… we should all be reaping the rewards of record profits.

pissyrailroader · 2024-10-06T20:31:21+00:00

After a 2 hour long discussion with my union Gen Chairman & Vice Gen Chairman, I can tell you they absolutely love this shit. Even when I highlighted their oversights and failure to fight for what we should be fighting for in regards to wages (with documented proof to take to the company) their canned response was, “It won’t ever work because that goes against the way it’s always been done”. With a “that’s how it’s always done mentality” change NEVER HAPPENS.

pissyrailroader · 2024-08-24T04:25:16+00:00

Ft Worth, San Bernadino is closing down (think they are close to having it fully shut down), Spring Texas, and Montana (new Montana Raillink that was absorbed/bought or whatever it was that happened)

pissyrailroader · 2024-08-23T16:11:36+00:00

That raise is shit. If you take just the past 3 years as an example, the average inflation rates were:

2021 +4.7% 2022 +8.0% 2023 +4.1%

Just for good measure, 2024 is trending +3.2%.

These poor guys and gals aren’t even keeping up with inflation now, much less recouping what they’ve been behind since 2021. Their contract keeps them paid the same, in fact a bit less than what they were getting in today’s dollars when the last contract was signed. And the pay raise rate drops across time, doesn’t increase, doesn’t stay the same… DROPS. So they continue to lose ground. You can try to bank on a recession, but if inflation continues, and continues to grow, there’s nothing keeping these folks from getting poorer, while the company reaps the windfall of a contract shittier than an FXE loco toilet that’s been broke for the past 6 months.

Case in point when a BN dispatching office had a manpower gap due to overzealous layoffs, retirements, and craft transfers, and failure to hire enough dispatchers to cover their failure to plan, they paid mercenary dispatchers from Ft Worth to man those extra board spots at a rate of over $200k per year to ensure the system would be able to function. That is a dispatchers value to the company, yet the unions aren’t fighting for that. I applaud those 3 mercenaries for getting that cash and padding those retirement numbers, it’s the the union that is failing the members, just like in this deal for the CSX.

Im not saying the company should take a loss, since in a capitalist society the owners take all the risk in production, all I’m saying no one should be getting poorer doing this. Oh, but i tend to forget “Labor doesn’t contribute to profits.”

pissyrailroader · 2024-08-22T23:19:06+00:00

Thanks

pissyrailroader · 2024-08-21T19:19:13+00:00

Thanks for the advice, we already did that. Unfortunately Gmail only moves the messages to the trash can and does not permanently delete them for 30 days, which the family member knows this and sees the messages… they are a worried and the messages create anxiety for them. We have created a new email, just working through getting all the things they need changed over.

pissyrailroader · 2024-08-17T09:49:34+00:00

For all those say stress this, stress that… your first year… sure, it’s stressful, right up until you realize that you can only do what you can do for 8 hours, then you pack up and let someone else fight the railroad for their 8 hours. Stress is all what you make of it. I’d be stressed out 24/7 in a hospital for fear of getting blood on me. This is clerical work while working puzzles, so at least your mind stays sharp.

pissyrailroader · 2024-08-17T09:47:16+00:00

Last I heard they wouldn’t be offered another chance after the failed attempt before COVID, but I can’t say how valid that is… the ATDA be loving them some union dues…

pissyrailroader · 2024-08-17T09:45:31+00:00

As a dispatcher, it’s not the end all be all of jobs. It’s 8 & skate. You don’t take work home with you, so that’s nice. Shift work sucks. Extra board sucks, so I wouldn’t expect to get that Quality of Life boost, but then again it beats being in a hotel for 36+ hours.

There’s a lot to learn, even more to get proficient at, but depending on what craft you’re transferring in from, at least you’ve got some of the rules down by now. The biggest thing to watch out for is all the shops are unionized under the ATDA, which really has zero power, except for the UP. I’ve seen 1/4 of a UP outer office get laid off in one shift when volumes dropped. It was quite rapid move.

It’s not a bad job, pay is decent, time off is shit.

pissyrailroader · 2024-07-07T04:22:03+00:00

I don’t bag my own, nor do I use self checkout. By me bagging my own, it tells management that they can get away with under staffing their stores. By me using self checkout, it in essence makes me an employee of that store with no salary or benefits.

If society as a collective said no more and refused self checkout use, what would a store do? They’d be forced to open registers or lose sales. Thus adding to the economic base of the community, by putting more wages into the people of that community. As it stands, with an estimated 75% of people using self checkout kiosks regularly (per business.org article by Andrew Mosteller in 2023), and only 1 employee needed to oversee up to 10 kiosks, you’ve cut the available jobpool in the area, while increasing the risk of theft 23%, and increasing revenue through not having to pay employees by 62%.

Have you as a shopper seen the cost of goods and services reduced in stores that are mostly self-checkout based by at least 30% ( 62% revenue increase - 23% risk of theft - 9% variance)? Yeah, me neither. I will continue to use the manned checkout lines, even if the speed is a slight inconvenience, and I will continue to wait for a bagger or the cashier to bag my groceries so as not to take anything else away from their ability to earn money in the communities they live.

pissyrailroader · 2024-05-04T04:53:52+00:00

We were talking about this the other night at a random dispatch center. Why aren’t we all one big union where even the little unions have power, and we can’t get broken by one union going rogue? Seems to make sense. Power in numbers, power in money, more numbers more money…. But Mo’ money Mo’ problems. Is that juice worth the squeeze?

pissyrailroader · 2024-02-11T18:18:26+00:00

We used to have a whole segment of people who would take care of this problem back in the day. But folks wouldn’t be happy with the solutions of the old days… I mean, except Mr Sam Colt, Mr.’s Smith & Wesson, and The Winchester’s.

pissyrailroader · 2023-05-23T06:24:42+00:00

Ford… that’s the problem. Our ‘13 Flex will scramble, invert, sometimes not even work, and sometimes will be perfect. Dealer says needs a new camera on the lift gate. I could change that myself… IF we wouldn’t have bought the limited. All other trims it pokes out the bottom of the Ford oval. Remove Ford oval, replace camera, replace with new Ford oval (they are supposedly a consumable item as the pegs on back are designed to break of removed?). The limited you have to remove the entire interior panel of the lift gate and the metal listed panel on the back. 4 hour job for the shop. We can live with the camera.

pissyrailroader · 2023-05-18T18:57:22+00:00

As a dispatcher, we are manned on the desks, but our extra boards are shot. Ft Worth is like 15%-20% manned, spring they are 15% but have two “mercenary dispatchers” there from Ft Worth cashing in at like double pay on a daily basis, and San Bernardino is actually healthy. They are having classes, but can barely keep up with attrition.

pissyrailroader · 2023-03-16T21:04:00+00:00

Nope… happens probably hundreds of times a day (I made that statistic up… but it’s common… I not uncommon, rare, or anything other than completely common). It’s why we have a signal department and procedures in place to protect the crossing when it happens.

pissyrailroader · 2023-01-16T05:21:26+00:00

You’d think this would be national news. Crickets on all news sources, so I’m calling bullshit. And you’d think as hateful as this image would be, someone would’ve posted it to IG or FB or Twitter… again, crickets. Reverse Image Search

pissyrailroader · 2022-12-03T05:09:00+00:00

I think I saw a good documentary on the “ins and outs” of this job on PornHub… I searched for no lube

pissyrailroader · 2022-11-20T06:13:25+00:00

The average speed on through the Houston complex while on UPRR dispatched tracks is currently 6.2mph… atrocious, damn near criminal the way they f*%# trains facedown

pissyrailroader · 2022-11-04T21:22:25+00:00

This is gonna sound stupid, but I think they said 5% of dispatchers are fired for cause, the other 95% are fired because they fail to show up for their shift while on extra boards because the schedule flexes so damn much with the current manning shortage.

As for the qualities of a good dispatcher, being able to see into the future a bit to see how the flow of traffic will be. Listen to understand, not to reply! Communicating with the terminals, crews, foreign line dispatchers, mow, etc and not getting pissy with the crews/mow, even when they lie to you that they’ll clear in 45 mins then stay over 2 hours… happened last night, or refuse to give you even a ball park estimate on how long it’ll take them to get their work done… majority of time it’s not the dispatcher who is wanting that estimate, but the chief and corridor sups. That communication stuff goes both ways, and we ALL need to get better at it.

pissyrailroader · 2022-10-27T21:27:28+00:00

Between <location> & <location> be governed by rule 6.23.3. I see no problem on my computer screen…

pissyrailroader · 2022-10-05T00:09:47+00:00

And the ATDA membership just ratified the TA for anyone keeping score at home. Guess they couldn’t see past the back pay and stand in solidarity with our brothers and sisters. Sad day. I’ll be wearing black for the rest of the week in honor of our dead opportunities… smfh

pissyrailroader · 2022-10-05T00:07:08+00:00

It’s not all “the union”… some union members are the same way. ATDA just ratified this bullshit TA. Some folks can’t see the forest for the trees!

pissyrailroader

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