Video I recorded from earlier in June of CSX westbound empty oil B748 with 169 tank cars + 4 buffer cars = 173 cars / 716 axles counting the units. B714 with the 2 YN2 AC4400CW's coupled up to the rear of B748 with the 2 BNSF ES44C4's. It's 2 trains combined into 1. But for fun, to the average railfan, the 2 CSX YN2's look to be DPU.
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They are getting too long. Public safety issue, maybe?
@Former Member posted:They are getting too long. Public safety issue, maybe?
Yes I agree, but we are just the audience who watches real trains.
Horrible.
anything to save a crew start
Something really bothers me about this. I am a retired electrical engineer I am not a railroader by profession, so I really don't know what I am talking about but here goes. Suppose each crew member gets paid $40.00/hour, and there are 2 crew members in the cab for a 10-hour shift. The direct labor cost of running a train over the road is around $800.00. Further, let's suppose there are 100 loaded cars in the train containing millions of dollars' worth of cargo. And the railroad gets $400.00 to $600.00 per car to haul the car and spot it at its destination. The gross income generated by that train is $40k to $60k, less fuel and maintenance costs. It seems to me to be a no-brainer that the railroads need to be a little less greedy and limit the train length to something reasonable, say, 100 cars instead of 200+. A little common sense should be applied.
J
Unions have been trying to get train sizes limited, to little success..
@Former Member posted:Something really bothers me about this. I am a retired electrical engineer I am not a railroader by profession, so I really don't know what I am talking about but here goes. Suppose each crew member gets paid $40.00/hour, and there are 2 crew members in the cab for a 10-hour shift. The direct labor cost of running a train over the road is around $800.00. Further, let's suppose there are 100 loaded cars in the train containing millions of dollars' worth of cargo. And the railroad gets $400.00 to $600.00 per car to haul the car and spot it at its destination. The gross income generated by that train is $40k to $60k, less fuel and maintenance costs. It seems to me to be a no-brainer that the railroads need to be a little less greedy and limit the train length to something reasonable, say, 100 cars instead of 200+. A little common sense should be applied.
J
You are indeed correct, i.e. you do NOT understand. Todays railroading is all about lowering the operating ratio, and satisfying the Wall Street crowd, thus the reductions of employees. Customer service is no longer a priority.
@Former Member posted:…Suppose each crew member gets paid $40.00/hour, and there are 2 crew members in the cab for a 10-hour shift. The direct labor cost of running a train over the road is around $800.00.
Your crew cost estimates are too low. Actual cost is closer to $1,500 when both salary and benefits are included.
...A little common sense should be applied.
Common sense ceased to be a part of the railroading industry a long time ago. Today the ”Holy Grail” in railroad operations is “PSR”, Precision Scheduled Railroading.
A more appropriate acronym would be “Pretty Sad Railroading.”
As Hot Water said, the goal of PSR is to please shareholders. Customers are not part of the equation any more.
@Rich Melvin posted:Common sense ceased to be a part of the railroading industry a long time ago. Today the ”Holy Grail” in railroad operations is “PSR”, Precision Scheduled Railroading.
A more appropriate acronym would be “Pretty Sad Railroading.”
As Hot Water said, the goal of PSR is to please shareholders. Customers are not part of the equation any more.
This is the corporate mantra. Customers and employees be d***ed!
When PSR first came on the scene, I read a forty-one page white paper about it. I wanted to understand what it was and how it worked.
Within those forty-one pages, the word “shareholder” appeared almost thirty times. The word “customer” did not appear even once. That should tell you all you need to know about “Pretty Sad Railroading.”
These massive trains, like the one that Tom has shown so well in the OP, are the result. That train is running about 50 mph, yet it takes over three minutes to go by! Entering a yard at 10 mph, it would block a crossing for almost a half hour. However, it won’t fit in any yard, so it has to be broken in two to yard the train. That adds even more time to the operation.
But they got TWO TRAINS over the road with only ONE CREW. Hallelujah! And that, my friends, is just another illustration of the goal of PSR.
Thank you Rich. Yes, you are most definitely right about this. It's kind of neat to see a train this long, but I'm kind of surprised any railroad for now is doing this because of what happened in East Palestine. NS is restricted to 10K feet trains last I heard. This one definitely was longer then 10K.
Re: what crews make, for example, the Norfolk Southern website says engineers are guaranteed a minimum annual pay of $94,000. Note that's the minimum. Plus a boatload (trainload) of benefits, of course (health, retirement, etc.) which add to the effective income. Given their crew hour limitations, it would seem your guess of $40/hour pay would be far too low.
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