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Has anyone hear of any body getting hired for grand Rapids mi. The local managment said there 12 in school now.


Rob

Havn't heard anything along that line. I would assume the 12 at school could/would be conductors at engineer training school. A lot of guys are retiring this year here in GR. They would thusly move up (or down depending on ones outlook) to being train drivers.

Took 11 days to pick up 4-5 empty center beams from the GR. GDLK come up and grabs the string with their couple in the line and take them all to Hughart. "Duh boss, we brought all of them, yah, but most weren't for us" lol
So the mill logistic company wants to know what happened to their car. Well I tell them it took a tour of the town and it's still here in Grand Rapids

Raildudes dad wrote:Well I tell them it took a tour of the town and it's still here in Grand Rapids

Ahh, the good old GR circle tour. Oughta send them up on a round trip to Baldwin, to make sure those cars see all of the GRR railroads!

Better than the time the computer repeatedly played return to sender with a load until Doc finally manually over rode the computer

Raildudes dad wrote:Better than the time the computer repeatedly played return to sender with a load until Doc finally manually over rode the computer

Call Clutch at the lumber company on Fruit Ridge..."Is this your car?" "Why yes, yes it is." So just take it up and give it to GRE...easy enough. Who finally got paid? Not my problem. Customer gets their product, that's my problem...and its fun to screw around with J-ville who told me "you can't do that..." Bwahahaha. Glad I am GONE!

Doktor No wrote: Call Clutch at the lumber company on Fruit Ridge..."Is this your car?" "Why yes, yes it is." So just take it up and give it to GRE...easy enough. Who finally got paid? Not my problem. Customer gets their product, that's my problem...and its fun to screw around with J-ville who told me "you can't do that..." Bwahahaha. Glad I am GONE!

It's sad (and a shame) that a foreman/conductor on a yard/local job has to "override" the carrier's computer system in order to get the customer the car they ordered! sheesh!

-barny

I don't remember the details anymore but the GDLK system and the CSX system said it wasn't their car and automatically generated a WO and returned it back to the other. I'm tracing it for the customer watching the ping pong across town. Finally Doc got it to go to the GR

Raildudes dad wrote:I don't remember the details anymore but the GDLK system and the CSX system said it wasn't their car and automatically generated a WO and returned it back to the other. I'm tracing it for the customer watching the ping pong across town. Finally Doc got it to go to the GR

Same baloney goes on in the airlines too! Guy I know (Retired airline agent) loves to tell the story of a bag that was tagged for Minneapolis but kept coming back to Detroit; Minneapolis kept saying that the claim check number was invalid or something. Finally after a couple of days of back-and-forth, he did some digging. Come to find out, some idiot skycap had mistagged it -- there was a claim on it from SEATTLE, complete with the "Invalid claim check number!"

So, once he found that out, he just correctly tagged it, sent the new claim check number to Seattle, and put it on the next flight out. Did it make it to Seattle that time? Who knows -- he mentions that that particular flight switched aircraft at Minneapolis. For all we know, it may still be bouncing from airport to airport, all these years later!

Eric Berger wrote:

Raildudes dad wrote:I don't remember the details anymore but the GDLK system and the CSX system said it wasn't their car and automatically generated a WO and returned it back to the other. I'm tracing it for the customer watching the ping pong across town. Finally Doc got it to go to the GR

Same baloney goes on in the airlines too! Guy I know (Retired airline agent) loves to tell the story of a bag that was tagged for Minneapolis but kept coming back to Detroit; Minneapolis kept saying that the claim check number was invalid or something. Finally after a couple of days of back-and-forth, he did some digging. Come to find out, some idiot skycap had mistagged it -- there was a claim on it from SEATTLE, complete with the "Invalid claim check number!"

So, once he found that out, he just correctly tagged it, sent the new claim check number to Seattle, and put it on the next flight out. Did it make it to Seattle that time? Who knows -- he mentions that that particular flight switched aircraft at Minneapolis. For all we know, it may still be bouncing from airport to airport, all these years later!

Always a nightmare, handling bags. We had seven bags going to Manila when they decided to go via Detroit AND Seattle THEN Narita instead of just being routed through DTW and NRT. We were lucky to push on time. Always something new with the airlines.

Saturnalia wrote:

Raildudes dad wrote:Well I tell them it took a tour of the town and it's still here in Grand Rapids

Ahh, the good old GR circle tour. Oughta send them up on a round trip to Baldwin, to make sure those cars see all of the GRR railroads!

Thats not funny Alex, I had loaded coke loads show up in my train at baldwin for Cadillac before. Messed up my entire block of shortwork and Ludingtons.

CAT345C wrote:

Saturnalia wrote:

Raildudes dad wrote:Well I tell them it took a tour of the town and it's still here in Grand Rapids

Ahh, the good old GR circle tour. Oughta send them up on a round trip to Baldwin, to make sure those cars see all of the GRR railroads!

Thats not funny Alex, I had loaded coke loads show up in my train at baldwin for Cadillac before. Messed up my entire block of shortwork and Ludingtons.

How did loaded coke cars show up on your train? Messed up train order in GR?

CAT345C wrote:

Saturnalia wrote:

Raildudes dad wrote:Well I tell them it took a tour of the town and it's still here in Grand Rapids

Ahh, the good old GR circle tour. Oughta send them up on a round trip to Baldwin, to make sure those cars see all of the GRR railroads!

Thats not funny Alex, I had loaded coke loads show up in my train at baldwin for Cadillac before. Messed up my entire block of shortwork and Ludingtons.

What, you mean to say you can’t just interchange them to the GLC at Clare?

Saturnalia wrote:

CAT345C wrote:

Saturnalia wrote:quote="Raildudes dad"]Well I tell them it took a tour of the town and it's still here in Grand Rapids/quote]
Ahh, the good old GR circle tour. Oughta send them up on a round trip to Baldwin, to make sure those cars see all of the GRR railroads!

Thats not funny Alex, I had loaded coke loads show up in my train at baldwin for Cadillac before. Messed up my entire block of shortwork and Ludingtons.

What, you mean to say you can’t just interchange them to the GLC at Clare?

Alex, It would be much quicker to interchange them at Reed City and turn them north there rather than Clare.

Alex, It would be much quicker to interchange them at Reed City and turn them north there rather than Clare.[/quote]
Great Lakes Casting in Ludington used to get a lot of coke. I believe some was even trucked over to Cadillac at one time too. Price/service would come into play from time to time.
When you get a switch list with target tracks THATS where you put the cars. When they were outta whack I would look up the individual cars by looking deeper in the computer. Wasn't hard to do if you knew how but most of the switch people just followed instructions. One time we came up with 90 foot flats for Holland...who in Holland gets 90 foot flats?...turns
out they were for Holly/Holly Tube for change over to frame flats for Chrysler. The bills showed HLD and that, in our yard became Holland...even though its Waverly. I called Holly Tube and found out they were theirs. Got them re-routed and the bills changed so they ended up in the right place.
I wonder if anyone still does that?

And that’s just GRP. Imagine system wide. Imagine industry-wide. *shudders*

It’s people like Dok who really keep the system functional. Many work, only a few really truly care about the customer.

It is all industries. I deal with it every day with my parts suppliers. It amazes me how difficult it is for people to get the right part shipped out to the right address. I noticed it started getting bad in '08 or '09. Since then most of the good people retired, were "bought out", or just plain fired. Now that business is good everybody is overworking a minimum staff of people who were never trained properly, lack customer service skills or just don't care.

To all you young folks: take your jobs seriously, even if it is flipping burgers. Put effort and thought into what you do. It will pay off in the future. Trust me.

When you get a switch list with target tracks THATS where you put the cars. When they were outta whack I would look up the individual cars by looking deeper in the computer. Wasn't hard to do if you knew how but most of the switch people just followed instructions.

In the interest of keeping my job, I can't say where or what RR, but it was in Michigan. I was switching cars according to my switch list when I noticed I had 4 empty tankers that were being put on a local going to a place that ONLY receives loads. I called the yardmaster and questions this. He said the computer says their loads and their going to this industry. I tell him I can see the springs are not depressed, a indication of a load or empty and my switch list shows it as a empty. He says he'll get back to me. 5 min later, the trainmaster comes on and asks why I am refusing to follow instructions. I say I am not and was just asking about some cars. He says to follow the list because the computer and billing knows if its a load or empty and where it is supposed to go.

Long story short, the industry got 4 cars back that they had just unloaded last week and were most likely charged for the double move.

R.E.A.P.E.R. wrote:the trainmaster comes on and asks why I am refusing to follow instructions. .

...because if you follow instructions you know to be wrong you are guilty of malicious compliance.