UP To Test Ground-based Conductors

[LansingRailFan]

https://www.trains.com/trn/news-reviews ... pZ_RAK4c-4

[PatAzo]

Short lines do it everyday.

[BnOEngr]

Short lines do it everyday.

And the majority of those shortlines have one, maybe 2 moves/trains a day? A bit different if you're dealing with 40-60+ trains a day. How far apart are they spaced? Not every inch of track is readily accessible to a vehicle, so you can forget those time-savings.

[PatAzo]

Cost conscious short lines wouldn't deploy a conductor in a truck if it didn't add an efficiency. Commuter carriers and Amtrak are running with no conductor in the cab so from a head end prospective alone it's feasible.

For the Union Pacific and the class one's that follow the efficiency they are after is the single person crew. Dispatch 40 trains down the mainline and have 40 guys in trucks following? Not likely. More likely pushing for "expeditor" covering a number of trains.

If you read Joseph Hinrich's interview in Trains he compared PTC to lean manufacturing. If you know what lean manufacturing is you know they will be after the conductors position.

[Chip]

If you read Joseph Hinrich's interview in Trains he compared PTC to lean manufacturing. If you know what lean manufacturing is you know they will be after the conductors position.

Yeah, and lean manufacturing is why nobody can get a new car in a reasonable amount of time right now. It’s killing our industry. Someone should ask him how that worked for Chicago Assembly. It cost him his job at Ford.

[NSSD70ACe]

Cost conscious short lines wouldn't deploy a conductor in a truck if it didn't add an efficiency. Commuter carriers and Amtrak are running with no conductor in the cab so from a head end prospective alone it's feasible.

For the Union Pacific and the class one's that follow the efficiency they are after is the single person crew. Dispatch 40 trains down the mainline and have 40 guys in trucks following? Not likely. More likely pushing for "expeditor" covering a number of trains.

If you read Joseph Hinrich's interview in Trains he compared PTC to lean manufacturing. If you know what lean manufacturing is you know they will be after the conductors position.

Yeah, commuter carriers and Amtrak run with one guy in the cab but they still have a conductor and AC available with them, and the conductor has ridden up front before when necessary (see the SC derailment from a few years ago). Not a valid comparison.

I also know what lean manufacturing is. I did my time at WMU. It’s all they could talk about. It’s what’s got us in our supply chain crisis now. I hired on to the Class 1s and I can tell you, right now, that ground based conductors are an absolutely AWFUL idea. There’s track all over the system that isn’t accessible by road. The carriers are claiming that there will be “time savings” by having a roving conductor based out of a central facility respond vs having the on board crew do it. BNSF already has rapid responders on the southern Transcon and most of the time the crew fixes the issue before the responder arrives. If it’s bigger than a knuckle or air hose you’re already calling out the road truck anyway, so a GBC won’t win you back any time there. If it’s a wrong end drawbar, you also will need mechanical assistance. ETD failure? Call the Trainmaster to bring you a replacement (most of them carry spares in their rigs).

Ground based conductors are nothing more than a ploy to get rid of them entirely. The FRA needs to put an end to these games NOW.

[SD80MAC]

This is stupid. There are so many lines that have long stretches of inaccessible territory to vehicles. Invariably, that’s where a problem will happen.

[PatAzo]

UP isn't alone at wanting to reduce crew size.

https://livefromalounge.com/airbus-a350 ... perations/

The video is fairly interesting.
https://youtu.be/KIShArZ15_0

[Schteinkuh]

I also know what lean manufacturing is. I did my time at WMU. It’s all they could talk about. It’s what’s got us in our supply chain crisis now. I hired on to the Class 1s and I can tell you, right now, that ground based conductors are an absolutely AWFUL idea. There’s track all over the system that isn’t accessible by road. The carriers are claiming that there will be “time savings” by having a roving conductor based out of a central facility respond vs having the on board crew do it. BNSF already has rapid responders on the southern Transcon and most of the time the crew fixes the issue before the responder arrives. If it’s bigger than a knuckle or air hose you’re already calling out the road truck anyway, so a GBC won’t win you back any time there. If it’s a wrong end drawbar, you also will need mechanical assistance. ETD failure? Call the Trainmaster to bring you a replacement (most of them carry spares in their rigs).

Ground based conductors are nothing more than a ploy to get rid of them entirely. The FRA needs to put an end to these games NOW.

Dunno why I never saw this until now, but it's the same song and dance here at GVSU. The cirriculum is such a short sighted outlook based on graphs and "optimizing" equations that crash and burn once they're utilized outside of a controlled environment. They seriously teach that "Just In Time" manufacturing is the new way to make money, but even my short stint as a shipping clerk at Controlled Plating in GR taught me that was complete crap. Everybody's parts were high priority and, because they didn't want to make to stock anymore, their customers were running out of parts. Therefore I had to deal with countless enraged suppliers who were baffled that we couldn't turn their 21,000 parts in 18 hours, and they usually told their pissed off customers that everything was our fault, so we got those phone calls too. Prior to COVID it wasn't like that, most of these suppliers had several days worth of stock in case something happened, whether it was transportation/weather related. All the money they "saved" on their JIT method was easily burned by a barrage of issues that came from it.

Cost conscious short lines wouldn't deploy a conductor in a truck if it didn't add an efficiency. Commuter carriers and Amtrak are running with no conductor in the cab so from a head end prospective alone it's feasible.

Won't even comment on the passenger topic, but many shortlines have taken the truck away after their conductors got into costly accidents on the road. The highway is a far more dangerous place to be, especially if you're parked on the side of the road.