Large Scale Central

The next item on the agenda is ....

Prototypes
#21

I’ll give my 2 cents as a former railroader and one that saw some interesting changes with the FRA regulations in regards to rest.

I’ll start with the old law. Less than 12 hours of on duty time = 8 hours undisturbed rest

12+ hours on duty time = 12 hours of undisturbed rest.

New rules under RISA

Less than 12 hours of on duty time= 10 hours undisturbed rest

Greater than 12 hours= rest time to equal total on duty time. Ex 14’ on duty = 14’ of rest

After 6 starts in a row (0001-2359) on separate days = 48 hours rest

After 7 starts in a row (0001-2359) on separate days = 72 hours rest

Oh but what, say you go on duty at 0001, get off at 0800, rest until 1800, and back on duty at 1800, it only counts as “1” start for that day…

Or if on duty at 23:59-11:59, rest for 12 hours, rested at 23:59, but not called until 0001 your number of starts gets reset because you were ‘off’ one full day…

Confused yet?

Oh and I’'l add that your off duty time starts when you ‘punch the time clock’. So in my case, many times I would have 8 hours off (old rules) before I would have to be back at work. Off duty at say 0600 after working a night switch job. The clock starts running at 0600. I leave work, drive home (say I don’t fight traffic and it takes me an hour to drive home), so now I’m home at 0700 with 7 hours of rest left. Take a shower, sh**, shave, and drink a beer. Now it’s 0800 with 6 hours of rest left. Go to sleep. Phone rings at 12:00 to be on duty at 1400. The railroad gave me a 2 hour call to be back at work at 1400. So I went to bed at 0800, slept for 4 hours, and phone rang at 1200. Get up, eat, say hi to the wife, kids, dog, etc and leave the house at 13:00 to be at work at 14:00… I technically got “8 hours of rest” but how much sleep did I get?

The problem is two fold. One is the railroads, and second is the unions. The railroads want to get by with hiring the least amount of people as possible (duh, saves $$, and you don’t want guys sitting at home on the extra board making guarantee), and second the union is screaming if the boards get too long because the members aren’t ‘turning and burning’…

#22

Hans-Joerg Mueller said:

According to my dictionary/understanding “enterprise” in that sense refers to economic and business matters. Last I heard no branch of any armed forces anywhere in the world qualifies in that category.

So as mentioned it’s about railways and railroads. I’m looking forward to Craig Townsend pitching in with his “real world” examples.

That’s the problem with English as a second or third or is it forth language, you have to keep running to the dictionary, and still get it wrong. Stop trying to be smug, you don’t wear it well.

#23

Thanks Craig, it’s nice to hear from the “been there, done that” corner !

#24

I should have added the other issues of train lieups (line ups). Take my example as before. Off duty at 0800, rested at 1600 projected to work at 1600 when you tie up. You go home and sleep til 1200, and wake up because you were expecting a call. Nope, not yet the lineup shows you now projected to be on duty at 2000. You say okay great I’ll get some stuff done around the house. Go mow the lawn, pick up the kids from school, it’s now 1700. Great take a short nap, or if your feeling really good stay up. 1800 rolls around and you think the phone is going to ring. Check the lieup again, and now it shows an on duty time of 0600 the next day… Okay fine, I’m 5 times out still, sounds reasonable. Stay up with the kids, go to bed around 2200, expecting a phone call at 0400, and now your 3 times out. Still not too bad, but getting closer. 1st out guy decides to layoff, extra board man fills his slot, gets called at 22:30. Now your asleep, two times out still expecting a call at 0400.

Railroad decides that it needs to run the train that hasn’t been showing on the lieup all day. Calls the 2nd guy out. How’s its 23:00, and your first out. The regularly scheduled Z train gets called at 00:00 for an on duty time of 02:00, expected departure at 0400… Ring, ring the phone rings at 00:00, you’ve been asleep for 2 hours. Get up, drive to work, sit on your butt for 2 hours waiting for the train to be ready. It’s now 0400 the time you thought you were going to be called for work!

Tired yet? You’ve gotten 4+ 2 hours (6 total) of actual rest. But the clock shows you’ve been off for 18 hours and have had 18 hours of rest. The two above examples apply to anytime your on call. Extra board or an assigned pool job.

Edit: If you try and lay off fatigued because you are, the RR comes back at you and says “you’ve had 18 hours of rest, you shouldn’t be fatigued” and they call an investigation… Because the FRA gets reports on who layoff fatigued… Oh but Safety 1st! :wink:

Extra boards are even more crazy, as anyone can layoff any time. You can go from being 10 times out to 1st out in minutes… See why I wanted to work a “regular” switch job with set on duty times? Every night,day you go to work at the same time, no question. But when will you get off? After 8? After 12? After 13???

#25

These will give you a few good laughs!

NSFW…

http://youtu.be/UakdYcUIWCo

This one is even better, especially when you have the background of RRing to understand the level of frustration!

http://youtu.be/KUZEa9PN28s

I can’t find it but there is floating around a really good video that talks about being 2nd out and having no friends, but as soon as you’re 1st out everyone starts calling…

#26

Boy, I don’t mean to be a thread killer… I was just trying to provide some information. :wink:

#27

Craig,

I’m still recovering, I haven’t laughed so hard in a very long time. SWMBO told me to get a grip - this was last night. She’s away 'til Sunday night so I get to laugh as loud and hard as I like.

BTW I haven’t filled her in on what NSFW means … but oh man does it apply.

#28

For what ever reason the Canadian’s seem to get away with the “F” bomb on recorded radio and telephone lines more than the US. I remember working into Vancouver, BC and talking with the CN yardmaster, and RTC and they would swear over the radio just as much as the CN crews. It was quite a shock, as down in the States if we tried even something close the Trainmaster would come yelling!

#29

Is there an analog of the FCC in Canada? There are the seven deadly words, you know.

#30

It’s either the liberation or the frustration factor or, perhaps, a somewhat limited vocabulary. By and large they are quite genteel on the train standby line, even when the conversation gets a bit hot because they’re tired of the “darling” at RTC.

Different story once they’re off the train and I ask “How’s it going?” there comes that liberal flow of *&$% this and *@#%$ that. Not surprising after a few hours of RTC con.

#31

Off the radio, here in the States it was pretty much the same thing, but the Canadians didn’t seem to mind on the radio…

But back to the rest issue! The engineer I trained under was an insane man that used the rest rules to his max. He worked 7 (that’s SEVEN) YEARS with only taking off 3 24 hour periods! This was under the old rules, and he told me that he would intentionally tieup short 11’59" on duty instead of 12’01" so that he would only have 8’ of rest. If he wasn’t going out on his rest he was PO’ed. So the crews that moan and groan about not having enough rest are the same crews that moan and groan because they “only” had 17 starts in a 15 day period instead of the usual 20 starts…

Oh I should add that the new rule under RISA has a max number of hours per month that you can work. It is 276 hours per month. It works out to be 23 days at 12’ of work. One of the guys that worked a night switch job hit this 276 number usually by day 20 or 21…