Yesterday I was asked, by Davy Crockett (that really is his name), another conductor, "What is the difference between Barnum and Bailey's circus and the BNSF Railway." I was not really expecting a question, and certainly not that one, so I just shrugged and said, "I didn't think there was one." He laughed and corrected me. He explained the difference is that Barnum and Bailey do not let the clowns run the circus. At that point I laughed and had to agree with him. As much as I enjoy working for the railroad, some of the things that happen around here really make one wonder how the company gets anything done and how they make any money at all!
The whole conversation came about because I was looking at the list of incoming trains and trying to figure out what we would need to take care of out in the yard that afternoon. We had one mixed freight train coming in, the M-LAUNTW9-01A, which had some cars on it that would need to be set out in Glendive. The train had originated in Laurel, MT, which is west of here, and was ending in Northtown, MN, east of here. It was 99 cars and had about 30 set outs in Glendive. I sat down to look through the car list and figure out where the cars were on the train that we would have to pull out. The first one was 62 cars back, which sounds like a lot, but if you just work from the rear end, it really is not that big a deal. As I was looking through the list of cars, I noticed that the list included the customer's name and the ultimate destination for the car, as well as the cargo. Some of the cars we were to pull off in Glendive were actually staying here, but only a few out of the 30 or so. Most of them were headed to other nearby places. Several cars were going to Miles City, which is about 70 miles west of here. They had already been through Miles City, but the way train movements work, it is usually easier to do the work to set those cars out in Miles City from a westbound train. They would get dropped off later that night or early the next day. Some were headed to Sidney, which is north of here. We would take those cars about six miles out of town and pass them off to the Yellowstone Valley Railroad, who would take them on to Sidney.
As I looked through the list, there were other cars getting set out in different locations along the way. Cars would be added in various places as well, including in Glendive. As I looked through some of the other cars, I became quite confused. This was an eastbound train, but some of the cars seemed like they should be on a westbound train. We had about 20 cars, which started in Laurel, and were headed to locations in the Seattle area, which is farther west. Yet, apparently they were going from Laurel to Seattle by way of Northtown, MN. I found others which were headed to Salt Lake City. Those cars, it would seem, should have gone west from Laurel to Butte, and then gone south on the Union Pacific, to get to Salt Lake City. There were several other cars which, it would seem, should have headed west from Laurel, and not east.
This made me confused, which brought about the conversation about the circus. Davy Crockett was sitting at a nearby computer looking up information about his train. Finally, after seeing so many of these cars which seemed to be going thousands of miles in the wrong direction, I turned to him and asked him what was going on with that. He was a little confused at first, and so I showed what I was talking about. When I asked what was going on again, he just shrugged and said, "Don't try to make sense of things that don't make sense."
Sometimes I think this company makes money in spite of itself. I like working here, but sometimes I wonder about this place!
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