Prototype Railroading: Switching

As many of you are already aware, I spend a lot of my time on freight trains, operating between Glendive, MT, and Fosyth, MT.  The trains run much larger routes than that, but most of the Conductors in Glendive work on the West Pool, which is the Forsyth run.  We also have a Helper Pool in Glendive, on which Engineers and Conductors operate east, on a helper engine, pushing heavy trains up the grades in eastern Montana and western North Dakota.  The Helper Pool is one of the most preferred jobs in Glendive, and therefore it takes quite a bit of seniority to be on that pool.  Besides that there are a few yard jobs.  For the past two months, I was working on the west pool.  Eventually, I was bumped off o that by someone with more seniority, so I went to the Conductor's Extra Board.  An extra board is exactly what it sounds like.  Unlike the pool jobs, someone on the extra board is not permanently assigned to a regular job.  Instead they work on any job they are qualified for which has a vacancy. If a Conductor calls in sick on the West Pool, then someone from the Conductor's Extra Board gets called to fill in.  Because most of our crews are on the West Pool, most of the Conductors on the extra board get called to go to Forsyth.

A couple of weeks ago, I got bumped off of the extra board.  There were openings on the west pool, to Forsyth, but I really was getting tired of going to Forsyth.  So I decided to put myself on the Brakeman's Extra Board.  I am still certified as a Conductor, but as long as I am on the Brakeman's extra board, I can only work in positions a brakeman would be qualified for, unless there are no available Conductors available. Brakemen can work on yard jobs, work trains, any train that has a Brakeman, and as a Conductor on the helper runs.  Technically, the Conductors on the helpers are actually Brakemen earning Conductor's wages.  Since I went on the Brakeman's extra board, I got called to Forsyth once, due to no available Conductors in Glendive.  Other than that, I have primarily been working on the helpers.

On Sunday, I got a surprise though.  There were several helpers that needed to be covered early Sunday morning, after I was rested.  So I went to bed Saturday evening, figuring the phone would ring and I would get called for work at about 3:30am.  During those hours when I was asleep, trains got delayed, and those helpers were delayed.  Instead, the phone rang at 5:30am, and I was called to be the Switch Foreman, in Glendive yard.  The normal foreman is away on vacation, but there were still trains that needed to be put together and cars to deliver to local industries, so someone needed to cover the job, and that someone was to be me.

The Switch Foreman is basically responsible for the yard.  Some trains pick up cars before leaving Glendive, and others set out cars upon arrival.  It is the duty of the switch crew to make sure that happens, and to make sure the right cars are set out and picked up.  When the trains are all made up and ready to go, cars have to be delivered and picked up from local industries, and cars have to be interchanged with a nearby short line railroad, the Yellowstone Valley Railroad, or YSVR.  It is a long day, and it is pretty intense, because the foreman has to know where everything is going and then direct others in the crew to put things together properly.  If everything goes well, trains get out on time and the yard empties out.

I started my day by freaking out just a little.  I had never worked on the switch crew, and I certainly had never been the Switch Foreman, so while I knew the responsibilities, I had no idea how to figure out what to do.  Once I got into work, I went on the computer and printed out a list of all the cars on every track.  That showed where each car was located, what was in it, where it was going, and which train was taking it there.  The next thing was to sit down and make a plan.  Part of that involved talking to the Trainmaster about what he wanted done first.  The next step is to go out to the yard and get to work.  We located the switch engines, and got to work.  The first step was to put 19 rock cars on an eastbound train, which was already sitting in the yard and scheduled to depart an hour later.  Once that was done, we started pulling apart cuts of cars on other tracks and putting the cars in different blocks on several tracks, arranging them by their destination and train assignment.  It sounds simple enough, but sometimes in a block of cars, you have one car, right in the middle, in the wrong place, so it takes some time to pull the block of cars apart and get the car out.  There is a lot of thinking ahead, so that you do not create more work for yourself.  For example, when we started, the switch engines were coupled to some cars that we were not even going to touch until later that afternoon.  However, since the engines were already coupled, and we had to pull them out anyway, we moved those cars onto the track we wanted them on.  Then, later in the afternoon, they were out of the way for building another train.  We did not have to come back to them and move them, we could just begin working that track.

The day went well.  We spent most of it outdoors, moving railroad cars.  We got all the trains out on time, and we were able to get a few things ready for Monday.  I knew they would not be calling me back for that on Monday, because I had already worked six days, and was due for two off.  By the end of the day, I was completely exhausted.  I had walked several miles, handled countless railroad cars, built two complete trains, assembled pick ups for two others, and got one ready to be brought to the YSVR on Monday.  By the end of the day, it seemed that whenever I closed my eyes, all I saw was railroad cars.  That night, I woke up, sitting up in bed, trying to explain a switching move.  Weird stuff happens after intense days like that!

The scariest thing that happened all day-they gave me a trainee.  Once again, that was the first time I had ever worked on that job.