Prototype Railroading: Familiarization Trips

Because trains operated considerably differently than highway vehicles, and therefore require a considerable knowledge of the tracks ahead, an engineer cannot simply get on a train and run it over a stretch of track he has never seen, even if he has the card allowing him to run the train.  Since engineers usually stay primarily at the same terminal, usually this is not an issue.  In Glendive, for several years, engineers have either operated on the Dickinson Sub, west of Dickinson, or on the Forsyth Sub, east of Forsyth.  Since those were the only two lines we ran out of Glendive, all the engineers were pretty well familiar with those stretches of track.  Recently, however, we have had a little change.

Besides the Forsyth and Dickinson subdivisions, there are two other railroad lines out of Glendive.  The Circle Sub runs west, towards Circle, and is the remainder of the former Northern Pacific Redwater Branch, which once went to Brockway.  From Glendive to Circle, the line has a 10mph speed limit, and has not been used in years.  I think the railroad keeps it to store cars, and just in case oil or coal starts to be produced out near Circle.  The other line out of Glendive is the Sidney Branch, which was leased to and operated by the Yellowstone Valley Railroad (YSVR) for several years.  In January, the lease ran out, and BNSF took the line back from the YSVR.  The line runs north to Sidney, and then on to Snowden, where it connects to the Hi-Line.  Many years ago the Northern Pacific owned and operated the line as far as Sidney, while the Great Northern owned it between Sidney and Snowden.  In the last few years, as the oil industry has grown in the area, the amount of traffic on the Sidney Branch has picked up considerably, and BNSF anticipates it will continue to grow.

The Yellowstone Valley Railroad leased the Sidney Branch from the BNSF for several years, seven is what I am told.  Because of that, BNSF crews working in Glendive really had no reason to go north on that branch.  Since it had been so long since anyone in Glendive had operated on the line, and since there were quite a few engineers that had never been up the line, it was decided that everyone would need to be familiarized on it.  This only applied to engineers, so Conductors were allowed to go up there without having ever seen the branch before.  Over the last couple of months, when a train has been called for the Sidney line, typically a qualified engineer will be called, and a second engineer will be called to familiarize.  The idea is that the familiarizing engineer will operate the train, under the direction and supervision of the qualified engineer.  After a round trip to Sidney, and engineer is qualified to operate on the line.  Right now, the speed limit goes back and forth a few times between 10mph and 25mph, and there are no signals on the line.  Last time I went up there with a familiarizing engineer, he said it was a pretty easy line to run, just because it is a slow line, and there is only one siding between Sidney and Glendive.

Engineers are the only people required to familiarize on a line, because they are the only ones authorized to operate the train.  Conductors can go on unfamiliar territory, and basically get to wing it!  At this point, I have made a few trips up the Sidney Branch, and it is not a difficult line to work on.  But the first time I went up there, I felt completely lost.  First of all, I never go to Sidney, even on my time off, so I was not real familiar with the area anyway.  Also, I had never worked in dark territory (territory with no signals), and there are a few small differences when compared to track warrant control with signals.  There is a little extra paperwork, where the Conductor has to record the position of every switch operated, and sign off that they were left in the position instructed by the dispatcher.  Whenever a track warrant is cleared with the dispatcher, the Conductor has to let the dispatcher know that the position of switch form is up to date and that all the switches are lined and locked as he or she instructed.  On my first trip up there, no one told me ahead of time that I had to do that, or have that paperwork.  Fortunately, I had an engineer that had worked in dark territory before, and helped me out a lot.  And by sheer dumb luck, I happened to have a whole pile of the position of switch forms in my grip already!  On that first trip, we were to pick up a train at Crane, which is where the only siding between Glendive and Sidney is located.  Since it is dark territory, all the switches are hand operated.  The train was in the siding, which meant that someone had to line the switch before the train could go anywhere.  Once the switch was lined for the siding, the train could pull out, but then the switch had to be lined back for main track movement.  We had a brakeman on that trip, so he got to line the switch, and the crew van driver stuck around to give him a ride back to the engines after he lined it back behind the train.  It's a little trickier without a brakeman, which was the case on my next trip.  The rest of the trip to Glendive was pretty uneventful.  Going 10mph for miles at a time is really not very exciting!  It was interesting to see the line though, and see some different scenery.

On my next trip up the Sidney Branch, we actually made a round trip.  We first took a whole lot of empty tank cars to Oneok, which is an oil loading facility just south of the yard in Sidney.  We were supposed to be meeting a train there and returning to Glendive with it, but we ended up meeting them at Crane, which is five miles to the south.  We put all the tank cars where they needed to be at Oneok, and then a van met us and took s to Crane, where the previous crew had left the train.  The YSVR had brought it down there from the yard in Sidney, which is about as far as they operate on the line anymore.  This time, we did not have a brakeman.  The train was on the siding at Crane, as expected.  They YSVR had either neglected to air test the train, or had neglected to leave us any indication that they had.  In any event, since we had no indication that an air test had been done, we had to do one.  I had the van drop me off near the last car of the train, and then we began the air test.  The engineer set the brakes, and I walked up to the front of the train, about 4,500 feet away, inspecting each car along the way, and inspecting the brakes on each car, to make sure they had set up properly.  When I got to the front of the train, I lined the switch and the engineer pulled the train out of the siding.  As it rolled slowly by I inspected each car to make sure the brakes had released properly.  With the air test complete, and the train out of the siding, I lined the switch back to the main.  Our warrant actually allowed us on the main track between switches at Crane.  Ideally the dispatcher would have given us permission to pick up a crew member, which means that no one has to watch the shove, and the train could have backed up to pick me up.  However the dispatcher had only given us permission to make a reverse movement, which meant someone had to protect the shove as the train backed up.  There was a crossing near the south switch, so I watched the shove back, and met the van where it had left me to do the brake test.  Once the engines were near that crossing, I hopped in the van and got a ride around to the front of the train.  It sure beat walking!  All of this work, especially during my first trip, made me think that Conductors really ought to get some sort of familiarization as well though.  My engineers on both of those trips really made my life a lot easier, because both of them had been up the line more than I had, and had more experience working in dark territory.  On both trips, I learned a lot of new information, and went to places I had not even seen pictures of before.  Several people had tried to explain exactly how things were laid out at these locations, and their explanations helped a lot, but everything made a lot more sense when I was there, looking at what my engineers were explaining.

Now that I have been up the Sidney line a few times, I actually like the run.  It is a nice change from the constant runs to Forsyth, and at the end of the day, we go home, which is always nice.  The trip is slow, and running at 10mph can get to be a bit boring, but the work is more interesting and it's a nice change of scenery.  Currently there is no Sidney pool job, so all the jobs on the Sidney line are called off the extra board, which means a little bit of dumb luck is what gets you on one of those trains (off away from one, depending on your perspective.), but they keep talking on and off about establishing a pool to shuttle trains up north.  Personally, I think they ought to forget the shuttle idea and just run some local trains, but the railroad will probably try to avoid locals if they can, because the local crews get a higher rate of pay, making them more expensive to the railroad.

In other news, I got a little surprise the other day.  I was standing around in the depot, waiting for the crew office to decide what to do with me.  They had called my engineer and me for a grain train, which was outside of the area we can work in, as Glendive crews.  They thought about sending us home, but eventually decided to have us go get some engines off a work train in Terry.  While I was standing around the depot, waiting for the phone to ring, one of the engineers surprised me.  He made a comment about something I had written on here.  I think I was more surprised that anyone at work would read this than anything else!  I hardly knew what to say, because I just had not expected it.  I have wondered to myself on occasion, if other railroaders have ever found this, and I guess I have my answer now!