Customer Service

Before I worked for the railroad, I worked in a position that  had a very strong focus on providing a high level of customer service.  I worked for a cruise line, as a tour bus driver, in Alaska.  After safety, making the customers happy, or guests as we called them, was our number one concern.  Every day at work, I met, talked to, and worked with the guests, and on  many days, there were several hundred of them that would ride the motor coach I operated, throughout the course of the day.  For the most part, they were vacationers, who had decided to visit Alaska, and consequently, they were generally a pretty happy crowd to begin with.  That did make my job a bit easier.  After doing this for a few years though, I got in the habit of going out of my way to make sure everyone on my bus was comfortable, happy, had all their questions answered, and knew where they were going.  I only knew of one lady who got off my bus still pissed off at the world, but we will get to that story in a minute.

Since I took this job, with BNSF, I have found that my interaction with the customers is nearly completely nonexistent.  As a Conductor, it is extremely rare that I ever see a customer, and even less frequent for me to actually have to talk to one or deal with one.  Most of the time, the customers who are moving the freight on my train are hundreds or thousands of miles away.  They have no idea I exist, and I would know the same about them, except that their freight is on the train.  In some ways, I actually do miss working with the customers, but I enjoy what I do for the railroad.  In the very early hours of this morning, I actually did have an interaction with a customer though, and it was an eye opening experience of sorts.

Yesterday afternoon, I was called for the M-LAUDIC1-09A, a low priority merchandise train, from Laurel, MT, to Dickinson, ND.  I got on it in Forsyth, and I knew we would be on it a while when I saw that we had a pickup to do there, plus two pickups and a set out in Miles City, a set out in Terry, and a set out in Glendive.  At least we would earn the local pay rate!  We got started and it stayed daylight until we were finishing up our work in Miles City.  One pickup in Miles City was inaccessible to us, so we only had the one pickup and set out to do.  We delivered a covered hopper car full of fertilizer or something to the local Farmers Union, and then we picked up 19 ballast cars to be brought east for reloading and use on the under cutters next week.  Most of it went without a problem.  We did have a guy at a crossing decide to crawl under the train, rather than wait for it, right when I instructed the engineer to pull the ballast cars off the old siding.  Luckily for him, the brakeman spotted him and the train did not move until he was clear.

While we did our work in Miles City, unbeknownst to us, the General Manager of the Montana Division was there watching us.  We saw his Jeep parked close to the right of way, but we did not recognize it.  We were going to report a trespasser, and the brakeman went to investigate, and only then did we learn it was the General Manager.  When he left, we put the train back together and headed east.  Those ballast cars are all old and falling apart.  Some of them are so rusty I am afraid if we make a hard joint, they'll just completely disintegrate!  We got the train over the Miles City detector, and it reported no defects.  That was good since we had spent several minutes trying to get brakes to release and apply on those ballast cars before we left!

Several miles later, we went over the Shirley detector, and it reported dragging equipment.  It was about 40 cars back, right in the middle of those ballast cars.  We got off and found an air hose hanging low.  The ballast cars have main reservoir hoses, in addition to the normal brake hoses, so that they can be opened and closed using the air pressure from the engines.  One of those hoses had become detached from its wire keeper, and was hanging down to less than an inch above the ties.  We tried reconnecting the keeper, but it had been smashed against switches and crossings for at least a few miles, and the glad hand was pretty banged up, and the keeper would not fit in the little hole.  It was intact enough to connect to the same hose on the adjacent car, so we did that to get it up out of the tracks.  It was not a permanent fix, but it worked well enough for us!

When we got to Terry, we had two fertilizer cars to set out at the grain elevator.  We got those in position and put our train back together.  When the train was back together, we tried to air it up, but for some reason it was losing pressure.  After a minute of that, it went into emergency, so instead of walking back to the engines, the brakeman and I walked the other way.  As we did so, we could hear air leaking from somewhere.  It sounded like some hoses had come apart.  When we got to the source of the hissing, we found that an exhaust valve on a car was stuck open, letting all the air out as we tried to build pressure.  As we were fixing that, someone came along in a truck.  As he got out and started walking towards us, I was expecting complaints about us having the crossings blocked, and I was already formulating a response, with an explanation of our air problems.  When he approached me, he asked what we had set out.  I was caught a little off guard, but told him I though it was fertilizer.  The next question was definitely not expected!  He asked if it was dry or liquid fertilizer.  I had no idea there was a difference!  I told him I though it was dry, since it had come in a pair of hopper cars.  He heaved a sigh and asked if I knew anything about his liquid fertilizer, and explained that the railroad told him it would be there on April 15th.  I told him I knew we had one other car, scheduled for set out in Glendive, which had an ultimate destination of Terry, and if that was it, it would probably arrive in a few days.  He asked if we could set it out then, but we were not authorized to do so, and it was near the head end of the train, beyond the switch to the elevator anyway.  Setting it out at that point would have required backing the entire train up nearly 50 cars.  He seemed pretty disappointed, and I can understand why.  If he farms, he is relying on this fertilizer for his livelihood, and the railroad is delaying it just because it is more convenient for them than setting it out.  He was not upset with us, but he could not understand why it took so long, or why it was scheduled to go to Glendive.  I agreed with him, and apologized that we could not do anything for him, and we both went on our separate ways.  It made me think it is a miracle anyone ships with BNSF if delays are that bad!  April 15th was nearly a month ago!  I suppose my attitude of customer service is not shared with my employer.  The rest of the trip was uneventful.  When we got to Glendive, the switch crew took care of our work, and the Dickinson trainmaster was there cooking burgers and brats (yes, at 3:00am) for everyone, so we had some of those before calling it a night.

Now, on an unrelated note, the story I promised earlier.  When I worked in Alaska, we worked a lot with the Alaska Railroad.  In fact, the company I worked for owns about 25 private rail cars that operate on the Alaska Railroad.  People travelling with our company would typically do their shorter, local tours by bus, and then take the train to their next destination.  From Anchorage, they would take the train north, to either Talkeetna or Denali National Park, depending on their tour schedule.  Of course, some people did the same tours in reverse, and would come south from those locations by rail as well.  In the morning, we would shuttle people from their hotels in Anchorage to the depot, to catch the northbound train.  In the evening, we would meet the southbound train and shuttle people from the depot to the hotels.

One evening, towards the end of the summer, we were all waiting for the train to arrive downtown.  We were quite early, and it was said to be running a few minutes late.  As we were waiting, we got a call from our dispatcher.  The train had been involved a fatal collision with a vehicle, at a crossing in Willow, AK, and would be heavily delayed.  Rather than have everyone sit on the train, we would meet the train in Willow and drive them the remaining distance to Anchorage.  It was typically about a two hour drive.  We all headed north to Willow.  We did not know where the train was or where would meet it, but our dispatchers wanted us to get started north while they got more information from the railroad.  Eventually, we got all the information we needed and got to the right location in Willow.  It was the site of a crossing that had been removed.  There was a laundromat next to the tracks there, where we could turn the buses around.  The railroad had asked us to send some extra buses so they could take everyone off the train, instead of just our passengers.  There were 755 passengers on the train that day.

The location the railroad had chosen to use was small.  There was a patch of fairly level gravel right along the tracks, where the road had once been, but it was only about 15 feet wide, which meant only one car could be unloaded at a time.  It would take a while to get everyone off the 21 car train.  When the train arrived, the Conductor got off to spot the cars for the Engineer.  The first car was the baggage car, which we had to unload by hand.  We all pitched in and got the estimated 1,500 bags off and in rows for people to claim as they headed to the buses parked nearby.  Once that was done, the train was pulled forward about two cars, and the unloading process started.  After the two cars adjacent to the door were empty, they would pull the train forward another two car lengths.  This process was slow, but it moved steadily.

As the unloading process continued, buses filled up faster than rail cars emptied.  As buses got full, they left for Anchorage.  Soon, it was my turn to load.  Most people were pretty quiet.  It was dark by then and they were generally tired and a little shaken up from what had happened a few hours earlier.  As my bus was nearly full, I had a lady approach me and ask which bus was going to the Howard Johnson hotel, in Anchorage.  I explained that none were, but my bus was going to the train depot, where the railroad would be providing taxis, free of charge, for people to get to some of the hotels that the buses were not going to.  She did not like that answer at all.  She explained again that she was going to the Howard Johnson hotel, and needed to know which bus would take her there.  I repeated exactly what I had originally told her, and then added that it is physically impossible for a 45 foot bus to fit in the parking lot of the Howard Johnson.  Apparently that was still not good enough!  By this point, she started shouting at me.  I stayed quiet, and tried to maintain my composure, despite being yelled at.  Her shouting got the attention of one of my supervisors, who came over to see what was going on.  She started over with him, only shouting the whole time.  He explained everything that I had told her already, and she finally announced, "I cannot believe your company would let the train hit a car like that!  I'm never traveling with you again!"  I was thinking, "Fine by me, travel with someone else!"  Finally, we both politely told her that her options were get on the bus, and deal with it, or walk the 100 miles.  That got her on the bus, and I did not hear a word from her the whole way to Anchorage!  When she got off at the depot, there was a cab waiting for her, but she still did not miss the opportunity to share a piece of her mind with me before leaving.  What she probably did not realize was that she got a pretty good deal out of this.  Had nothing happened on the train, she would have been dropped off at the Anchorage depot and left to fend for herself and pay for her own cab.  I guess you cannot please everyone!  The train continued to Anchorage only after being emptied, and finally arrived at 4:00am, nearly eight hours late.