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In the “good old days” when I hired on Mac Yrd had different(manned) towers for all movements and yard assignments in the yard Red for South control, Blue for East control, Green for West control, Yellow for Local (hump), White for Dual control, plus you had employees in Receiving (R yard) and Dual at the north end.
Today all towers and yard jobs are controlled by only two operators. The Dual controls all movements at South (plus York 3), East, Receiving and hump. Side Tower controls West L100 lead and BIT.
So many changes over the last 38 years.
I guess these are the problems associated with the use of software-based electronic controls; they are fast, efficient, and cost jobs!
Being pretty acquainted with how electronics work, I know how susceptible these systems are to flaws. Factors can include high/low operating temperature, static potential energy, age and even magnetic interference when comes to the hardware alone. They claim that digital circuitry is much more quote on quote: “reliable” but it is still an electronic circuit and has problems associated with electronic circuitry. The fact that fancy software is now used also adds another huge tier of complexity which is another matter all together. And the worst part is that the more complicated the system the greater the risk! I sure hope that in the mere future there will be at least a handful of people that will monitor the system and if necessary replace it if something goes wrong (I assure you it will).
Wasn’t Red for the Dual, and White for the south? Every night at 8 the three south engines going over to do the pool cars…getting yelled at for telling inbounds they could run into the A building to grab a coffee because they wouldn’t have a track for at least 15 minutes…..which often turned into an hour…..or the extra east yard engine that, with the wrong yardmaster, turned rapidly to gridlock. Mother Hunter on the east midnight out throwing switches while almost magically getting the 3 200 series westbounds out at 1, 2 and 330. NOw those super long tracks from C yard all the way down to south control for the DPU double overs, and I’m sure the “magic” of yarding DPU trains with their massive double overs while trying to keep track of when the tail end is finally clear. The 80′s was fun….
@Dave…you may be right young man..its been awhile since Mac Yrd had real yard jobs
LOL, 15 minutes always means an hour in railroad time
Mother Hunter,have not heard that name in like..forever. It seemed like the operations ran way more smoothly back then in the pre Hunter days.
I spent many days/nights doubling over from East to South in the super tracks in C yard.
Yarding was always fun with huge trains. Especially when you had to set over a “designated” cut to West control or the “jet fuel” cars in R yard.
Repercussions of Lac Megantic were also felt when yarding trains as well. If any portion of your train was hanging out on the main line and you had to take the first 5000 feet in, the tail end either has to have handbrakes or a crew member or rules qualified person in position to watch the train. Fun times indeed!!
Hand brakes…or a crew member available….right; no problem with 2 man crews. Doubling into West Control….I’m sure that was a delight when the west side of the dual was working so the north end was plugged for half an hour plus. Jim Hunter was fabulous in the East; never seen a yardmaster run around so much, or giving the last three digits of a car number when both engines where shoving in…the complete opposite of the Hunter Harrison who began the PSR calamity. I like to think there was still a belief in service before Harrison. It wasn’t always perfect, mixed with the variations of opinion of what was a reasonable working speed. Now it seems, you just her the “105″ running around in panic trying to do 4 things at once while the Dual Yardmaster is stuck in the whirlpool….Receiving Control was more fun to work, but the North Switchtender needed its own brand of creativity….and always luck.