The Polar Vortex

[John Bobinyec]

Now, I've been shot down on this in the past, but it seems like there would be a way to keep a crew technically at rest ONBOARD the train. I get it on freights that you can't just jump into a 2nd or 3rd loco, stretch a sleeping bag across the floor and be expected to be up and at 'em in 8 hours. But with a transdorm and a diner, I still can't believe that they can't have two to three operating crews ONBOARD that can rotate. I know that the Unions would never go for it, and I know that the FRA would never buy off. But it seems like it could be successful.

Of course the unions would, as long as it's covered in the agreements.

I'll ask the FRA what they think.

jb

 

[greatcats]

I have been on some Trans Pacific flights, such as Air New Zealand where there are crew rest facilities up on the tail section of the 747 for the relief crew. Whether a Transdorm car would be considered a proper rest facility I don't know. What is being discussed here is pretty theoretical and not likely to happen on Amtrak.

 

[Nathanael]

Now, I've been shot down on this in the past, but it seems like there would be a way to keep a crew technically at rest ONBOARD the train. I get it on freights that you can't just jump into a 2nd or 3rd loco, stretch a sleeping bag across the floor and be expected to be up and at 'em in 8 hours. But with a transdorm and a diner, I still can't believe that they can't have two to three operating crews ONBOARD that can rotate. I know that the Unions would never go for it, and I know that the FRA would never buy off. But it seems like it could be successful.

This actually might make a lot of sense for those long routes through the middle of nowhere. I'm sure Amtrak would have to pay "away from home" bonuses, but it might work better than having so many crew bases scattered across the Mountain West for so few trains.

Probably makes no sense anywhere where a crewbase is supporting more than one-a-day (so not even on the Silver Service route) but I think there are quite a lot of crewbases supporting only one-a-day. Perhaps something Amtrak could consider for its next BLET negotiation.

 

[fairviewroad]

I have been on some Trans Pacific flights, such as Air New Zealand where there are crew rest facilities up on the tail section of the 747 for the relief crew. Whether a Transdorm car would be considered a proper rest facility I don't know. What is being discussed here is pretty theoretical and not likely to happen on Amtrak.

I agree with your last sentence. Also, on a TPAC flight the 747 isn't going to put down in Raratonga just to take on new crew. That would be hugely expensive and time-consuming. At least on Amtrak, the stops are being made anyway.

The obvious downside to the en route rest facility plan would be that it would take away revenue space in the Transdorm car, OR would require some sort of complicated room-sharing agreement that the unions probably would not go for.

 

[Ryan]

You'd run into problems with the crew having to be qualified on the territory - right now they only need to know their 10 hour stretch (or maybe the 10 hour stretch in each direction from their crew base) and most of the time on the same host RR.

Going to a "rotational onboard crewing" type setup, the crew would have to be qualified from endpoint to endpoint, including all of the host RR's that the route touches..

 

[leemell]

I have been on some Trans Pacific flights, such as Air New Zealand where there are crew rest facilities up on the tail section of the 747 for the relief crew. Whether a Transdorm car would be considered a proper rest facility I don't know. What is being discussed here is pretty theoretical and not likely to happen on Amtrak.

It used to be common almost all transoceanic flights (slower planes). I'm not sure about now, but many transoceanic flights had at least a third pilot and these planes have (have) a rest bunk in the cockpit.

 

[jis]

Pilots don't have to be specifically qualified for every mile of the route they fly, unlike railroad engineers. So all this business about using ULH flights as an example to figure out how to manage operating staff on LD trains is grossly misguided at best.

 

[greatcats]

Airline operations are obviously quite different. The point has to do with hours of service limitations, not qualifications.

 

[jis]

More like definition of what counts towards hours of service methinks. The pilots on ULH flights are not allowed to be actively flying the plane beyond the standard hours of service. But the rest up in the loft above the cabin counts as break in hours of service as far as operating hours restrictions are concerned.

 

[John Bobinyec]

Now, I've been shot down on this in the past, but it seems like there would be a way to keep a crew technically at rest ONBOARD the train. I get it on freights that you can't just jump into a 2nd or 3rd loco, stretch a sleeping bag across the floor and be expected to be up and at 'em in 8 hours. But with a transdorm and a diner, I still can't believe that they can't have two to three operating crews ONBOARD that can rotate. I know that the Unions would never go for it, and I know that the FRA would never buy off. But it seems like it could be successful.

Of course the unions would, as long as it's covered in the agreements.

I'll ask the FRA what they think.

jb

The FRA didn't buy it. Amtrak sleepers WOULD provide sufficient rest, but only if they were stationary. That's what I was told.

jb

 

[fairviewroad]

Now, I've been shot down on this in the past, but it seems like there would be a way to keep a crew technically at rest ONBOARD the train. I get it on freights that you can't just jump into a 2nd or 3rd loco, stretch a sleeping bag across the floor and be expected to be up and at 'em in 8 hours. But with a transdorm and a diner, I still can't believe that they can't have two to three operating crews ONBOARD that can rotate. I know that the Unions would never go for it, and I know that the FRA would never buy off. But it seems like it could be successful.

Of course the unions would, as long as it's covered in the agreements.

I'll ask the FRA what they think.

jb

The FRA didn't buy it. Amtrak sleepers WOULD provide sufficient rest, but only if they were stationary. That's what I was told.

jb

How could a sleeper be considered sufficient rest, what with those breakfast announcements at 06026!

 

[Just-Thinking-51]

So on the highway side of the DOT it ok and legal to rest in a sleeper when a truck is moving. But on the railroad side a railroad sleeper car with a dinner car available is not a legal rest location for the T/E crew.

 

[Anderson]

I get a feeling that the airline situation evolved out of necessity: Without allowing some sort of "on-board rest", a number of routes would have been difficult-to-impossible until the 1950s (with jet engines). Even now, there would be some non-starter routes, but a lot of those could be handled "simply" by having a crew switch in places such as Hawaii, Fiji, etc.

Railroads never got into that sort of necessity situation. In the early 20th Century, the response would have been "put a town with a hotel at a crew change point"...if you didn't hit a crew change before then, which union rules at the time tended to ensure.

 

[jis]

So on the highway side of the DOT it ok and legal to rest in a sleeper when a truck is moving. But on the railroad side a railroad sleeper car with a dinner car available is not a legal rest location for the T/E crew.

Well Highways are known to be less safe than the railroads

 

[Nathanael]

The FRA didn't buy it. Amtrak sleepers WOULD provide sufficient rest, but only if they were stationary. That's what I was told.

jb

This is silliness -- if it's been good enough to sell to elite passengers for 150 years, it's good enough for the crew -- but it's the FRA, home of the "make trains heavier" regulations, so what do you expect.

 

[John Bobinyec]

The FRA didn't buy it. Amtrak sleepers WOULD provide sufficient rest, but only if they were stationary. That's what I was told.

jb

This is silliness -- if it's been good enough to sell to elite passengers for 150 years, it's good enough for the crew -- but it's the FRA, home of the "make trains heavier" regulations, so what do you expect.

I would disagree. I am one who doesn't sleep very well on a moving train, but if the train stops somewhere, I'm out like a light.

jb

 

[VentureForth]

If you were on a train on a regular basis with a private room and fed by the crack dining team, you'd probably get used to it pretty quick and find plenty of rest before moving back up into the engine room. When I travel, I have a hard time sleeping on my first day in the train. But it's mostly out of excitement and wanting to savor every moment I paid for. By the 3rd day, I can easily get 8 hours of solid sleep. Add a good breakfast and shower, and I'm good for the day.

 

[MikefromCrete]

Shouldn't safety always be our first concern? Having fully rested crews working on territories well know to them seems more important that an occasional blip where trains have to wait for rested crews.

 

[CHamilton]

Return of the polar vortex: Cold, at times downright frigid for end of January; increasing snow chances

The remainder or January is expected to be colder than normal, sometimes downright frigid. The pattern is very similar to the pattern during the first week of January when temperatures plunged more than 20 degrees below normal in the so-called polar vortex event. This time, the cold could stick around for a longer duration.

Temperatures should average well below normal starting around next Tuesday, lasting at least through the end of January.

 

[AmtrakBlue]

Return of the polar vortex: Cold, at times downright frigid for end of January; increasing snow chances

The remainder or January is expected to be colder than normal, sometimes downright frigid. The pattern is very similar to the pattern during the first week of January when temperatures plunged more than 20 degrees below normal in the so-called polar vortex event. This time, the cold could stick around for a longer duration.

Temperatures should average well below normal starting around next Tuesday, lasting at least through the end of January.

You love being a bearer of good news, don't you Charlie?

 

[OlympianHiawatha]

Return of the polar vortex: Cold, at times downright frigid for end of January; increasing snow chances

The remainder or January is expected to be colder than normal, sometimes downright frigid. The pattern is very similar to the pattern during the first week of January when temperatures plunged more than 20 degrees below normal in the so-called polar vortex event. This time, the cold could stick around for a longer duration.

Temperatures should average well below normal starting around next Tuesday, lasting at least through the end of January.

This confirms the various models I have been running. There is so much Arctic cold energy built up in that region it throws off the Polar Vortexes much like the Sun periodically throws off Solar Flares or CMEs. We have a lot of hard Winter still ahead of us, a trend that many Climatologists see continuing for many years.

 

[henryj]

See the BBC, "Has the Sun Gone to Sleep". It's the end of global warming. lol. www.bbc.co.uk/science-environment.25771510 Will New York freeze over?

 

[SarahZ]

I don't like the way they're trying to freak people out with the whole "Return of the Polar Vortex" (dun dun dun) headline.

When I read the article and looked at our 10-day forecast, yeah, it's going to be a bit colder than normal (as they state), but not -40 to -60 like it was a couple of weeks ago. Michigan (especially northern Michigan) occasionally has temperatures just below zero during the winter, and we call it a "cold snap". It's January, for crying out loud. January is pretty much always our coldest month, as evidenced by my heating bills for the past 17 years.

It's nothing to get all worked up about, but the news is certainly trying to work everyone into a fever pitch again. :angry:

 

[AmtrakBlue]

I don't like the way they're trying to freak people out with the whole "Return of the Polar Vortex" (dun dun dun) headline.

When I read the article and looked at our 10-day forecast, yeah, it's going to be a bit colder than normal (as they state), but not -40 to -60 like it was a couple of weeks ago. Michigan (especially northern Michigan) occasionally has temperatures just below zero during the winter, and we call it a "cold snap". It's January, for crying out loud. January is pretty much always our coldest month, as evidenced by my heating bills for the past 17 years.

It's nothing to get all worked up about, but the news is certainly trying to work everyone into a fever pitch again. :angry:

Yeah, they're saying it's going to be bitterly cold here next week. High's in the 20's and lows in the teens. Maybe for the younger set who haven't expereinced those kinds of temps, but us old folks have been through it a few times. Not saying I like the cold, but I do know how to dress for it.

 

[Nathanael]

This is just normal cold. Actually, it's unduly warm here in upstate NY... much warmer than it should be.