For the last three weeks, I have been doing on the job training. I started out working on the freight trains between Glendive and Forsyth, about 125 miles west of here. That went well. The schedule was a little crazy, but I guess I had better get used to that! I was mostly on either empty or loaded coal trains, depending on the direction I was going. I was on a few other freight trains too though. Empty coal trains are some of the lightest trains we have go through here regularly, and loaded coal trains are among the heaviest. I was on several loaded ones that weighed over 17,000 tons!
Adter spending most of the first week on the road, I was given a different assignment. I was moved to the yard, as a Utility employee. The utility is responsible for moving locomotives around. Glendive has a roundhouse and a service area, so a lot of locomotives come off trains when they get here to be fueled, serviced, or repaired, if needed. Generally we fuel locomotives if they have less than 1,500 gallons in their tanks. Most hold around 5,000 gallons of diesel. Sometimes locomotives also need to have repairs made. In that case, we would also pull them off the train and bring them over to the roundhouse. Before trains go out again, they need to have locomotives added, and the utility crew was also responsible for that. The roundhouse has four tracks, called ready tracks, where they would park locomotives that were ready to go out on trains. We would go over there and pick up locomotives and then run around the yard and put them on the trains they were assigned to. If that was all done, then the crew taking the train did not have to worry about getting their engines before they left. They could get in the train and head out of town right away. That saves them a lot of time. Besides that, utility crew handles a lot of the other odd jobs around the yard area. Sometimes it is as simple as throwing switches for a train that is coming in. Other times it is walking the length of a train to conduct an air test and inspection. Walking trains always takes a while. Most of the trains are over a mile long, and the air test requires an inspection of both sides, so you walk the length of it twice. The first train I had to walk was over 7,000 feet long, because it did not fit in the yard track it was on.
I spent about a week working in the yard, on utility, and then I was supposed to go on the helper locomotives. When our coal trains head east from here, they get a helper locomotives. Some other trains also get a helper, but the coal trains always get one. They go up Beaver Hill, into North Dakota. The helpers push form the rear, and basically just give them some extra horsepower over the hill. Once they are at the top of the hill, the train stops, they uncouple the helper locomotive, and the train continues east, while the helper locomotive returns to Glendive. There was a mix up with that though, and I ended up being put back on the road to Forsyth. I did not get to do the helpers this time around. I spent all of this week running back and forth between Glendive and Forsyth again. This week was a little crazy though. At the beginning of the week, there was a derailment in Idaho, on a different line. That meant that a lot of trains were detoured over this line, while they cleaned up the mess on the other one. Things were busier than normal, which also meant everything went a bit slower than normal. Later in the week, there was a minor derailment in Dickinson, ND, which is on this line. Because of that, nothing could get through, and so everything was quiet for a day and a half while they sorted that out. Those two derailments really made things crazy around here, even if they were not here.
Next week, we go back to the classroom. We will be in the classroom for the next three weeks. In two weeks, we have our first test. It is called the Hostlers Exam. It is a basic exam, going over basic operations, air tests, safety rules, and operation rules. We have two opportunities to pass that, with a 90% or more. If we do not pass it, we continue with training and take it again at the end, with the rest of our exams. If we do pass it, we are licensed as a Hostler. That allows us to operate engines without any cars and perform conductor and brakeman duties around the yard. In three weeks, we take a practice exam. The practice exam does not effect our training or our job, but it gives the training people an idea of how we are doing for the real thing, which will be six weeks later. Ideally, most of us will get a passing grade on it. We will be studying a lot more rules over the next few weeks, and in three weeks, we are doing more on the job training.
So that is my life. I have no schedule anymore. Sometimes I go to work at 11:30pm and work until lunch time. Other days I go to work just after breakfast and work until dinner time. Basically, if I am not at work, I spend most of my time sleeping, so I will be rested enough when the phone rings to go to work again. The classroom will be on a more regular schedule for the next few weeks.
Well, that is all I have to say!
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Friday, March 4, 2011
Switching
This post comes at you from eastern Montana!
Last Saturday, I made the LONG drive from Utah County to Glendive, MT. It took 13 hours, and I covered 927 miles. Along the way I made exactly three fuel/rest stops, in Idaho Falls, ID, Bozeman, MT, and Miles City, MT. It was a very long drive, although shortened a bit by the ability to drive at relatively high speeds for most of it. It started out in the snow, but that only lasted as far as Ogden, UT, which was fortunate. I really did not want to drive in the snow if I did not have to.
On Sunday, I managed to find the ward here, the Glendive Ward, and get to church. The church is located right next to the railroad tracks, so it is actually a pretty noisy place at times. At least it does not shake whenever a train goes by! The ward is well attended, but it also covers a huge area!
On Monday morning, I began my first day at work with the BNSF Railway. Several of us met in a conference room on the second floor of the Glendive station building. The class was supposed to have eight students, however one did not show up, which is a bit odd, because apparently he called our instructor and talked about coming, and he formally accepted the job last week. But when Monday came around, he was missing in action. Since then he has not called or emailed or made any contact. At this point he has lost the job even if he does turn up somewhere. We have covered so much stuff that catching up would be difficult. We began class as normal, despite the absentee. Monday was a lot of very general safety information. We started reviewing the rule book, which is the size of a toddler, and going over safe practices around trains. We learned about the "Eight Deadly." They are eight things that pretty much guarantee a very serious injury or death of you do them. We reviewed a lot of rules, and watched some short safety videos. Most of the stuff we covered on Monday was pretty obvious, and it makes you wonder how stupid someone was to get such a rule in the book!
On Tuesday, the coldest day all week, we decided to go outside. It warmed all the way up to -2. We learned some basic operations such as setting hand brakes on cars and coupling air hoses for the brake system. We also learned how to disassemble the couplers and replace the knuckles if they break. We were probably only outside about an hour, but it doesn't take long to want to somewhere warm when it is that cold! The rest of the day was spent indoors, with more rulebook stuff. Wednesday was even more rule book stuff.
On Thursday things worked out such that we could go outside and actually use a train. Not only that, it was the warmest day all week! The switch engine had a crew, and they had an hour to work with us in between their regular duties, so we all got to work around a moving train. There were three freight cars we found laying around, which were not being used, so we decided to practice coupling the engines to them. Of course, being conductor trainees, we were not be operating the locomotives, but rather spotting for the engineer. We took turns using hand signals to instruct the engineer to pull away from the cars left on the siding, and then we would guide him back to make a joint, or coupling. Once the coupling was made, we would give him a signal to indicate that we would be stepping between the locomotive and car to couple the air hoses. Once that was done, it was the next person's turn to start the process over again. We were also instructed to go to the cab of the locomotive, so we could see the hand signals from the engineer's perspective. We had a pair of locomotives, and so the engineer was sitting well over 100 feet away from the coupling, in the far locomotive. He was also facing away from the coupling, meaning he was watching these hand signals in a small mirror outside his side window. We felt like we were giving huge signals, but from the cab, they did not look quite so huge! We all got to ride back and forth a couple times to get an idea of what he sees and how he reacts up at the head end during such an operation. After about an hour, we all had a chance to do that, and so we headed back inside. The locomotives and cars we were using wandered off with the switch crew, and we picked up where we had left off with rules and practices.
Today was a very short day, but it did involve more rules. We spent a couple hours studying the rules for conducting different types of air brake tests on the trains. Those rules and exceptions and really complex. Not only do we have to know when to conduct such tests, we have to know how. Typically it is the conductor who takes charge of such tests. On Monday we have to be back at work, and we will be putting ourselves on a call board for trains. Starting next week, we will be doing on the job training. We will mark up with a crew and ride the trains with them to get an idea of what operations are like outside of the classroom. We will have three weeks of on the job training before we return to the classroom again. This job is a lot of fun, but I think it will be better in warm weather!
That locomotive above is one of the pair we were using yesterday. I did not take the picture, but it is the actual locomotive that someone else spotted out there.
Last Saturday, I made the LONG drive from Utah County to Glendive, MT. It took 13 hours, and I covered 927 miles. Along the way I made exactly three fuel/rest stops, in Idaho Falls, ID, Bozeman, MT, and Miles City, MT. It was a very long drive, although shortened a bit by the ability to drive at relatively high speeds for most of it. It started out in the snow, but that only lasted as far as Ogden, UT, which was fortunate. I really did not want to drive in the snow if I did not have to.
On Sunday, I managed to find the ward here, the Glendive Ward, and get to church. The church is located right next to the railroad tracks, so it is actually a pretty noisy place at times. At least it does not shake whenever a train goes by! The ward is well attended, but it also covers a huge area!
On Monday morning, I began my first day at work with the BNSF Railway. Several of us met in a conference room on the second floor of the Glendive station building. The class was supposed to have eight students, however one did not show up, which is a bit odd, because apparently he called our instructor and talked about coming, and he formally accepted the job last week. But when Monday came around, he was missing in action. Since then he has not called or emailed or made any contact. At this point he has lost the job even if he does turn up somewhere. We have covered so much stuff that catching up would be difficult. We began class as normal, despite the absentee. Monday was a lot of very general safety information. We started reviewing the rule book, which is the size of a toddler, and going over safe practices around trains. We learned about the "Eight Deadly." They are eight things that pretty much guarantee a very serious injury or death of you do them. We reviewed a lot of rules, and watched some short safety videos. Most of the stuff we covered on Monday was pretty obvious, and it makes you wonder how stupid someone was to get such a rule in the book!
On Tuesday, the coldest day all week, we decided to go outside. It warmed all the way up to -2. We learned some basic operations such as setting hand brakes on cars and coupling air hoses for the brake system. We also learned how to disassemble the couplers and replace the knuckles if they break. We were probably only outside about an hour, but it doesn't take long to want to somewhere warm when it is that cold! The rest of the day was spent indoors, with more rulebook stuff. Wednesday was even more rule book stuff.
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| Photo from www.trainpix.com |
Today was a very short day, but it did involve more rules. We spent a couple hours studying the rules for conducting different types of air brake tests on the trains. Those rules and exceptions and really complex. Not only do we have to know when to conduct such tests, we have to know how. Typically it is the conductor who takes charge of such tests. On Monday we have to be back at work, and we will be putting ourselves on a call board for trains. Starting next week, we will be doing on the job training. We will mark up with a crew and ride the trains with them to get an idea of what operations are like outside of the classroom. We will have three weeks of on the job training before we return to the classroom again. This job is a lot of fun, but I think it will be better in warm weather!
That locomotive above is one of the pair we were using yesterday. I did not take the picture, but it is the actual locomotive that someone else spotted out there.
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