Name: RRJ
E-mail: 
Employed as: Locomotive Engineer, for 30+ years
Posted: 14 April 2012

Goob

Call time windows, 8 hour calls ect..have been discussed in the past.
Call time windows could only work if there were gaurentees in place.
Gaurentees killed it. I know 8 hour calls have been seriously discussed
over the years. It gives notice to get rest. Why the railroads fight
this one is perplexing? With all this modern technology tracking a call
time should be easy. Not so. It ran more efficeint without computers.
You would remember local crew callers the boards with plugs. Use to
call down talk to a real human being normally those crew callers were
right on the money of when I was going to get out. Now it's calling an
infobot on the phone or looking at the computer for a train line up that
is not accurite it's not continuiously updated. The times I spoke to a
crew caller it was passing the buck. The CC would blame the yardmaster
for not updating, call the YM they blamed the train dispatcher for not
updating ect...Best way of knowing was to look up trains that had been
called out heading your way from other terminal. Even that was a long
shot if somewhere down the road it hogged or they yarded the train
ect...The FRA hasn't been unsympathetic they don't have the balls to
do anything. They like to play politics by making unenforceable
guidelines (suggestions) instead of enforceable regulations.