Train parked across the tracks...

The worst part is when trains go missing

 

How does one lose a train? Car keys, people, cars, doggies, kitties, kids, wives, even semi trucks can go missing. Trains are bigger. ...but I realize anything is possible.

 

The CN in Harvey, IL is a big offender of the train blocking the entrance/exit. The have one track that you have to cross as you enter the yard and another track you have to cross after ingating. The second one isn't so bad, you just have to drive the long way around that one. You can easily lose 30, 45 minutes while they move cars around.

A former bad one was NS Landers yard (Chicago). The old ingate/outgate house was between two inbound tracks. So if a train is coming in (or leaving) you were stuck. But NS remodeled their yard and moved the ingate to where you don't have to cross any tracks and relocated the outgate on the other side of the yard. So a former yard I hated, isn't so bad now they did that and installed the scanners and kiosks.

BNSF Cicero is a weird layout, depending on what lot you have to take your box, just past the ingate, you have to cross 3 tracks. If there is a train, you can wait or go the long way around.

 

As you should...Southern Pacific sided a load of Desotos in the desert......they stayed there for near 10 years . Sad part is once discovered, they were destroyed.

Another rail incident: Union Pacific sided a load on Anhydrous Ammonia in a bad area. This is a bad gas that travels as a liquid under pressure and it's also a key ingredient in crack........deputy dawg caught a couple of crack heads on top of the car with a 5 gallon bucket, seems they planned to draw some off to make some crack.....trust me when I say that's not a good idea for the 2 crack heads and 50 of the nearest homes down wind..... true story!

 

trust me trains go missing when i ran intermodal for jb we'd have nights where dispatch would say we have no loads cant find the train and the entire jb fleet would be just milling about waiting for the train to show up or to get a update to where it is

 

Trust me, the extreme inability in freight railroads management now days have reached levels unknown to man. Trucking couldnt hold a candle to it.

 

Ebola guy mention it, cn Harvey is the worst in my book. Only railyard I get stuck in. Everytime I go in it, I spend atleast a hour waiting in line or waiting for the train to get out the way. Once the train comes, you have to decide if you should wait or rush to the other side to beat it

 

All the time, they have no clue where it's at, when it will arrive. Someone forgot to input something, or the computer failed to update something. What's more fun, when they loose one box car or one intermodal car or intermodal container and have no idea where they parked it, left it, or which train they put it on.

Few times a year, they will switch cans around within the Z train, and forget to input which car they moved a container to, or better yet, the Z train will arrive, someone will transpose a number and they forget to unload a container, or they take a container going on a regular train and put it on the Z train. One of the weirdest, someone inputed the info for the L.A. to Dallas train as the L.A. to Denver train. 4 days later, the UP in Denver got two trains, each one 10,000' long. Ooops. One of the ramp coordinators got fired some years back after she sent 15 containers bound for Oakland export to Chicago.

Back in the early '90's, I worked in a book warehouse, we should ship our returns back to the main warehouse outside Philly. One time, we had 100K in returns, called to order a boxcar. Two nights later it shows up. I go to load it, the doors have seals on them. Cut the seal and open it, it's loaded with newsprint. A paper company in Oregon had shipped 10 boxcars of newsprint destined for Miami, Fla.32 weeks earlier. Somehow, one of the box cars got separated and someone thought it was empty and delivered it to us. We notified our shipping dept., they called the railroad and ordered a new boxcar and told them to pick that one up as it was delivered wrong. 3 days later, they pushed the loaded one out of the way, and brought us an empty. When they came to pick up our load 3 nights later, they left the other loaded one behind. It sat there for 10 days. Finally, we called the Miami Herald, who the load belonged to. They were glad to hear, as they had received the other 0 boxcars, but the railroad didn't know where the 10th one was. Two nights later, it was finally picked up, 2 weeks later it arrived in Miami.