Be A Selfish Prick


It’s 2006 at the East Rail Industrial park in Miami. The engineer has gotten out of the cab to talk strategy with the conductor about a plan of attack for handling an extremely complex switching situation. Pauses in the action like this are common in the real world. Just because a comment is annoying and […]

Switching Ops. May 14, 2023


Cars spotted at The Terminal Corporation’s logistics warehouse in Baltimore on a very rainy day in May. The photo above, taken yesterday in Baltimore, illustrates how just a single turnout and judicious industry selection can provide a platform for an interesting operating scenario. Because this is a logistics facility, you can’t just dump cars anywhere. […]

Where Does the Time Go?


In the above video clip, The Downtown Spur job works Miami Iron and Metal. Let’s take a pause in our day (pun intended) and talk about switching operations. Looking at a crew’s shift, where does the bulk of the time go? Moving cars? Nope? Travel time? A little but not that much. Where then? Last […]

Some Ops. Questions Answered


Setting the brakes is an integral part of operations as seen in the YouTube video above (go to the 1:20 mark). A reader recently contacted me asking for some clarification on operational practices centered on setting brakes while switching. For the answer I reached out to my buddy and ops. guru Tom Klimoski for the […]

The Lowly Shuttle


My first encounter with The Downtown Spur was in February of 2006 where I caught GP38-2 #2639 (above) heading light back to Hialeah Yard. Clearly it was a shuttle of some sort, the details of which I have no clue. I think it’s safe to assume he had a car (or several) that needed to […]