Is there a way to find out a general schedule of trains coming through a particular section of track?
I think this is a CSX route, and I believe it’s all freight. I can hear it from the house, but not really loud enough for me to be sure of paying attention to it and noting down times.
I’d like to know because I trailride my horse over that way sometimes and one of my routes takes me parallel to the tracks for a bit. It’d be nice to know if one was headed my way! (I could go off into the woods if I had to, but it’s dense and full of brambles and vines and I’d rather not have that argument if I can avoid it)
They don’t publish freight train schedules the way they do passenger schedules because they need to be open changes in business conditions. That said, they appear to be fairly consistently running by my place about the same time each day, so I imagine it must revolve around their employees work schedule.
Also, you might be able to find out when one is dispatched but doesn’t mean it passes by your house at a specific time on a regular basis as it might need to make random stops throughout the week.
Because freight trains aren’t scheduled as was already said, the best way to know a train is coming is a radio scanner. They make ones the size of a walkie-talkie, I’ve seen used ones for sale online for under $20, and the radio frequencies used by various railroads can be found online.
It’s not a sure-fire method, because the train crew aren’t constantly on the radio. There are places where they’re frequently communicating – or where a defect detector announces every train that passes over it – and other places where you might never “hear” the train until you actually hear it. The best way to know whether your area is the former or the latter would be to go to a train-fan forum (Trainorders, railforum, etc.), find the relevant sub-forum for your area, and ask.
Train forums! Well duh… Why didn’t I think of that! And no I’m not being snarky, it really didn’t occur to me, despite the fact that I’m on several horse and dog boards, and here of course
And yeah, I was afraid that the scheduling would be a lot more random for freight, but I wasn’t sure if there was a “this track spoken for” kind of database out there.
Part of the answer will depend on what kind of track is close to you: main line? major branch? spur?
For example, the track that runs close to my parents’ house is a spur serving the local power plant, and the only trains that ever use that track are the coal trains to the power plant. Over the course of the year the schedule shifts, but from day to day their schedule is quite regular: today’s mid-day delivery will be within fifteen or twenty minutes of the time of yesterday’s and tomorrow’s.
On the other hand, the track near me is a major branch line serving a big chunk of the state, so although there are certain ‘regular’ trains (an auto train heads westbound pretty much every weekday morning, e.g.), there’s also a lot of variety and specials and timetable adjustment.
As noted above, check with railfan groups in your locale to find out what you’re dealing with.
Surprisingly, probably not.
I read an article a decade ago where a union for railroad engineers was saying that the way freight trains get “scheduled” was a safety issue, because the engineers couldn’t be sure to be well rested: apparently engineers are placed “on call”, and then called into work whenever a full trainload of cargo is ready. If the shipments along a line are pretty constant, the train will leave at a predictable time, but for the majority of routes, and engineer may have already been awake and waiting for a call for 12 or 16 hours before he actually gets the call, then he may be expected to work a 12 hour shift.
This is rather contrary to the way railroad operations were described in stories from the 1800s, where freight trains were scheduled like passenger trains and passed a specific point at a specific time each day, but it may be that improved communications made it easier to route trains quickly, allowing their exact schedule to change as needed.
While I can see lots of reasons why a railroad would want to keep its exact schedule private, I would think they’d be open to questions that were more like “will a train pass by here in 20 minutes” than “when is the next train passing by here”, especially if they get that the answer will be used to try to avoid an accident. But just because it sounds neighborly doesn’t mean that they pay somebody to do that.
So while your intent is rather the opposite of a railfan’s, I suspect they’d have the best lines on who to contact and how, as was said above.
It’s tough to describe the way the railroad operates, but for North American freight railroads, it’s essentially like this:
At terminals (like, say, the Port of L.A.) there’s usually a “schedule” in the sense that a certain type of train will leave each day. High priority trains can have guaranteed transit times, but that’s relatively rare.
The first crew (engineer and conductor) will take the train from their “home” terminal through to their “away” terminal–usually a distance of 150 or so miles (these are subdivisions) and hand it off to the next crew. They’re paid for the trip regardless of whether it takes 3 hours or 10 hours. If there’s a breakdown en route, they will be relieved when their 10 hours of on-duty time is up. The railroad will bring a fresh crew out in a van and meet the train wherever it happens to be. This is called a “dog catch.”
Anyway, there’s a lot of fluidity in terms of how a train might be routed across the country. Every couple hundred miles, the crew changes and takes the train through their qualified subdivision until it arrives at its destination.
Since the railroad is all union, seniority is key. Those with the most seniority get first bid on which trains they want. Lots of times, they’ll take the “local” trains, which deliver and pick up a few cars at a time and bring them back to the ‘home’ terminal. Those crews are at home every night instead of in a hotel at the “away” terminal. Likewise, high priority trains usually get to the away terminal faster, so high seniority crews like to bid on those; they usually get to work for 3 hours, get paid for 10, and then relax. Yard duty is another popular option–since you never leave your home yard, you’re home every night.
Crews with low seniority are on the “extra board” and those are the “on call” folks. They can be called 2 hours before they’re expected to report for duty. Federal law says once duty starts, they can operate a train for 10 hours. Then they’re required to have an 8 hour rest period. Once that’s up, they’re on call again. Their next shift might start right then, or they might be laid up for 3 days, not really knowing when they’ll be called. There are ways to “game the system” and get an idea of what’s coming by calling the crew caller and asking where you are in the lineup, but that can be unreliable.
The regular board is a cushy place to be. The extra board sucks, and you’ll likely be on it for a decade or more before rotating into the regular board. The only thing that matters is your hire date.
Some railroads have national seniority, meaning someone can move to your “home” terminal and bump you off, while other railroads keep seniority limited to each particular subdivision.
Anyway…that’s basically how it goes on the large RR’s.
The Rail Safety Improvement Act (RSIA) has changed the minimum rest for train crews to 10 hours. Also, a maximum on-duty time to perform operations is 12 hours, not 10.
Also, Class Is are far from operating on any type of time schedule. There are too many variables involved to be able to say train A will always leave point X at the same time each day.
Yeah, I knew the RSIA had changed duty times–when I was on the RR, it was 12 hours on duty with 8 hours rest–I thought they’d just changed the duty times, so I stand corrected.
And schedule wise, I wouldn’t say a train leaves a terminal at the same time each day–just that a certain train should be scheduled to leave sometime that day. Of course, if an Amtrak or commuter train misses its slot, or a train has to double a hill, all bets are off.
– and other places where you might never “hear” the train until you actually hear it. The best way to know whether your area is the former or the latter would be to go to a train-fan forum (Trainorders, railforum, etc.), find the relevant sub-forum for your area, and ask.