Switching Action at Mountain King Potatoes

[Tom]

49CFR Part 218 describes Railroad Safety Procedures for men working on, under or between railroad rolling equipment. Basically it is the railroad industries version of "lockout-tagout". There's a lot more to it than that, but in the model railroad world at least (as far as your industries is concerned) except when railroad trainmen are going into the foul while performing train service duties (except to test or arm an EOT device) all personnel going on under or between any rail equipment need to protect themselves against movement into that track by lining and locking the switch away from movement into that track, a derail may be placed, and a blue flag MUST be placed at all entrances to the track to be protected.

Blue signals may only be removed by the craft, class, or group of workmen for whome the protection is being provided. So, on the layout, a blue flag sign stating "MEN AT WORK", "SAFETY FIRST" or the like between teh rails, or clamped to one rail and extending over the track while your LPB's are loading/unloading cars on your industry spurs or mechanical forces are working in your yard, locomotive repair facilities or RIP track (car) facilities.

[Charlie B]

Tom, I just want to clarify a point here. Blue flag protection does not apply to industrial workers unloading cars on private tracks nor does the FRA regulate private railroads that operate within a private complex. I would assume the tracks to the potato company are company owned or leased so would come under OSHA rules. I know a lot of mill railroads that use blue flags even though they aren't FRA regulated, but the mill we serviced didn't even know how to apply or release a hand brake, and sand for the trackmobile was too expensive.
You would think the blue flag would be universal, but for camp cars a white light is hung on the siding. And when doing track work, a red flag is needed on the track. My self, I think a blue flag should cover it all. That is one of the reasons I'm glad I don't have to worry about it any more
Charlie

[Tom]

49CFR Part 218.3-This part does not apply to--
A railroad that Operates only on track inside an installation that is not part of the general railroad system, or Confined within itself (insular railroad).

So yeah, you're absolutely correct.

However, (at least out west here and most locations I have been to in the midwest) several individual FRA Inspectors have told me personally that 218 DOES apply to these installations (such as private plant and industrial rail operations) since they are connected to the outside rail network. Basically they are confusing the definition of the term "insular railroad" in my opinion. So that is why I always teach blue signal protection when I go into do training at industrial rail operations. Besides, it's a good safety procedure, even if not required by law anyway. Out here, you would be hard pressed to find ANY industrial spur that didn't use blue flags during loading/unloading on their trackage.

[Russ Bellinis]

I guess I missed this thread in the past few weeks. I didn't realise that Gary had asked me a question back on Dec18 until just now. The problem with the T-K mechanics that BNSF had was that, typically, if a refrigeration mechanic is called out on a job, the tech is on "flat rate." If the job has a flat rate schedule of 1 hour, the tech is allowed 1 hour to complete the job plus reasonable travel time to and from the location where the work is done. You go to the location where the truck or trailer is located, park as near to it as you can and set up your ladders and tools and go to work. You get the job done as quickly as possible, pack up and go to the next job. It doesn't work that way with the railroad. I

On the railroad, you need to lock out the siding, if the switch is manually controlled. If it is controlled by ctc, you can't do anything with it. In either case, you need to call the railroad dispatcher, to get clearance to work on the equipment with an estimate of how long you will be working. You then place a "blue flag" at the end of the train between the spur and the mainline, or if there is a switch at each end and the car is on a siding, a blue flag needs to be placed at each end of the siding to effectively "kill" the siding. If the cut of cars your car is in is in a siding that is over 1 mile long, you need to place the flag at one end and then walk or drive (if possible) to the other end to place a second flag. After you have done that, you can unload tools, ladders, etc. and go to work. What the T-K mechanics were doing was driving up to the car in question, and going right to work on it just like it was a truck or trailer in a parking lot. Unlike other industries, many of the safety rules that the railroads live by are not simply company rules but are actually federal law. The "blue flag" laws are federal laws, not simply company work rules.

For me, the U.P. was a special problem. If I was called to the BNSF to work on a unit, I had a phone # for one man in Idaho, if I remember correctly. He was the BNSF Car Maintenance Supervisor. All repair work on any car on any siding in the system went through him. If someone called me to fix a BNSF reefer, I called him for authorization. When he authorized the work, he notified the dispatchers that the siding was dead, and that car was deadlined. I went to the job and set out my blue flags and went to work. If I was called out to the U.P., I had to call the dispatcher on his personal cell phone. Sometimes I had the number, sometimes I had to try to find it! I would tell the dispatcher when I wanted to work on the car and gave an estimate of how long I would be. I would then set out my blue flag. Of course, if the dispatcher went off duty and someone else came on duty while I was working, I could count on the U.P. dispatcher to forget me completely, so the new guy never knew I was there! In that case I would frequently see a train show up with the switch crew calling dispatch to find out "Who the H___ put this blue flag up here?" I would clear off my tools, and pull my blue flag and tell the switch crew, that I called in and cleared the job with say Joe Smith for instance, and they would respond "He got off work 1/2 hour ago!" Like I'm supposed to know the U.P.'s working hours, and of course the dispatcher never ever told his relief about anyone working under blue flag protection, at least it never happened when I was working on a U.P. track.

[Gary S]

Thanks for the info, Russ. In the very last photo of the switching, you can see the "blue flag" across the tracks in front of the cars which are set out at the unloading locations.

[bdw9535]

Here's what happens when someone on the switching crew doesn't spot the blue flag derail.

Bruce

[P5se Camelback]

OOPS!




... sorry!

[tetters]

Just out of curiosity. What am I supposed to see in the first photo? Or is it just a gratuitous shot showing a set of trucks sitting over a gap in the rails?

[bdw9535]

tetters,

The yellow piece in front of the wheel is the derail with the blue flag. The photo doesn't show the blue flag it was laying next to the inside of the rail.

Bruce

[Gary S]

Finally got Mountain King substantially complete. Here is a sequence of switching which mimicks the prototype as evidenced on page 1 of this thread. Compare this sequence to page 1...

First, an overhead shot of Mountain King and the empty SLC reefers at the potato unloading ramps.

   

There are 7 empties total at the unloading ramps (2 empties on track 1 and 5 empties on track 2). Our job is to pull all those empties and replace them with 6 loads that are coming in from the Pearland Yard.

The empties:

   

Here are the loaded cars on the spur. The locos are behind the loaded cars, having pushed them from Pearland Yard onto the industrial spur.

   

The first move is to get all the empties onto Track 2, clearing up Track 1 for loads. Here we are backing into Track 1 and coupling to the 2 empties there.

   

Once coupled, we pull the 2 empties out of Track 1.

   

We pull the 2 empties past the turnout so we can push them onto Track 2. This gets all the empties on Track 2, and Track 1 is clear so we can spot 5 of the loaded reefers there.

   

We throw the turnout and shove the 2 empties into Track 2 and leave them there.

   

So Track 1 is now clear. We shove the loaded reefers onto Track 1:

   

continued next post......

[Gary S]

Here we have all the loads on Track 1.... There are only 5 unloading ramps, so we now have 5 loaded cars spotted at the ramps. We'll leave the extra load on Track 1 for now because we need to pull the empties from Track 2 before we can spot the load there.

   

We pull the locos back out of Track 1 past the turnout:

   

Back into Track 2 and couple to the 7 empties there:

   

Pull the 7 empties out of Track 2 past the turnout:

   

Throw the turnout and back into Track 1 to grab the remaining load.

   

Now we pull the empties and the last load from Track 1 and go past the turnout:

   

Throw the turnout and shove the load down Track 2 to an unloading ramp:

   

The load is spotted at the ramp:

   

Once uncoupled, we pull away with the 7 empties and head for the Yard, having completed our switching duties at Mountain King.

   

Thanks for following along!

[Gary S]

And a photo of the unloading ramps:

   

[Harry]

Gary, good work

[bdw9535]

Gary,

Another great looking structure and rolling stock, your details really make the scene come to life. Very nicely done

Bruce

[Ralph]

Gary, love the switching sequence and the very real looking structure and loading facilities. This may sound odd but I keep looking at the air conditioning/venting units on the roof. Did you scratch those?

Ralph