WSC'S War Stories: Front Range

Support this website by joining the Silver Rails TrainWeb Club for as little as $1 per month. Click here for info.

This website has been archived from TrainWeb.org/southwestshorts to TrainWeb.US/southwestshorts.

WHISKEY SIERRA CHARLIE's
WAR STORIES

FRONT RANGE desk: Saturday, August 18, 2001.

I worked overtime on 2nd Trinidad yesterday, so today -- which would normally be my "Monday" -- feels more like Tuesday. Even though it's Saturday. Go figure...

My schedule has me working the Front Range job just one day out of the week -- Saturday afternoons. As a result, I'm not as familiar with the territory as I am with the other two desks (Amarillo and Trinidad) that I currently work. Plus, I've never seen the Front Range territory in person. I did, however, get to go on train rides on the Amarillo and Trinidad lines as part of my dispatcher training in 1995. Seeing things first-hand makes a BIG difference.

The Front Range desk handles the following segments of track: First there's the Front Range Subdivision, consisting of former C&S (Colorado & Southern) trackage from Denver north (timetable west) through Cheyenne to Wendover, WY. >From Wendover to Bridger Jct, our trains travel over the Canyon Subdivision -- part of the Orin Line dispatcher's territory. Then we handle the same trains -- plus other ones that run to and from Guernsey -- on the south (timetable east) end of the Casper Subdivision between Bridger Jct and Casper. We also have the Golden Subdivision... a short branch line extending from Denver to the Coors brewery in Golden, CO. The entire territory is un-signalled, TWC (Track Warrant Control) territory. Most of the sidings are activated in the CTWC (Computerized Track Warrant Control) machine for Protect Open Switch, meaning that crews on trains entering or leaving a siding can leave the swich open behind their train, if authorized by their track warrant to do so. The territory can be frustrating to dispatch, due to its slow pace, lack of long sidings, and the length of time trains take getting over the road. Some dispatchers say it's a boring job, but I wouldn't be complaining about boredom today.

When I sat down, a westbound Boeing train (J-WICLAU9-17 - Wichita, KS to Laurel, MT, Boeing high-wides) -- led by just one engine: the BNSF 7265 -- was meeting eastbound MLAUDEN (Laurel to Denver -- BNSF 1120 East) at North Yard siding outside Fort Collins. After they met, the daylight job on the Great Western (GWR, a shortline that uses our main line for about 7 miles in the Fort Collins area) called me up. I gave issued them a track warrant (their engine today was the GWR 5625, a GP20) so they could get from Fort Collins back to their yard to tie up.

An MDENLAU1-18 -- BNSF 4342 West -- had been on duty at Denver at 1201... it would be a while before they left, but they ended up meeting the MLAUDEN at Broomfield. With almost 8000 feet of train, I let the MDENLAU hold the main and ran the LAUDEN through the siding. This is my usual course of action when making a meet at Broomfield, because if the Rennick yardmaster (at Denver) balks at taking the eastbound, I'll have the train in the siding instead of blocking the main. This plan also prevents me from having to run a loaded Valmont coal train through the siding if an eastbound is held out.

Anyway, early in my shift, I had to run paperwork on three different trains with High/Wide cars... the JWICLAU, the HFTWLAU (on duty at Guernsey for Casper) and the HPASFTW (on duty at Casper for Guernsey). By the time I ran all the printouts, highlighted the portions relevant to my territories, and prepared extra copies for the Orin Line dispatcher, an hour had passed, and a couple hundred sheets of paper had passed through my printer!

Out of Cheyenne was a westbound auto rack train, the VLAJPTL4-16 (La Junta, CO to Portland, OR) -- BNSF 4367 West -- which had a straight shot to Wendover before entering the Orin line. The HPASFTW -- BNSF 998 East -- left Casper and headed to Bridger Jct to enter the Orin line. His meet with the vehicle train had to take place on the Orin dispatcher's CTC, as both trains were too long to fit in any of the sidings between Bridger Jct and Casper. The HFTWLAU1-16 -- ATSF 610 West -- , in the meantime, had left Guernsey and ended up right behind the vehicle train heading into Bridger Jct after meeting the HPASFTW.

Soon afterward, we had a coal empty (EMOLDFM053 -- BNSF 8842) ready to depart the Moba plant north of Wheatland. But first they had a bad order to set out; by the time he left, the Boeing high-wides were right behind them and followed them into Wendover.

In the meantime, a loaded coal train for the Platte River plant south of Cheyenne was en route to Wendover from the Orin line, but the Orin dispatcher hadn't finalled it to me and I didn't have a Cheyenne crew in Guernsey to run the train. A short ways behind that was a loaded train for the Moba plant -- which the Orin line crews take through Wendover up to the Moba plant north of Wheatland. Since the Platte River train would end up parking, and since coal loads cannot use the siding at Wendover, the Orin dispatcher had to run the Moba load around the Platte River load in his CTC. The Platte River train then followed the Moba loads into Wendover and tied down on the main, to wait for a crew to deadhead up from Cheyenne.

Comedy event of the night: I was on the radio issuing a track warrant when my chief dispatcher walked in and advised me that someone had contacted our ROC (Resource Operations Center... i.e., the Special Agents) of " 2 kids " getting on the rear end of the MDENLAU when it passed through Loveland. I got on the radio and mentioned this to the crew. "I don't know, dispatcher... we were going pretty fast through there," was the crew's response. But my chief requested me to stop the train in Fort Collins and have the police meet them to locate and remove the riders.

Since the train was quite long, the plan was to have them drop the conductor off at the Fort Collins depot and then pull out of town; the conductor would meet the police at the depot and then drive ahead to the rear of the train. Well, after they got to the depot and the police hadn't shown up, so the MDENLAU asked the Great Western's evening job (which had just gone on duty at 1800) to roll them by and see if they could find the riders. They did, and reported that the riders are not two kids -- as previously reported -- but " two middle aged adults ". They were sitting on the train's rear car. The MDENLAU stops their train, and the GWR crew reported that the riders had stayed on. Now we had to wait for the police to show up.

The Great Western crew reported that they had seen a sheriff's patrol car pull someone over. The crew on the head end of the MDENLAU reported that they saw a patrol car drive by going the other direction, and they waved at him and tried to flag him down, but that the officer just looked at them and kept on going. I checked with my chief, who called the Fort Collins police, who in turn report that the responding officer had been diverted to answer an emergency call, and that another officer would be there shortly. Meanwhile, the GWR crew reported that the sheriff they have been watching has pulled over another vehicle! "They (the sheriff and the Fort Collins police) must not be talking to each other," the crew suggests. Finally, the GWR reported that a patrol car had arrived and -- five or ten minutes later -- that the riders had been removed. The MDENLAU can proceed west toward Cheyenne, where I've already got an outbound crew ordered. The whole production, from the time the train stopped until they were back on the move, consumed 55 minutes. It's a good thing the crew wasn't short on time!

While all of the above events were going on, I watched the aftermath of a derailment unfold on DS-22's territory (the former Santa Fe line between Gainesville and Temple, TX). I caught wind of it when I walked by the South Chief's desk and overheard them talking about it. It seems an HLARALT1-15 (Laredo - Alliance, TX), had derailed going over the switch at West Haslet to enter the lead to Alliance yard. Alliance was cut off from Fort Worth, and the Fort Worth Sub main line was blocked. Fortunately, the train which derailed had only three cars coming into Alliance, but UN-fortunately, one of them was a depressed center flatcar with a large electrical transformer. Ouch! That's gonna be expensive... Amtrak 822 (the evening Fort Worth - Oklahoma City Heartland Flyer ) had already departed Fort Worth when the derailment occurred, but since its route was blocked by the derailment, the train had to return to downtown and the passengers were bussed north out of Fort Worth. After my shift at 2300, I headed up to Haslet to check things out, but couldn't see much... just some floodlights and heavy equipment off to the west of Highway 156.

So that's about it... a somewhat crazy, but still pretty typical, Saturday afternoon on the Front Range. We had a few track inspectors out today, but they cleared up a little earlier for a change since the temperature had cooled down. On really hot days -- when the temp is in the upper 90's -- I can usually look forward to them being out past 1900 or 2000! Oh yeah, it's nice to have the yard at Cheyenne back to a fluid operation. A few weeks ago, our yard was crammed full of UP interchange cars -- pipe empties, ballast empties, and assorted other junk... over 100 cars total -- that the UP had pretty much balked on taking, leaving us very little "wiggle room" -- usually only one clear track -- to get trains in and out. Today, we were down to just a handful of cars on one of the short tracks, and all the long tracks were clear.

WSC

Return to WSC's Dispatching Stories

Support this website by joining the Silver Rails TrainWeb Club for as little as $1 per month. Click here for info.