Re: Battle Creek Idled
Bill just got home from a 12 hour shift working in the yard at Battle Creek. They cut 4 yard jobs siting slow traffic levels, yet call extra jobs off the spare board every day to fill those vacancies. We have 21 people laid off right now so those of us that remain have to work our rest day in and day out. The west end of the east yard is out of service right now, as the track department has decided since it's going to be slow, that they would rebuild the entire lead. This is good, but now we have to switch at the same end of the yard that road trains work, so everything gets delayed. (We sat for two hours last night waiting for road trains to depart so we could get headroom to switch.) Auto traffic is down from Michigan plants, but we are still seeing a decent amount of it coming through. We are moving sand and grain traffic now, which seems to be new business, plus extra through intermodal and the occasional ballast train. Pretty much all of the core trains are still running, some of them are shorter due to lost auto traffic, others are not. I know this is random, but I've been up for 26 hours, so a little foggy right now. Bill
|