Thanks, I'd forgotten about this. It's the result of UP's degradation of it's own trainmens' skills and work ethic, not to mention the fixation on paying lower wages. I was still working when the UP made the change. For a while they used "outside contractors", so to speak, because I recall one of them relating to me that he'd been temporarily transferred to or shuffled around in the M/W department and specifically assigned to the flagging job for the duration.