Some guy at TO posted his two week's observation of the pitiful operations of the UP Valley/Black Butte Subs. He noted that UP doesn't run a lot of trains. Four ups and four downs. Some of those ups get split at Dunsmuir and others around Lakehead. A helper crew brings the rear half of the train up to Black Butte or even up to Grass Lake depending on tonnage.

THE COMMON THEME WAS THAT UP RAN DIFFERENTLY EVERY DAY THAT HE WATCHED TRAINS.

I suppose the OP who made a ridiculous post about seeing an ASS man before going out to watch trains set a series of stupid responses.

The traffic manager response was spot on. UP runs trains that are too long that don't fit into 8000 ft passing tracks that Espee used to gauge their ops. 10,000ft trains don't work well between Dunsmuir and Black Butte. UP has wasted more crews trying to make PSR 15,000ft trains work, but won't save face and abandon its stupid policies.