So, if I understand this right, what is being said here is that double stacks with hi-cube containers must still thread their way around on the CTC in some stretches, because one track has better clearances than the other. Did someone imply that is why one track has the new CTC on certain stretches while the other track adjacent to it didn't get it?

Wow! -- How long will it be, before some dispatcher makes a mistake! A really easy mistake to make it would seem - especially since they too really are human. Of course, the engineer and the conductor would also have to have missed the high car listed in the manifest - if the clerk didn't forget to put in on the list in the first place. Who knows what the dispatchers excuse might be. Maybe because all the red bars on his display look the same.....

But wasn't it Murphy, who said "if it can happen - it will happen!". And accidents have happened before, caused solely because incorrect manifests led to improper train handling (on Cahon for example).

Imagine a hi-cube 174 platforms back, meeting the tunnel on the wrong track! What crew member up front would even notice. Probably get noticed when the next train hit the pile of rubble left behind - or maybe the neighbors would be nice enough to call it in sooner!

This sort of accident is common in the trucking industry; an easy mistake to make even there! But such extreme subtleties anywhere on any railroad, are a sure recipe for disaster just the same. And what a fine mess it will be - too!

Perhaps we should just take up a pool and play the odds. So, Deja vu all over again - you can't spell stUPid, without UP.

OPB