George Andrews Wrote:
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> I suspect any cost savings Espee may have gained
> from fewer yard crews, was more than cancelled out
> by penalty payments to road crews having to switch
> the sidings along the Valley main.

If there were fewer yard crews it was because of the continuing dowuturn in business, not because half the tracks were locked out.

I'm not aware of road crews receiving penalty payments for switching at sidings, so please enlighten me. Maybe I'm owed some money! SP Western Lines road crews received an artibrary payment of 28 cents per trip if they made more then 3 pickups or setouts enroute, hardly a financial burdeon on the railroad. (For those unaware, a "penalty payment" is for a violation of the Collective Bargaining Agreement, and typically results either 100 miles at the instant rate of pay or for lost earnings or earnings stood for . . . although the railroad would typically deny the claim, resulting in the employee's union representative having to progress the claim through the collective bargaining process, which could take years. An "artitrary payment" is a set amount for a specific event, usually an hours' pay or less, and is part of the Collective Bargaining Agreement.)

What did cost the railroad money was the trickle-down effect of deferred track maintenance. The Valley, basically single-track CTC, was pretty hard hit with slow orders during the latter part of the '80s and early '90s. Many of the sidings which were originally 25 MPH had been reduced to 10, or even 5, resulting in long trains taking 45 minutes or more to accomplish a meet. The lower speed sidings were also prohibited to K Trains (carrying HazMat; they're now called Key Trains), resulting in higher priority trains having to run through the siding while the less important train held the main. All of this resulted in lengthened running times which in turn resulted in higher crew costs.

Getting back to the original discussion about Fresno Yard, a quick check of the October 25, 1987 timetable shows the maximum authorized speed allowed in both the Fresno and Bakersfield yards to be 4 MPH, an indication of how far the track conditions had deteriorated.