>It sounds like a "blue print" spells out something like a grievance proceedure. Is this correct? Would it be about safety proceedures or operational proceedures?

No and no. Besides, if a procedure is spelled out in the agreement, there are no grievances involved, except for the timekeepers becoming anal (which they are instructed to do from time to time).

OPRMS said: "A Blue Print Agreement is a written agreement between the railroad and the union that describes the process to follow under specific situations and scenarios.", and what I gave is an example of this: how to handle the calling order of engineers at their away from home terminal, in one particular freight pool on one particular railroad.

It's virtually impossible for a "layman" to comprehend a railroad agreement (union contract) because there are so many small modifications from division to division and terminal to terminal. For example, in San Francisco, and engineer could take a temporary hold-down (hold a job vacant on account of the owner being on vacation) on any vacancy. In Oakland, they were forbidden on switch engines unless the person desiring to make the hold-down was restricted to switch engines. This is a "local agreement, not a "blue print" [agreement]. Another local agreement is how may days/trips a vacancy must go to the extraboard before someone can ask for the hold-down.

Think of modern day RR labor relations departments in this light. THEY can't keep track of all of these local agreements, so they want to get rid of them. It's no different than the UK switching from old pence to new pence. The old system was base-10 and base-12 joined together in an apparently complex fashion. New pence are base-10, like just about everywhere else in the world (as in 100 cents to the dollar). As a British friend of mine said at the time, "They're doing it for the tourists. If you give a common dustman [garbage man] change, he'll know whether it's correct."