I agree with Craig, in essence. Could someone please tell me what crew member has seniority rights from Los Angeles to Edmonton?! Those crews, on their districts learn THEIR territories. No one in St. Louis is going to be called to run from E. St. Lou to Toronto!

Should a person tranfer into that district, he/she will be (as a general rule of thumb) required to become familiar and demonstrate a level of proficiency.

Except for the benefit of armchair analysis, I fail to see the rationale for converting all the signal rules, equipment and dispatching software to continental standard. in fact, more changes just adds to the trainman's confusion. Enough with the changes and 'improvements'! Let's put more constructive effort in learning how to use what we have!

The amount of money spent to re-configure rules, software and physical plant would be better spent in BETTER hands-on and classroom/field instruction. Let's eliminate the 13-week Conductor Class and make a 52-week Conductor class, and let's see Engineers get better, more scenario-involved crisis handling, and more district-specific training. Let's see a locomotive simulator that is district specific, can help me feel the slack run-in and at a usefull location- not somewhere a 1,000 miles away that you might see once every three years.

By the way, PTS stood for Positive Train Stop, not 'seperation' if I'm not mistaken. Positive Train Seperation can easily be accomplished by puling 1600 amps with a 20 pound set.