Dispatcher: RTC

Here I am in Wichita dispatching the K&O railroad. The K&O has over 800 miles of track, all dark territory, operating under Track Warrant Control (TWC). I was working longer and longer hours in my job as a medical technologist. It got to the point that I figured I was making as much per hour as the french fry cooks at McDonalds. So, I decided to go back to work for the railroad. But not as engineer, mind you. I have still had enough of 100-hour work weeks. So, I decided to go back as a dispatcher. Dispatcher hours of service are quite different from engineer hours of service. I can only work 9 hours per 24-hour period. That boils down to a maximum of 63 hours per week. I was putting in about 80 per week at the hospital. So, goodbye hospital- hello Austin Western Railroad. My hours now work out to be 40 per week, although an extra day here and there does crop up. I haven't worked overtime in the last 2 pay periods, though, and I do value my off duty time more than the overtime pay. I got my dispatcher training at the Watco Dispatcher Center in Wichita. I dispatched every railroad they operate during my training. It was a blast. The Austin Western railroad is dispatched in Austin. The AWRR is different because it is the only railroad that will have daily passenger service, with 30 minute headways between trains. The dispatchers will be on site rather than in Wichita because of the commuter service- we will dispatch using TWC, but we will also have 32 miles of CTC (for the passenger trains).

Orders in the Hoop

Here I am scooping up the train orders at speed (throttle 8) as I run past the depot at Bertram on the Hill Country Flyer this summer (picture by my friend, Bradley Linda). I have picked up train orders in this fashion at 60 mph more times than I can count. The trick is to stick your arm through the hoop- not try to catch them with your hand. It is fairly easy to do (although you have to lean out quite a bit) when there is a standard hoop system like this one. It can get tricky if the operator is passing the orders up with a hand-held hoop, particularly if the operator is not quite experienced. I have had operators get cold feet at the last minute and step back, making it impossible to reach the orders, and then I have had operators misjudge the height and hold them up too low to reach. I had one operator think he had to loop my arm rather than the other way around, and we played arm tag, with me grabbing the entire hoop at the last second, raising a bruise on my palm that didn't go away for weeks.