Remember also that there should be a hierarchical relationship between your operating rules, timetable, general orders, bulletin orders, special instructions, and form d (if in effect)
The first is the least specific and largest in breadth, and the last is most specific in terms of application. The relationship between these resources is one of the reasons they all play an important role. Each compliments the other.
The timetable usually specifies which operatig rules are in effect and which train movement control system is in effect. This helps to specify which rules need to be reviewed.
By the way, should anyone wish to review, the NORAC rules are available in online form here:
http://www.blet57.org/NORAC.pdf

Steve Piwowarski

Steve's reply above is probably the best description of how this all (should) work. Be it NORAC, GCOR or "other".

No, you do not need to teach line side signals if you do not have them. No, you do not need to teach rules applying to inhalation hazzards if you do not ship them.

Anecdote Time:

A good friend of mine was at one time employed on the XY&Z railroad here in PA. Said railroad operated without signals. In comes a new general manager who wanted to flex his muscles a little. Monday morning he says to the crew: “I want to hear you call out signals on the radio today”. Crew says “But boss, we don’t have any”. Boss says “I want to see if you can comply with the rules”. Crew complies for the day, calling out “Clear, Approach, Restricting" and so on as they go about their work.

Around 4pm, after a day of this foolishness the crew calls out “Stop Signal, MP 5”. Crew then properly calls out: “Train ABC to Base: requesting permission to pass stop signal at MP 5, over”. No answer from base. “ABC to Base, over”. Still no answer. Apparently everyone in the office, including the new boss, went home for the day.

Tuesday morning comes. Irate general manager asks train crew “Why didn’t you guys make it back last night?”. Crew replies: “Couldn’t get permission by a Stop Signal”.

Imaginary signals were never called again.

Moral of the story: Don’t needlessly complicate things.

Dave Crosby

As again an author of the 1990-ish SMRS rulebook and the author of its timetables #1 and 2, I now think it would be better to integrate all that stuff as much as possible, to the point of, if possible, having no TT at all. (the reason I did 2 timetables is the schedule changed. Yes, our TT actually called out train times, which is madness. Seriously at a museum operation you don't need that, they are on the sign or brochure. The rule is simple: be where the public's been told you'll be.)

As far as GO/BO/SI/FD, a small operation doesn't need 4 things like that. One should do, and none of them should be standing, they should be incorporated into the rulebook later.

And then, with the time you save not publishing all these documents, do some publicity and get riders in seats. That being the entire point of the rulebook.

Robert,

Had you used a general order, you could have revised your timetable schedule without reprinting the entire document. The general order would just replace that portion of the rulebook. Another way to handle this would be to run all of your trains as extras, so that even though you have a public timetable, your trains don't necessarily correspond directly to that.
I really do feel like these documents all play a role. Here is a scenario. On your railroad you have a stretch of track from MP 6 to MP 7 that requires attention due to alignment issues. You don't have anyone to work on it immediately, but next weekend a crew of guys will be available to work on the problem. It's during an operating weekend though. What do we do?
Instead of passing this information along to several different groups of people by word of mouth we can use bulletin orders and form d's to simplify the process and make it safer.
First, a bulletin order would be issues indicating a temporary speed restriction between MP 6 and 7. On the weekend the work is being completed form d's could be used to indicate an OOS track section where the work is being done.
I don't think I would personally feel safe either operating on or riding on a railroad that did not utilize some sort of form d or train order system.
Steve Piwowarski

Yes, in hindsight that is what we should have done. I did it that way for nostalgia reasons, which frankly is not a good way to choose policy.

Another option is to use a staff system. We considered that at SMRS but we had 2 simultaneous mainline movements and they would have had to swap staves at the meet. 12 times a day.

Or simply make the entire railroad yard limits. Yard limits puts the onus on the train crew to actually watch where they are going. Or rather, extends that onus, since they have it inside yard limits in any case. In preservation we are rarely overdriving half the distance we can see, so yard limits is not a serious hardship.


Here are a few.

#1. The railroad is all yard limits. You have one type of bulletin, not 4, simply called a Bulletin. They are in a binder near where the locomotive handles are kept. The track man has scrawled one out saying " Slow order MP6 to MP7 speed X. Crews will be working in that area all day both Saturday and Sunday, watch for activity" and it's in the binder. Done.

#2. The track man takes the MoW section of the staff. When the operating dept. takes the staff, they notice it is 1/3 its normal size. This tells them that they do not have run of the railroad and to proceed with caution and prepared to stop for MoW crews.


Looking at that with fresh eyes, that seems unnecessarily complex for a 1-train out and back tourist railway.

To start, you've added another position that must be staffed. Somebody must be responsible for writing that Form D and distributing it. You can overlap that with an operating crewman but now you have a problem reaching them if they're on the train and someone at the office needs orders. You introduce new bureaucracy, chasing people around and making sure they get the forms. And you've introduced a number of new failure points. You've also tangled us up in reg and law relating to dispatchers, law intended for large operations that need dispatchers. This also adds about 10 pages to the rulebook and a half day of training which everyone will soon forget because it's little used. And that's going to be a problem because you have to retest people on it.

What concerns me is complexity. I think it confuses and snows volunteer crews. Too many rules makes them go "tilt" and stop using the rules, instead, using their judgment. They don't set out to break rules, but eventually practice deviates, and nobody ever dives into that tome of a rulebook to check. After awhile, deviation from the rules becomes the norm. Complex is more versatile but that comes at the cost of simplicity, trainability and safety. My suggestion is to tend toward simple, and handle complex situations as a special case. Each organization must make these decisions to suit their needs. If you could have a CSX detour coming down your line at any time, "complex" might be warranted. I wouldn't do it for old times' sake.

I note that in your OP, you asked how we feel they aid or limit your ability to recreate an authentic historic opearting environment. Note that yard limits and staff systems are also traditional systems.

Here's one: If there's only one operable locomotive, make the staff its reverser or keys.


Hrmph! Then don't ride the Western Railway Museum! We have a $7 million endowment, professional management, simultaneous train movements, 15 trains a day, 150 operating days a year, and outside audit of our operating practices. We used to use yard limits, but now we use staff. We make a show of it for the riders. It impresses and educates, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

The idea of this thread was to discover the answer to a specific question, namely the one mentioned in my first post.
As you can see, it has gotten far enough off that topic and has become a war over who has the "right" or the "wrong" operating rules. The question was simply which do you use and how do they enhance your operation. Perhaps this discussions breadth could also include how historic operating practices could or have been used to enlighten and educate our visitors.
Robert, I apologize for insinuating that your operation was not safe in any way. I am sure that it is. If you trust the system in place, that is good enough for me. Lets all agree that there are multiple systems out there that could work, but certain systems may be better suited to certain operations. In the case of the Berkshire Scenic there really was only one because we operated over a host railroad.
Lets get back to the task at hand. Identifying how historic operating practices can be incorporated into today's operations to enhance your visitors experience.
One example I can think of that is very cool is the magneto telephone setup used on the WW&F. Crews can phone the station to request additional directions or orders as neccesary. This is a very interesting and functional display that adds to the overall visitor experience.
Steve Piwowarski

At RMEO, we presently operate entirely within yard limits. However, at the time the rulebook was prepared, we were working to acquire a larger section of the CN Smiths Falls Subdivision- unfortunately that deal fell through and we ended up entirely in the town of Smiths Falls.

In order to protect ourselves as much as possible, we stayed with the exact wording used in the then- national standard Canadian UCOR rulebook. In case of an incident, as long as the rules were correctly followed, the courts would be judging us against an accepted industry- wide standard, not something made up by "a bunch of guys who thought these would be cool rules" whose choices could be suspect.

A side benefit is that any CNR or CPR employees or retirees would already know our rules, as our rulebook is "UCOR lite". The extra rules these guys had been tested on had no application at our museum, but they would in no way contradict our rulebook.

We operate entirely in dark territory, so all rules related to signal aspects were eliminated. Various other rules that had no practical application to our operations as well. For instance, the higher speed definitions were of no use in our operation and were removed.

All UCOR rule numbers were maintained- having gaps is not a problem, but having different rule numbers could become a big issue in some circumstances.

A foreword explained the origin of the rulebook and the rationale for removal of certain rules- this eliminated the need to explain why, and how, various rules were implemented.

We are gradually rewriting the rulebook to conform to the newer CROR national rules. Once completed, these will be presented for approval and training will shift over to the new book.

The biggest difference will be elimination of flagging rules, which are unnecessary in our entirely- within yard limits operation.

Steve Hunter

The fundamental component of safety is inquiry, as in contemplation. Some would say compliance with the rulebook is the key -- but if you don't understand a rule, you cannot comply with it... and if you have not honestly self-assessed whether you are in compliance, then you are definitely not. Am I doing the right thing? Does my habitual practice match the rulebook? And for a rules author or master, you should ask more: Does what I'm doing make sense? Does this other thing over there make sense? When I said "Looking at that with fresh eyes", that's what I meant. Take nothing for granted. When you do things by rote, without knowing WHY you do them, you are no longer safe.

We saw that at Gettysburg when people used mindless rote to blow down a glass. We also saw it in the skies above Brooklyn, when Sullenberger had the stroke of genius to switch on the APU, saving the airplane's fly-by-wire controls, despite this not being part of any procedure.* Your brain has to be turned on - or as Fairmont famously says on their equipment - "The best safety device known is a careful man."

Ultimately safety comes down to human factors. That's true at the micro or macro level. And that's why it's valuable to look at out-of-field accident reports, especially aviation where the human factors are so well documented.

My view on rulebooks and training feeds back into that. I like rulebooks that stimulate the inquiry I describe above - that turn your brain ON. The modern GCOR/NORAC rulebooks write everything out in nosebleed detail not because railroadmen are any dumber than airline pilots, but frankly, to impress juries in courtrooms. Class I railroads face quite different challenges in court than airlines (or frankly, tourist railways.) Like airlines, railroads have deep pockets (tourist railways do not), but unlike airlines, railroads lack the same liability limits, and cannot so easily transfer blame onto suppliers, FAA, airport etc.

Just today I was reading an incident report where it's clear the crewman was flustered, and did not know what to do when confronted by a dynamic situation. This is a typical product of being trained by rote. Standard procedure cannot imagine every situation, nor should it try.



* and why in bloody blazes not??? Seventy years of APUs being on airplanes and nobody thought of that? (On the A320, the APU provides all necessary resources to fly-by-wire in normal fashion, whereas with the other backup system, the RAT, many systems are degraded or disabled.) Just goes to show that an established "gold standard" can still be flawed or flat wrong. That's why we have to keep thinking, and that can't be done by rote or tradition.