NS Helper Crew loses his cool with Allegheny Dispatcher

Should have the donate thing to the people who run the audio feed to make this video possible... Which is me. Nice to hear the whole audio of this and not the last half just before the helper flipped on the dispatcher.

I was the conductor on 20T that day that said "and do it in 17 minutes too" at 0:59. We were sitting at the Brickyard waiting for traffic ahead to clear before we could drop down into Altoona. That day was just an absolute disaster and that dispatcher didn't help things. The engineer on C05 retired not long after this all went down. It was like his swan song

"Theres a mountain up here!!" should be framed in the NS office

Funniest thing I've ever heard over scanner feed was a couple years back on BNSF's Steven's Pass. An empty oil can was approaching Skykomish, the last siding before the 2.2% climb starts, and called dispatcher saying they lost power from their second unit. Dispatcher tells them to give the climb a go anyways, they might be light enough to climb with only two units. You would never guess, but they stalled almost immediately after getting out of town. After a bit of toiling with a remote maintenance crew, dispatcher realized he had a priority stack coming up behind and had to have the stalled oil cans roll back down the grade into Skykomish siding. Once there, they went right back to trying (and failing) to get the second unit to boot back up. The poor conductor was being told to try all sorts of different things to get it to boot back up until an hour or so later a maintenance guy finally arrived on-site. He looked at the unit for about 5 minutes before he calls the dispatcher and says "Hey uhh, I think I found your problem... this thing's got no gas in it" 🤣

This is what happens now that Dispatchers are often no longer required to ride over the territory they will be dispatching. Knowing the physical characteristics of the line and taking a test to show that you know them are important.

"I don't understand but I understand" is the most concise description of modern Class 1 railroading I've ever heard, and boy, I've had that feeling in a different industry a whole bunch.

I've been a railroader for over 27 years and trust me sometimes the depth of stupidity here is fathomless. Some of the dispatchers have no idea what's going on but that's because of poor training and the railroad is more worried about profits than safety.

Wow. And here I thought CSX was the only ones that had dispatchers who couldn't run a train around a Christmas Tree.

I wouldn’t mind seeing (or hearing) more stuff like this. This is also a cool way to see how railroads work.

Everything is possible when you drive a desk.

I can’t say I’ve heard any incompetence on the New Castle Sub (CSX western PA/eastern OH), I heard Q138 (now I138) radio they were clear of “Center Yard” then proceeded to yell “DROP THE HAMMER LARRY! YEEEEEHAAAAAWWW!” at which point you just heard a K5HL start blasting close by. Another time, K676 (now B773) and K183 (now B158) had combined into one train and had to be split in New Castle. I recall the conductor saying “I gotta turn one train back into two trains….like a shitty magic trick.”

A little dissapointed at no point the conversation became: Dispatcher: Can you guys connect the head end of the train to the back end? Helper Crew: How about I connect the end of my boot with your ass?!

"Norfolk Southern what's your function" "Being incompetent and angering our crew"

A co worker of mine had a funny line in situations like this. He would just say " I hate working for somebody dumber than me".

“That makes stupid look smart !” That line is sure to get me in trouble when I use it .

The best part was when the C05 crew went off on that dispatcher and the dispatcher had no response.

C05 got me at "WHOEVER TRAINED YOU DIDNT DO A GOOD JOB AT ALL!!"

The “hopes someone nails her” part got me laughing 😂😂🤣🤣

I had one from Omaha when I worked for the RGR in Colorado. She asked me “What you be doin with a passenger train up there?” I responded “The same thing we do five times a day every week!” She had to go get help and then hung up before I could repeat. My engineer pulled the throttle wide and said “I heard you repeat it!”

"OH WHERE DO THEY GET THESE PEOPLE" had me dying