a. Creating an extra.
When the dispatcher authorizes an extra to go
out on the main track and proceed over the road to a specified point, he is
said to "create" the train. Once the extra is created, it proceeds toward
its destination with only the timetable or train orders to restrict it.
Read rule 201(1), given in appendix III.
b. Fixing meets. If a dispatcher creates an extra at a time when there
is another moving on single track toward the newly created train, he must
immediately set up a meeting point for the extras and inform each train crew
where it is.
If he fails to establish one in a meet order given to each
train, they will collide. Look again at figure 1.1. If a dispatcher had a
westbound extra by DN tower at 0711 hours and an extra ready to leave AY
tower going in the opposite direction, he would probably establish a meet at
WD. Each train crew would be given orders to meet at WD. The objective is
not to attempt to determine in advance the actual meeting point, but to set
one even if selected at random.
c. Changing meeting points. Assume that the westbound train mentioned
above had 100 loaded cars and had work--stops--at both MD and RK, while the
eastbound train at AY had only 65 empty hoppers.
Obviously, the lighter
train would arrive at the WD meet before the heavier one. Initially, this
does not concern the dispatcher. The important thing is to establish a meet
somewhere on the railroad before one extra starts to oppose another.
The
meeting point can always be changed later after the dispatcher watches the
progress on his train sheet for an hour or so.
To permit two extras to oppose each other without having an
established meet and to plan to give them one when they come within 20
kilometers of each other is not only highly dangerous but also universally
prohibited.
The dispatcher might drop dead and the relieving dispatcher
might not notice that the trains were without a meet until they collided.
More likely, however, the dispatcher would get busy with other work and
simply forget about the lack of a meet until it was too late.
d. Superseding meet orders.
Actually, to try to fix the final meet
exactly in the first order is almost pointless.
Normal running time,
generally the only basis that could be used, depends on the type of
locomotive and the tonnage of the train.
However, one train might make
excellent time while the other might encounter delay caused by one or more
of such things as engine failure,
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