Could you clarify "many US railroads" please?
I only know of one US railroad that has centralised then later de-dentralised their control centres: CSX.
BNSF took the dispatchers that work all the former Santa Fe track in California and put them in a new facility that is also used by Union Pacific dispatchers as well as the dispatcher for the Alameda Corridor. They also opened up 2 similar centers. One in Spring Texas for working the lines in South & Central Texas. The other is in Kansas City and controls the former BN & ATSF lines in the Kansas City area to the Northwest, West & South.
Add NS to that list whilst I try to dig out my info again.
and RS saying 'bollocks' to OT's statement isn't undermining him is it not?!.The fact is the centralisation that some are quoting,indeed the list RS came up with,bear little relation to the centralisation Network Rail are proposing,actually, many of the IECC's etc that RS quoted are to be closed under the centralisation I suspect Old Timer is talking about.....
Thank you chap, you made the point exactly.
After all many of the centres listed could hardly be called "centralising" - unless closing the odd box on the CrossCity North could be considered so. By the way how many boxes did we close on that route ?
Whilst BR was not looking at the major centres that NR are looking at, on the ER for example the plan was for Peterborough to be split between KX and Doncaster, and Doncaster would have extended northwards to meet up with Tyne around York, Scunthorpe would have moved onto Doncaster.
Leeds would have taken Sheffield and and NE/SW as far as Church Fenton, and Edinburgh would have taken over part of Tweedmouth.
The WCML was going to be controlled by two PSBs and the West Midlands by one, Derby and Notttingham were to be amalgamated and Leister and West Hampstead amalgamated.
These plans were then scrapped, partly because of the economics but also because of a number of other issues such as IR, employment issues, a loss of local knowledge, the risk of a loss of control and the realisation that the same number of signalmen would generally be needed irrespective of where they would be located. The disruption caused by a single PSB on a route such as Doncaster taking strike action saw to it that a major centralisation scheme was left undone.
This did not stop the introduction of new PSBs and I never stated it did, and had RS bothered to read my post properly and maybe understand what centralisation means then this would have been obvious. Many PSB/IECC on the RS list were only introduced because of manning shortages in a period when there was little relative unemployment at least so far as those actively seeking work were concerned, or because there were benefits to be gained.
With regards to age, having been aware of what was going on having actually been at work on the Railway at that time, I do take objection to someone who was not trying to tell me they know more about it than I do. Especially when in many cases they were maybe not even at school then. I am sure the rest of the Railway staff on here will understand what I mean. Too often we have people with little or no experience holding forth with what they believe or surmise to be the case and attempting to put down those who were actually there or who know their jobs.