When my Dad worked on MILW passenger trains out of Deer Lodge, MT he carried one of those Hamilton watches with two hour hands, blue for Mountain Time and red for Pacific Time. (*That's because all but a few counties in the "Eastern" portion of Indiana don't observe "daylight-saving" time.)ĬSX, however, operates on Eastern time on its entire system - even the parts in the Central Time Zone. When a friendly railroader handed me a copy of it in 1995, I observed that the final ATSF employee timetable (before the BNSF merger) listed where the railroad's time zone boundaries were and specified that this timetable took effect in the Mountain Time Zone one hour later than it did in the Central zone and one hour earlier than it did in the Pacific zone.įor NS, the time zone boundary on the former Conrail main across northern Indiana is at Elkhart year round, even though the "public" time zone boundary changes* during the course of the year - Ohio border in the summer, west of South Bend in the winter. This sometimes means that the time zone points are different on railroads than they are on civilian maps.Īs mentioned previously, the time-change locations for the railroads tend to be set up so that the dividing points co-locate with crew-change locations. On railroads the time zone changes were usually done at crew change terminals so that no re-setting of watches enroute and no re-calculations of times were necessary on train order times and train schedules during a crew's trip. There are many reasons on the RR even today that require you know the correct time. You often also got "Wait at" orders requiring you to wait at specified stations until a specific time. Historically the correct time was the most important thing about railroading since you had to clear following trains and meet opposing trains according to their timetable schedules. Work orders such as Form B restrictions have specific time limits. You need the correct time to get out of the way of passenger trains. Authorities such as Track and Time are granted for a specific time and you need to be in the clear on time. You have to know what time zone you are in.
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