Another Precision Day on CSX
A rare sight to see is this Chicago bound hot "tote" train CSX Q028-28 (Atlanta,GA-Chicago,IL) stop in the center of the small mountain town of Cowan, TN (MP J-86.8 SE Cowan) on the CSX Chattanooga Sub. The extra board schedule CSX W987-29 is about a mile up the on the 2% Cumberland Plateau grade with the conductor on the ground trying to uncouple the unscheduled pusher off the rear of the hot "tote", and to reset Q028 End of train device (EOT). The bigger story is this, a week or two prior the upper management out of Jacksonville seen fit that cutting pusher service throughout the lower 23 state that is served by CSX that needed pusher on grades would save them money, part of their you can say "Precision railroading theme!?" Welp as you can tell that idea corroded fast, which resulted into major delay in railroad operation and also resulting into bring pusher service back "pre se!" To make matter worst here in Cowan on the Pusher District, someone in the Division Management position thought it would be a wise idea to remove helper links from the pusher which reverting back into so called old school railroad method in pushing train to the top of the grade, balance the tonnage, and send the train on it's way, except cutting the train on the fly, which would have taken a train close to 45 minutes to and hour to get a push up and over the Cumberland Plateau with helper links to now a hour plus complicated movement. You can say the out-of-ordinary is now the new norm here on CSX....
