Why does the same delay keep coming back?
Seven questions for anyone who answers for how fast a railroad acts on what it sees.
The question this Read asksHow many hours a year pass between the railroad learning a thing and acting on it, and what do they cost at our own rates?
Exposure Read 15 · The Decision Cycle
Every railroad acts on what it sees, and every railroad takes time to do it. The time is spent in four places: seeing the thing, making sense of it, deciding, and acting. Nobody times the second, and that is where most of it goes.
A railroad makes sense of what it sees through its rule book, its departments and its habits. They decide what the railroad notices before anybody decides anything. Two railroads can see the same missed switch, the same late interchange, the same customer’s complaint, and one acts in minutes and the other in days, and neither is breaking a rule.
The four steps behind these seven, observe, orient, decide and act, are Col. John R. Boyd’s, USAF.
Most of the cycle is unregulated. On a report of a disabled vehicle or other obstruction blocking the track at a highway-rail or pathway grade crossing, the railroad promptly contacts the trains authorized through it, in an effort to warn each crew “prior to each train’s arrival at the crossing,” then promptly contacts law enforcement, and the railroad that maintains the crossing takes the necessary action to have the obstruction removed “without undue delay” (49 CFR 234.305(d)). Certain accidents and incidents are reported “immediately” (49 CFR 225.9(a)). For each crossing report the railroad records the time and date it received it, the actions it took before the condition was resolved, such as warning train crews, and the time and date the condition was remedied, kept at least one year from its last action on the report (49 CFR 234.313(a), (d)). It asks a time for receipt, for remedy, and, where a maintaining railroad must be called, for that call (234.313(a)(9)). It asks none for the warning. The rules say promptly, immediately and without undue delay, and they measure none of them. For those three words, the railroad’s own records are the only clock.
Each rule cited here was read in its current published text on 13 NOV 2026, at the eCFR (current to 10 NOV 2026). The law changes after that date; read the current text before relying on any of it.
Run them yourself.
These seven are answerable from your own records: the dispatcher’s log, the service record, the crossing reports and the last disruption. Run them yourself. They take an afternoon and they require nobody’s help, which is why they are yours to run.
When a customer’s car misses its switch, how many hours pass before someone who can fix it knows?
Take the last five missed switches. For each, the time it was missed, the time the customer noticed, and the time someone who could fix it knew. The shipper’s loop runs faster than the railroad’s: by the time the railroad knows, the freight may already be booked on a truck, and nothing in the railroad’s records will show the order it lost.
When a call comes in on the number at your crossings, can you show the minute the approaching trains were told?
The record must show when the call came in, when the condition was remedied, and when any maintaining railroad was called (234.313(a)(3), (7), (9)). It records the actions taken, such as warning train crews, but asks no time for them (234.313(a)(5)). A record without that minute cannot show the warning came before the train. Keeping it costs one line.
Who on the property may act without asking, and on what written authority?
List the decisions that stop a train, hold a car, call a crew or change a plan. Beside each, who may make it alone and where that is written. Authority that lives in habit and not in writing slows the loop to the speed of the phone tree, and at night the phone tree is one man asleep.
What does the dispatcher see that the crew does not, and the reverse?
Lay the dispatcher’s log for one bad night beside the crew’s account of it. Two pictures of one train. Where they differ, the decision was made on one of them, and the gap is where it went wrong. The fix is usually a sentence on the radio, not a system.
In your last disruption, which decision waited on someone who was not there?
Washout, derailment, storm, a line blocked overnight. Find the decision that waited longest and who it waited on. The loop runs only as fast as its slowest authorized man, and the record of the wait is usually a gap in the times nobody wrote down.
What has your railroad stopped looking at since a machine began looking for it?
Wayside detectors, automated inspection, train control: each sees something the railroad used to see with people. A machine that observes changes what the people observe. Ask what nobody looks at now, and who would notice if the machine stopped seeing it.
When did the railroad last change a plan in the middle of carrying it out, and who had the authority to?
Find the last time a plan changed mid-shift because the ground changed: a train rerouted, a work window moved, a crew held. A railroad that can change a plan only at the next planning meeting acts at the speed of the meeting. If nobody can name the last time, the answer is in the asking.
A step nobody timed is a step nobody can shorten. Either the time was never written down, or it was written down and nobody has added it up.
The total hours in a year between the railroad learning a thing and acting on it, at your own rates.
That is what the decision cycle costs, and it is spent a few minutes at a time in places no report adds up.
What arrives.
The cycle timed
One or more real events laid out from your own records, every step with its time. Where the time went, step by step.
The slowest step named
With the authority it waited on, and what would have to be written for it to go faster.
The records that would show it next time
The few lines your logs and reports would need to carry, so the next event times itself.
An answer on whether the cycle holds
Including, on some railroads, that it does. This read finds a cycle sound whenever it is.
And what it is not
Not an opinion on any individual’s conduct: where a specific event and person are the question, that is a different instrument, and the firm states which party has engaged it before the work begins. Not a reading of any railroad’s compliance with Part 234; the rule is cited for its clock, not tested.
The seven questions above are the test of the firm that wrote them. Run them, and judge the firm by what they find.
These seven are yours to run, and if the cycle holds you owe nobody anything.
If you need a second reader, one who was not part of the event he times, write and say what happened and when you need it.
Our bench of career railroaders brings better than 160 years of combined field experience. Nobody we send learns railroading on your property. That is a standard, not a résumé.
Write and say what you found.
Write and say what you found, or call 928.605.7984 and say it. Not an impression — what the seven returned on your own records: your score, and which step nobody had timed. That step is the finding, and on most railroads it is the whole matter.
You will have a reply within one business day, from the principal and not from a form. Writing puts you on no list. If what comes back says you have no problem, you will be told so. What comes back sets the next stage, or the work stops there. The full Exposure Read, with its worksheet, comes from the same address.
This page is general information about railroad practice and the rules it cites, as they read on the date shown. It is not legal, engineering or financial advice, it does not replace counsel or an inspection of your property, and reading it does not engage SteelWheels.Co.
solutions@steelwheels.co · 928.605.7984 · What happens when you write back