What's it like in the NOC?

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NETWORK OPERATIONS CENTER (NOC)

(place photo here)

First, a little background. The NOC (Network Operations Center) is BNSF's version of "Mission Control". Burlington Northern opened the facility in early 1995, before the ICC had given its blessings to the BN-SF merger. This place has gone through a world of changes in the past 6 years.

When I started the dispatcher training program, not all of the BN dispatchers were working in the NOC yet. As I recall, dispatchers from the offices in Springfield, McCook, Galesburg, Minneapolis, and most other offices were already working here, and the Powder River dispatchers arrived soon after. Dispatchers from the Seattle office were last to arrive. Immediately following the approval of the BN-SF merger, construction crews set to work re-arranging the place. Lots of shuffling of people, cubicles, and offices was necessary to accommodate the Santa Fe managers and operations personnel who would soon be moving in. Many a wall was knocked out, and entire offices and hallways were gutted and re-done. The location of dispatching workstations ("Pods") were in a constant state of flux.

The Santa Fe dispatchers joined us in 1997, arriving from Schaumburg. Through early 1998, we dispatched virtually the entire railroad from Fort Worth. In 1998, BNSF and UP opened the "joint" dispatching center in Spring, Texas: a suburb of Houston. A prime motivating factor in the opening of that facility was the belief that a joint office would better facilitate the movement of BNSF and UP trains amongst the various rail lines in the Houston area. This would be achieved through the closer, face-to-face communication between managers and dispatchers that such an office would provide. It was believed that such an environment would result in the un-tangling of the rail congestion that had plagued the railroads -- particularly the UP -- in the Houston area since 1997. Moving down from Ft. Worth to Spring was the former BN Ft. Worth East desk (now known as DS-111), along with the Santa Fe dispatchers who dispatched the former Santa Fe lines south and east of Temple.

The Spring office worked so well that BNSF decided to open another "branch office" in 1999.... this time in San Bernardino, California. Making the move were all the dispatchers handling the former Santa Fe lines in California.

The most recent satellite office to open was the one located at BNSF's Argentine Yard in Kansas City. That move took place in the fall of 2000, and included the dispatchers of all the former Santa Fe lines east of Wellington, Kansas (and also the former Santa Fe Newton desk -- DS-17) and the dispatcher working the Ustick terminal desk, which itself had just recently been relocated to Fort Worth from Kansas City's Ustick Tower.

Publicly, the company stated that the smaller offices would provide for better communication between dispatchers and managers of the BNSF and the railroads with which the company interchanges traffic, would provide for better communication between railroads and in cases of jointly operated terminals or main line trackage, and allow dispatchers to become more familiar with their territories by placing them in closer geographic proximity to the lines they dispatch.

The company was less vocal in expressing what most of us believe was an additional motive: reducing the job turnover (movement from desk to desk and from job to job, and therefore the amount of training expenses and the lack of job familiarity caused by frequent turnover) among dispatchers. By their very nature, job vacancies in smaller offices create less of a " chain reaction " among dispatchers "moving up the ladder", seeking to work a more desireable desk or to get a schedule with more desireable rest days. I'd say the company has accomplished this goal... but only in the smaller offices. Here in the NOC, there is still a lot of movement.

So, with all these moves, was there anyone left at the NOC?

Actually, the number of dispatchers here is still a little higher than the number we had before the Santa Fe dispatchers moved down in 1997. We still have:

* The dispatchers of all the former BN territories, except the former FW&D line between Dallas and Houston -- which moved to Spring -- and the Ustick Tower job.

* The dispatchers of the former Santa Fe "transcon" between Needles, CA and Wellington, KS and also dispatchers handling lines to Raton, Phoenix, and the former Santa Fe trackage in most of Texas and all of Oklahoma.

In addition to dispatchers, the NOC houses locomotive utilization managers; crew utilization specialists; chief dispatchers; corridor superindentents; train scheduling personnel; traffic planners for grain, coal, intermodal, and general merchandise; managers who supervise the operation of Amtrak trains on BNSF; managers of maintenance of way operations; dispatcher performance evaluators; signal call center employees; service interruption personnel; and countless others.

So, what's it like in here?

I remember my wife's reaction to seeing the NOC for the first time, early in the summer of 1998. I had taken her up to the Viewing Gallery, to show her the token "down-on" view of the facility which BNSF is fond of showing customers and visitors. "It's so big," she said. Of course, I had already been working here for close to 3 years, and by that time, had grown used to how massive this place is, and how imposing it can look.

Lots of people say it kind of looks like NASA in here, and I guess they're right... what with the wrap-around display of nine enormous projection screens on the north and west walls, and the hundreds of computer monitors spread amongst the cubicles on the "dance floor". What's really interesting to see this place at 3 or 4 in the morning, even on a weekend. Although the place empties out a little when the 9-to-5'ers and weekday-only staff go home, I sometimes marvel at how this place is usually hoppin' just as much at 3 in the morning as it is at 1 in the afternoon! It's a little surreal to see so much activity in a workplace environment at such an unconventional time, but it's certainly a testament to the fact that railroading is a 24-hour-a-day, 7-days-a-week business.

Most dispatchers who have worked in other offices say the NOC is the worst dispatching office they've ever worked in. Our open office environment lends itself to lots of background noise, which can sometimes hinder communications between dispatchers and field employees. As far as the NOC being the worst possible work environment, I wouldn't know; the NOC is the only dispatching office in which I've worked. Many of the older dispatchers bemoan the loss of individual offices with four walls and a door, which our current standard -- open cubicles with 5 foot tall "sound-dampening" (yeah, right) walls -- have replaced. Sound does carry quite a ways in this place, but the sheer number of people in the office at any given time usually results in one hearing a symphony of murmurring voices. Occasionally though, the raised voice of a stressed-to-the-max dispatcher -- arguing with a train crew over an impending meet, or taking a section foreman to task for holding up traffic for too long -- will carry through the office, prompting giggles and muffled laughter (and sometimes even cheers!) from all within earshot. The sounds of sneezes, belches, and other bodily functions seem to travel quite well in the NOC also. If you're having a slow day, eavesdropping on those around you can be a near-constant source of entertainment!

The NOC -- what's left of the dispatching desks that are here, that is -- is arranged roughly in geographic order, so that the Illinois Division desks are all in one area, the Seattle region desks in another, and so forth. A walk through different parts of the NOC is kind of like an overview tour of different parts of the railroad. Walk a little ways and you're in Minnesota, walk a little further and you're in Colorado, a few more steps brings you to the Santa Fe "transcon" in New Mexico and Arizona... you get the point. It _is_ pretty fascinating to think of how much railroad we control from in here. And I often marvel at the thought of dispatchers talking to trains over the radio and lining signals and switches in places as far away as Chicago and Seattle, all from the click of a mouse in Ft Worth.

One more thing - you should see this place during a derailment! Usually, you can identify a major service interruption right away, even if the dispatcher's flashing yellow "emergency light" and accompanying beeper did not go off... just look for several people scurrying around a single pod or workstation, jabbering away on wireless telephones. It's always reminded me of what it looks like when you step on an ant hill!

So that pretty much sums up the ole workplace. To learn about what our dispatching work stations look like, or or to read about what a typical day on the job is like, return to the index page and choose another option.

Return to WSC's Dispatching Stories Index

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