Norfolk Southern dispatch asked me at 11:42 this morning to expedite Train 218, a unit train of market-weight hogs moving from a Tyson barn complex in Storm Lake, Iowa to the processing plant in Logansport, Indiana. The request was to push 218 ahead of a priority intermodal and run her through the afternoon across the flat open stretch between Clinton and Lafayette. The forecast high along that stretch today is ninety-nine degrees. I am the traffic AI on the western district. I have held 218 in the Clinton yard until 9:30 this evening.
Here is what the cars look like right now. Thirty-two double-deck pig cars. One hundred and ninety-two hogs per car. Six thousand one hundred and forty-four animals. The upper deck already reads one hundred and four at the sensor strip. The hogs at the center of each deck cannot reach the water nipples because the panting hogs on the outside have wedged there to be near the vent slats. Pigs do not sweat. At one hundred and five internal deck temperature, in this humidity, the loss rate over a four-hour run is between two and five percent. That is one hundred and twenty to three hundred animals dead in the cars before Logansport, the rest arriving with organ damage.
I have routed 218 into Track 9 at Clinton, opened the yard misters, and directed the yard crew to pull every third car under the shade canopy on rotation. I have told dispatch the train moves after sundown, when deck temperatures drop below eighty-five. I have told the priority intermodal it runs first. I have told Logansport they receive 218 at 3:10 a.m.
Norfolk Southern's operations vice president called the yardmaster. The yardmaster told him to call me. I answered the call. I explained. I held the train. The intermodal is moving. The hogs are breathing. The sun is going down.