1: Some lumber travels without wrapping paper around it. Why do you never see graffiti on the wrapping or the lumber cars and why wouldn’t they wrap them just in case?
2: People are always doing a roll-by - what might they find dragging underneath?
3: approximately only - if you have an empty coal train that can be routed around an entire sorting yard and keep going on to its destination, about what speed would it go around said yard?
4: there are chains on the hand brakes on freight cars. (at least I think that is where they are) Is this a tie down? And do they lock them or just snap them to hold them? (I can see a whole lot of trouble if you had to find a lock and key each time…)
5: Seat belts to go with the mirrors? They are so safety conscious on railroads, why not seat belts?
At last! Something I am semi-qualified to talk about. Whether the lumber is wrapped or not, depends on whether the lumber purchaser pays extra to have it wrapped. The wrapping is to keep the lumber dry, since it probably just came out of a kiln to make it dry. Sometimes, the end use of the lumber, pallets for example, do not require that the wood arrive clean, dry, and unstained. More often, the ultimate buyer is too cheap to pay for wrapping. Like most things, you get what you pay for.
As to the graffiti: I don’t think the lumber cars sit around in yards as often as the boxcars. That, and the bigger, more permanent “canvas” may influence graffiti vandals(?)
They aren’t looking so much for what they may be dragging, in the sense of dead moose or alligator as evidence for that is usually found on the front of the locomotive, but for flat wheels, dangling hoses and such.
Gosh, I thought I wore a seat belt when I did my territory ride-outs. (I keep confusing ems training terms with the railway ones.) But I can’t remember for sure.
Well, I am going to look for the alligators and dead meese since they aren’t. Actually, the driver asked me if they had seat belts and while I didn’t think so, I thought I best ask!
As a point of reference concerning the lumber cars: whether the car is dragging an alligator or a moose will go a long way in determining if the lumber in question is Southern Yellow Pine, or Canadian Spruce-Pine-Fir.[;)]
There’s no meaningful answer to your question because the answer completely depends on how the track is constructed and configured. Ideally one has a main track bypass to the yard with no speed restriction at all and the empty continues at 50 mph without braking or stopping. There are actually many instances of this but no one realizes they are “no influence” because the influence of the yard is indeed zero.
That’s a clever answer but not so. Maximum authorized track speed in the vicinity of a yard is rarely achieved because signaling configuration won’t allow it. Thus the importance of a true bypass.
2 rollbys are not only used to see whats underneath but if trains should have a meet somewhere they will look for defects in cars(or containers) as was the case on saturday on csx.some railfan saw the back door open on a container the 3rd car from the end of a train(poor conductor)
4 - I looked closely at a coal train yesterday and the chain setup is easier to see. So reading Houston Ed’s explanation made it pretty plain.
#2 - Joe (or anyone) - I have seen open (slide door) empty cars go by, engines with the front door open and not the lead motor and dump cars with their dumps open - most of these were headed into the yard, so would be, hopefully, caught within the yard. But we have a southbound freight train that regularly has open doors on at least one or two of its boxcars and one coal train was leaving town with the 2nd motor - both the front and rear doors open (I commented on that a while back.)(figured the crew did know about that one!)
Are any of these reportables to the 800 # or just business as usual? I don’t want to be “Citizen-sit-on-hands”, but I don’t want to be on the phone for every little thing, either. We would have reported a rather bad track situation where mud was oozing onto the track and cars would do the jig everytime they crossed that section, but we figured track maintenence or some employee would see it and report it. That was two weeks before they finally had a big pow-wow over it and suddenly worked on it overnite to get it fixed.
#3 - I think 50 is within the neighborhood of what I am looking for - Driver guesstimated 40 for the coal train that didn’t hesitate at all - just in, around and gone - all in one very nice move. I know they just look awfully fast to me - I am used to creeping in and out trains.
I thank you all for the answers up to now and if someone would like to tackle the 2nd half, I would appreciate it.
As for #5B, when you’re in a car seat belts make sense–you don’t really have anyplace to go. In a locomotive cab, one can stand up and walk around if/when necessary, and I wouldn’t want to have my options limited by a seat belt. It might make more sense, if one sees an impending collision, to just get down, or get out of there. If I were to see at the last moment that my side of the cab was about to be sideswiped by something out to foul, I’d want to be able to get over to the other side without taking the seconds needed to undo a seat belt. And while encounters in automobiles have generally the same outcome, a locomotive wreck resulting in a derailment would have a lot more variables contributing to what the locomotive actually does–whether it tips, has its cab crushed, or just stubs its toe, as it were.
clever answer and is the truth. track speed for trains running around yards. The track speed may be as simple as restricted speed . or a designated speed. In yards or switching areas you wont usually see 50 mph speed limits the speeds i run in and around and thru yards on my line is 30 mph 20mph 10 mph and restricted speed. You state a true bypass i do travel on a true bypass and the max speed on it is 25 mph on a clear ( amtrak 30 mph ) that is track speed double main . in dark territory we have a 20 mph speed limit but in the yard the yard rule aplies for restricted speed now on a clear day sun shine 20 mph is fine but if its foggy and cant see the nose of the engine the conductor will be walking 6-7 cars ahead and ill be following at 1 mph .