December 2013 had an excellent article on the westbound Capitol Limited running out of fuel because someone forgot to refuel the two diesels at Ivy City. Don’t engineers generally check the fuel level before starting a trip? Are there fuel guages and are they generally reliable?
One way one might check fuel level is by banging (not too hard, don’t chip the paint and don’t hurt your hand,) on the side of the fuel tank. The sound when full should be different than when empty.
The only problem I see with your “train” of thought daveklepper, is that you’re being logical and that can be dangerous these days!
My companies rules are that Engineers are to report when there is less than 1000 gallons in the tank, a corresponding report is then made through the mainframe computer system which alerts the appropriate people.
In the case reported by the OP - Ivy City is one of Amtrak’s main service centers - and I suspect the Capitol’s engineer just assumed that proper service had been performed on the engines - as it normally is. He was wrong!
Our instructions are to report when fuel is 2000 gallons or less. Those are local instructions, mostly for through trains, and other places may have other parameters.
Most modern engines have two gauges. One is the sight glass on the side of the tank. Modern engines with computer screens also have a digital gauge. One reading is displayed on the engr’s screen and digital readouts located on both sides of the engine by the fuel tank.
Some older engines have an analog dial gauge on the tank in addition to the sight glass. (I’ve even run across a few that have all three types.) The oldest engines just have the sight glass.
It’s not unusual to have an engine where the digital gauge isn’t working. The sight glass on the tank isn’t much help sometimes. On some engines the bottom of the gauge is around 3000 gallons. In that situation, the only way to tell how much fuel is in the tank is to get something to stick down into the tank. Usually if one’s available, they have a mechanical dept person do that.
I’ve had a trailing engine run out of fuel on me. The paperwork showed both engines had been on the train from it’s originating point (an empty hopper out of one of the Wisconsin power plants) and were to be fueled enroute. The leader had 2900 gallons when I took charge of it. I assumed since the leader had a sufficient amount and both had been together, that the second engine did too. Somehow when the engines were to be fueled, the second one wasn’t. It happens sometimes.
Jeff
Nothing we have is new enough to have anything digital anyhow, so that’s out…
Since we run a fairly regular schedule, we kinda know where things are, fuel wise, and have regularly scheduled deliveries. That doesn’t preclude issues like missed deliveries or the like, however.
The guages aren’t usually a problem, but sight glasses aren’t always as easy to read as you might think, between staining, crude, and road grime.
Through most of the season, though, engines are running in ones, and rescue could be a couple of hours away, so we do try to know how we stand.
Sticking a tank isn’t always that easy - many have the fill piping arranged in a way that precludes using a straight stick.
Some locomotives phone home to Erie with bad GEM data and other times the data is good, just handled improperly.
Tank gauges of all types have been notoriously bad since forever. Add to that that nobody shops an engine for a fuel gauge and you have a lousy situation. Calculating fuel burn from generator ho-hum plus idle fuel is far more reliable.
Ho-hum = horsepower - hours
So, start bngng on your tanks. After a while, your ears will be as accurate as a fuel gauge.
Not too different than running passenger, especially commuter, trains. Plan on providing service to the customers and not just running trains. Do things so that running out of fuel doesn’t happen. Why are there trainmasters, road foreman of engines, yard masters, master mechanics, supervisors of all kinds, train engineers and conductors if not to assure safety, efficiency, and service?
HENRY, even with commitment, the best of intentions, etc, people make errors, because we are human and not perfect. At the end of the chain are the on-board railroad people. Engineers should check that everything, or at least everything important, works before advancing the throttle. Food service people should insure that the commisary loaded the right food and drink. Freight conductors that the manifest corresponds to the actual cars on the train. And so it goes. Checking the fuel is just one of a lot of checks that the onboard people should do —before the throttle is advanced. This in no way implies that the trainmasters, yardmasters, switch crews, and locomotive maintenance people are not doing their jobs. I hope engineers will use my suggestion to make their jobs easier and have better peace-of-mind.
In all modes of transportation. Think of your car !
Airplanes have the same problems. In the age of recip engines the airline crews would dip stick the fuel tanks first thing every morning. Then add know quantity from certified fuel pumper gauges.
Jet aircraft which measure fuel in pounds as heat content per pound is constant would often pump a tank dry and then pump in quantity in increments of 300 gallons which would at standard temperature of 59 degrees would equal 2010 pounds. Checked your gauges each 300 gallon increment to see accuracy. Have tables for fuel temps other than standard…
When we needed to get all fuel possible you fuel at lowest fuel temp of day. Many Caribbean airports have only above ground tanks that have hotter fuel so less fuel.
That will last until someone hurts their hand. Then we’ll have a rule about banging tanks. I don’t think it works that well, either - those tanks have pretty thick walls.
The GPs we use have a combination of sight glasses, analog gauges, and digital gauges. Some have all three. The digital readouts are pretty accurate. Just have to leave a 200 gallon (or so) cushion.
If the gauges and/or glass are working OK - no need to bang. If need to bang, why bang so hard as to hurt one’s hand? Lots of people knock on doors. But who ever heard of hurting one;s hand doing so? But important to check, not just to assume.
So we assume the gauges are working ok, or are we banging? I’m confused…
Actually Dave, it’s not “because we are human an not perfect” but because we are human and not committed. We have jobs, not careers. Management thinks we come a dime a dozen and that there are 10 people in line waiting for our job; so they don’t commit to us and we don’t commit to them. They say we should be glad we got a job and to shut up and work. So we feel that if we just mosey along doing enough to be good enough, even less since nobody else cares. No one respects rules, management doesn’t respect labor and labor doesn’t respect management:, there is little respect. Speaking with some modern railroad employees (yeah, employees, not railroaders) and rail fans about how operations with timetables, train orders, and books of rules actually worked and they either think I’m lying, laugh at the thought it could operate today, but few are in awe and respect. Everyone knows that its just a job until something else comes along or that is is enough to pay the bills and t
Henry, I have to agree there are work situations like that and people like that even in some of the best work situations. But my closest experience with railroad operating people was when I was an unpaid employee of the Boston and Maine, 1952-1953 while working on my MIT SB thesis. Those guys were commited, wanted to do the best job possible, and wanted to help me as much as possible. I also used by B&M pass to commute regularly to my job at Mystic Transformers, and I can say I did not meet a single B&M crew member that was not dedicated to doing the best job possible. The worst situation was of course with Penn Central. Many employees stopped caring because they felt that management did not know what they were doing.
But even dedicated people sometimes make a mistake. I know I sometimes do, even when I am dedicated to what I am doing. Not very often, but it does happen. Even in commuting, I thought I boarded a Jerusalem 68 bus when actually it was a 39. Somehow, my eyes played a trick on me.
One of the most innovative and progressive railroads is Norfolk Southern. But I recall a poster corroborating your point by calling the railroad by a term with the same NS initials that the moderator would remove today. So, you are right in many cases, and I am right in others.
You and I Dave come from a time when the world was made up of people relying on each other for social and work situations rather than electronic machines for entertainment, social intercourse, and at work stations. In railroading, there aren’t humans strategically located at terminals or trackside, nor aboard the trains for that matter. When an onboard train person talks to his dispatcher most likely neither are next door neighbors nor have ever met…not ten miles apart but maybe thousands. There usually is one other person in the cab and those two may be the only humans they encounter except by radio for hours on end. So much is so different. Especially from the early fifties and so starkly from as late at the 70’s. A woman told me her boyfriend saw an ad that NJT was hiring conductors and told her she should go get one of those jobs because they pay so well…she did and told me she kicked her boyfriend out and that she doesn’t have much time for a boyfriend anyway because of “the job”. Everything is different for everybody…we just notice railroading more than others do.
Knock on the fuel tank will tell you that there is fuel in the tank, bu how can you tell how much is in the tank? you would be guessing, since the tanks are curved on the sides and flat on the top , bottom and ends.
I ra
Banging just DOES NOT WORK!
You really can’t tell the difference between top and bottom, the bangs all sound the same. That is why they dip. Sight glasses are a waste of time because as mentioned earlier, you can’t see through the cruddy glass. That is why they dip.
If most RR’s are like the NS, they have a centralized computer center that is supposed to keep up with fuelings (along with test dates and the like), but, like everything else some units fall through the cracks. That is why they dip. At least around here they do.
Not to say that it is uncommon to run out of fuel, but, in 40 yrs. I can think of only one time where my units ran out of fuel where it caused the train to come to a complete stop. And, one other time where I was on a set of pusher units. In this case the train was over any hills where they were needed, the lead units could easily handle the train and I was just along for the short ride into the crew change terminal.
While some folks here seem to be making a big deal out of all of this, remember, you don’t have locomotives falling out of the sky.