Earlier this week (with temperatures around 105) I saw a train powered by two SD40T-2s. The lead one was a former DRGW unit with no air conditioner, the second on was a former SP unit with an air conditioner. I noticed that when the train stopped for a meet with another that the crew went to the second locomotive and returned to the first one once they got a green signal.
Would it have been soooo impractical to put the A/C loco on point?
On a related note, last summer I saw a local train that would leave the yard fairly early in the morning and return in the middle of the afternoon. It would switch a tomato processing plant, so during tomato season that train can get quite long and would sometimes have two locomotives. It appears that the crew had the locomotives coupled nose to nose so that the unit with A/C would be one the front during the return trip.
Would it have been soooo impractical to put the A/C loco on point?
Depends on whether it was facing the direction of movement. Of course, the crew could have backed up all the way over the road . . .
Jeez! What if (gasp!) they’d had a steam locomotive? ? ? ? In 105 degree heat?
Oh, it must’ve never happened . . .
They don’t call me
Old Timer
for nothing . . .
In regards to the train I saw this week, the second locomotive was facing rearward.
been thier…done that…lol
csx engineer
Back in the days of yore, we used to have a SP loco come through once in awhile with roof air conditioning. Trouble was, they always showed up about mid-October. The rest of the time, we had to tough it out. Yeah, and a lot of it was running long hood lead, too. Not that I want to go back to all of that but I sure did it.
i’ve noticed that NS has put a lot of rooftop a/c’s on the older regular cab units. i thought the old SF and SP were the only to do that…
One day, my son , who was probably about five at the time, and I were sitting watching a BNSF train do some switching at a country siding. After making all the moves, the locomotives backed up onto the siding and stopped for a while. Someone from the front engine walked back to the second engine for a while. I asked my son why he thought the man had gone back to the second unit. He said “the engineer probably had to use the train potty and didn’t want to smell up his own engine” Just then, the man comes out of engine number 2, goes up front, and away goes the train!