I heard that locomotives are equipped with a dead man’s switch for engineers - is this accurate?
More commonly called an Alerter. Older units had a pedal that needed a heavy lunch pale to hold it.
Pete
So what do new units have?
New units have a button that needs to be pushed. There is a little graphic that comes up on the display screen and an audible tone. The engineer has to push the button or move the throttle, brake levers. Usually, when just going down the tracks, they will push the button.
What happens if you don’t push the button?
ANSWER: Alerters. Depending on the design of the device, the engineer has to “do something” like change throttle settings, blow the horn, ring the engine bell, work the sanders, dim the headlight, or acknowledge a cab signal change. More often though he presses an acknowledgement device.
Every 90-seconds or so, the Alerter “will ask” for an acknowledgement. The request is usually visual at first, but then a visual signal accompanied by a chirping alarm comes next.
QUESTION: “What happens if you don’t push the button?”
ANSWER: If the engineer takes too long to acknowledge the Alerter, the system takes over by automatically initiating a brake application, throttling the locomotive down, and bringing the train to a grinding halt. After the train stops, the engineer can recover control and get the train going again.
A more affective system might replace the chirping tone with a random stream of 250 or so pre-recorded insults directed at the crew and delivered by “Mr. Warmth” himself, comedian Don Rickles.
You must have had a heavy lunch box. The deadman pedals that I remember required a grip or something to be wedged down. What a nuisance they were, we never had them but occasionally had to deal with them on run-through power or units required after the merger with the Road that Gave a Green Light to Innovations. It was best to use your grip, or a heavy lunch pail, it was too easy to forget it otherwise, which could lead to close questioning from the folks you really didn’t want to talk to later.
Of course, I never did any of this, I just heard about it.[:)]
Typical dead man pedal:
One does not want to use a ‘lunch pail’ or othre non-railroad device - that would be a rules violation. Just take a couple of ‘brakes shoes’ and use them to hold it down - They are ‘normal’ equipment carried in the cab of an engine. If asked, you just respond that they must have ‘slid’ over the pedal. The above was part of ‘Engine Service 101’ that I learned from the ‘old heads’!
Jim
… jamb an air hose under the ledge in the control stand…
You mean that isn’t the bottom fixture of the locomotive air hose holder?
Seems like the authors of the above 2 posts both attended the same school of Practical 2nd Generation Locomotive Management . . . . Darn good photo of it, too - thanks much, Dakguy201. - Paul North.
A flag works well too. [:-^]
Nick
Yeah, a flagstick will work, brakeshoes will work (we never had brakeshoes in the cab, don’t know how we’d explain that) but it was too easy to get off the engine and forget you’d done that. If you used some sort of personal possession, you were going to take that with you and all the evidence. We had at least one engineer who forgot to remove the evidence, to his regret.
According to “Bozo Texino” as quoted in one of these articles - “If you see an engineer whittling, follow him !” A few of the stories were about just this, gone wrong. One of the funnier ones involved an engineer who was so surprised by the TM showing up in the cab during the initial terminal air brake test that he quickly yanked out the flagstaff that he was using to jam the pedal down, ‘busted’ his air - and during the ensuing chaos, a long, hot ash from his stogie dropped into his lap - with predictable results.
- Paul North.
How to be an assistant trainmaster
Back in the era of pre-modular (GP7&9, F7, E8, SD45, etc.) locomotives, we always had a supply of spare fuses (not fusees) for the electrical relays. The copper contact end would fit real snug under the housing just above where the pedal pivots. Easy to kick away should an official visit occur, plus there were always fuses laying around, so the hastily-removed fuse would just blend in with the mess.
The discussion reminds me of a Western novel I read recently in which the hero had made his way from a passenger car to the engine after the bad guys had disabled the engineer and jammed something on the steam engine’s dead man’s pedal. The same author mentioned, in another novel, how the gear boxes popped and crackled as they cooled after a steam engine came to rest. The second idiocy could be removed if the book were republished; the first would take a major rewrite, especially since it is mentioned in later stories about the same hero.
[:)]
I could never understand why they call it a “Dead Man’s Switch.” It seems to me that, if an engineer should be so unfortunate to die on the spot, he would simply slump in place with his foot still firmly on the pedal.
I have seen engineers on commuter trains hit the alerter switch hard with the bottom edge of the closed fist (the edge nearest the little finger) in response to the “beep-beep-beep.” They never just press the button. Sometimes I hear the beep-beep-beep on the scanner when the engineer is talking.
There are stories of engineers who hit the alerter even while they are asleep. [:O]
[:)] [:)]
Yes, there are stories of engineers in a semi-conscious state who still hit the alerter on a regular basis. I believe that it could easily happen. I believe it but won’t comment further here.