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People who know railroads were so against it, I wasn’t going to argue the pros/cons. << Previous statement. Still stands.
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I used to be the engineer on that shoving move to GalvTech. We had a caboose for the conductor to ride. Shoving that far was still a pain since you had to protect the many road crossing at night. I got the yardmaster to have the train built with the locomotive leading and left the caboose in the yard. That way we could run at main track speed.
The siding at GalvTech is on a down grade so we cut the engine off and ran into the GalvTech spur. Then we would bleed off the air in the cars and let them roll past the switch in order to get the engine on the other end.
Mark Vinski
Most fall protection is needed for doing work that involves a lot of position changing and paying attention to lots of variables. In such circumstances, falls can be caused by distraction, loss of situational awareness, tripping, slipping, etc. Typically, there also the conditions such that an accidental fall would be from a height sufficient to cause death or serious injury.
A fall from a train is somewhat different because the fall often occurs from a moving train, and/or, the fall can cause a person to fall under a moving train. If you were wearing some type of fall protection harness while riding on the side or end of a car being shoved, what would you expect the harness to do to protect you if you suddenly fell off the train?
We used to do that at one of our customers. Worked like a charm. Letting the cars roll by with the air left bottled and released works too, then you have the option of opening the angle cock on the trailing car to stop them in case the handbrake you chose to ride didn’t work so well. We also had one of those special car moving pry bars hidden near the switch in case the cars stalled and trapped the engine in the spur.
Riding the point for several miles is common, and while it can be uncomfortable it is often the quickest and easiest way to get the job done. I, too would not want to be strapped to a car for the reasons mentioned. In situations where a B/O car has to be set out enroute you may have to leave the trailing portion of the train behind and limp the defective car to the nearest siding or back track, which might be 10 or 15 miles away, maybe more. Then you may have to ride all the way back to the train.
Back to the original topic of this thread, even coal gons only have a rotary drawbar at one end of the car, the opposite end has a regular solid drawbar. In unit coal trains all the cars are supposed to face the same way, and there are a few special ‘double rotary’ cars so both ends of the trainset will have a rotary coupler facing outward. If you have two rotary drawbars coupled together there will be nothing fixing them in place, and it is possible for the two to start turning around together as the train moves along the track. Once they get far enough around the locking block inside the coupler will fall ‘up’, allowing the knuckle to open and the train will come apart. Then the conductor gets to walk back there
Don’t feel too bad, nobody liked my idea of talking train horns with voice dubbing for colorful metaphors.
Were you going to use it to tell railfanners to get a life? It seems that train crews really dislike railfanners (railfoamers).
We dislike obnoxious foamers who trespass or otherwise make fools of themselves. That last part includes refusing to listen to advice about why the professionals do things in certain ways.
‘Advice’ would indicate that you believe that I’m going to do anything regarding railroads or trains. I simply ask questions and may ask follow-up questions to better understand why things are done (or not done). Unless at a level crossing, I’ll never be within a mile of a train or railroad track.
Going back to the original post, It is true that in a derailment one car will pull over the next but I also know that those same tight couplers will keep a derailed car upright for a long time. The gain in one scenario might offset the loss in the other.
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I remember reading in TRAINS about a block of tank cars equipped with shelf couplers. A truck on one of the cars came apart and the shelf couplers held that end of the car upright. I believe that the train ran for several miles before the situation was discovered.
I’ve seen more than a few photos of trucks coming off under trains without uncoupling. So yeah, that does happen.
You can’t take everything to be adversarial (or maybe you can). I know that I will never fit in here because I’m an outsider. I appreciate the help I’ve received in the past and will hopefully get in the future but until I get banned, I will continue to ask questions that may seem (be?) idiotic to those who have been in the world of railroading most of their adult lives. The fact that I may question certain practices doesn’t mean I believe they’re wrong. I may simply want to know why I don’t fully understand why things are done that way.
An outsider? Most on here are not RRers. Most are fans. So the victim card is not a good one to play.
But don’t worry, I’ll try to avoid answering any questions you have, and I apologize in advance if I accidently do.
I see very few posters who ask questions who are not long-term RRs. I do, however, see a lot of people reading posts. Far more than the 10 or so that commonly post.
A victim, not even close.
Apology accepted in advance if you make a mistake.
If any members of this forum see something that I’ve done wrong, please tell me what it was so I can change my behaviour to better conform to the norm.
“behaviour”? Interesting…
I don’t know what makes it interesting. What have I done that has been generally offensive? I’ve tried to be polite.
One place things started to run off the trolley was around the time of ‘previous statement. Still stands.’
My opinion – and it is only an opinion – is that drawing parallels between a theoretical knowledge of climbing gear and a proper fall-protection system useful for shoves is not the hill you want to die on in a technical argument with working railroaders. It is also my opinion that retreating into passive aggressiveness when a discussion doesn’t seem to be going one’s way is not a way that friends carry on a friendly discussion… or even a friendly disagreement.
Railroaders can be brusque at times. Since so much of railroading is promptly written in blood, they may not have much time or enthusiasm for unproven ideas presented as objectively ‘better’ unless the ideas are demonstrated to be objectively safer in the areas of concern – which long-fall protection systems for mountain climbing, or ever typical shock-absorbing fall protection systems as used in historic preservation, most certainly will NOT be.
Two potential examples: Within the three-odd months you’ve been here, we had a thread about a dump truck colliding obliquely with a shove move with the person riding the point unable to move away from being horribly crushed at the point of contact. Being tethered by even an elastic contact would have made it even more impossible to swing away from the ‘zone of collision’. Meanwhile, a tether system would have to be short enough that feet and ankles of a rider would not be pulled under the car to where injury might result, and restricted in breakaway not to pull a rider around to a dangerous position or trajectory and then release him without warning.
If you’re going to argue for a tether, or even a temporary hook with a handle that a shove rider could use to relieve full reliance on hand grip – you need to understand the various dangers and ‘design’ accordingly. Be civil about what