I was privy to a conversation, argument, between two fellow modellers online about sanders on EMD F series. One said they didn’t have sanders the other said they did. I was asked to settle the issue, but I’m a steam guy and know very little about diesels.
Did the F’s have sanders, and if so, where were they located and filled?
Thanks
The F-7 had sanders, it’s mentioned in the EMD Enginemen’s Operating Manual.
http://users.fini.net/~bersano/english-anglais/EMD-F7.pdf
Mel
My Model Railroad
http://melvineperry.blogspot.com/
Bakersfield, California
I’m beginning to realize that aging is not for wimps.
You can see the sand hatches on each side, right above the trucks, front and rear.
Mike.
To my knowledge all freight Fs were built with sanders – it is difficult to imagine them without. Ed will have detail pictures of the hatch arrangements on various models.
Details West has the hoses from the boxes in the carbody to the truck, and the pipes conveying sand to the right locations over the railhead.
https://www.detailswest.com/FUnit_info.htm
On the 27-pin MU cable, #5 is emergency sand and #23 is manual sand. There were different ways sanding was commanded from the cab; although I’m not an authority, I believe F3s had a special bail on the independent brake and F7s could have a hinged brake lever which was depressed to sand. This is perhaps more detail than you need to know to model.
I know this sounds weird, but I believe some Canadian F units in passenger service had their sanders intentionally disabled. This might be involved in someone claiming some Fs did not have sand.
You already had several answers, of course they did.
I am wondering how this even came up. Why would some one think they did not have sanders? Are there road diesels that do not have sanders?
-Kevin
As I noted, at least one Canadian railroad has been reported to have removed sanders from some classes of locomotive. I believe Bob Smith has commented on this in another Kalmbach forum (IIRC in the context of a thread on a wreck to a Canadian passenger train caused by a child’s vandalism).
Some of the argument is that sand has operational issues other than just cost, and with better traction control circuitry on locomotives, the need for brute-force sanding in some contexts (notably passenger service) is less…
Sounds like PSR-style ‘economizing’ to me…
Inoperable sanders is an FRA defect.
Jeff
But must they be equipped?
Then you get into the argument of a "full-time sanding facility".
Speaking of sanding facility:
GN_F7-272_Sanders by Edmund, on Flickr
If the overhead hose didn’t reach (as in the steam-centric facilities of yore) you carried the sand to the fill hatch one bucket at a time. Note the repurposed hopper car bodies probably now in sand storage service to the far right and the “steam” sand filler hose over the further unit.
Regards, Ed
I would say yes. https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/49/229.131
Jeff
PS. It says placed in a facility with the sand capabilities. I imagine that means if if don’t yard there, it can continue on. until the next daily inspection is done.
Ed, I zoomed in on your picture, and nothing about this looks safe.
[:O] [:O] [:O] [:O] [:O]
-Kevin
Yea, so?..
Although I do say they could have used something a bit more substantial than a “saw horse”.
Heck, now days, just handling the dry sand could considered a “hazard”, especially if it’s silca sand.
Mike.
I was a safety officer for a while in my gainfully employed days.
Seeing something like that sends chills down my spine. I know that was just how things got done back in the day, but it is still terrifying.
-Kevin
While at the Sacramento Railroad Museum I taped a few minutes of this F7 with the side panels removed:
You can see one of the sand boxes directly over the rear truck. (I tried to embed the video so it would start at 8:47 but I couldn’t get it to work, sorry)
I still vividly recall the days of the roofwalks. Very common to see trainmen standing on moving cuts of cars, nothing to hold, no harness, no tie-off rail above.
Good News! Only 43 killed in SIX months (this is only ONE railroad!)
NYC_deaths_1930 by Edmund, on Flickr
Yep, still dangerous but sure better than those numbers!
Regards, Ed
A thread from April, 2020 with pics of side panels removed:
http://cs.trains.com/mrr/f/13/t/282057.aspx
One of my post in this thread has a link to a picture in Flickr. You can enlarge it by clicking on it, and you’ll see the sand box and hatch over the rear truck.
Mike
I remember reading a union letter about sanding facilities and what it means to have sand capabilities. Krazy konvuluted. But I always make sure I have sand - we need it a lot in switching service. ( Insert my rant on rebuilt engines that don’t give you sand on demand. When I want sand it is because I know I need sand… the wishes of the engine software be damned.)
The safety committee where I worked once posted a notice that said we did very good this year. We exceeded our goal and had no injuries. The goal for next year is three.
Mark Vinski
There is only 1 engine that I have seen that didn’t have a way to sand the rails. That was the Mt Washington cog railway in New Hampshire.
Joe
I’m still looking for (or hoping someone will comment on) sander removal in Canadian practice.
I remember in mid-2004 AAR tried to get FRA to delete the 229.131 “safety” basis for sanders (providing research that indicated sanding didn’t significantly reduce stopping distance) and this led to the RSAC review of many of the rail-related CFR provisions. To my knowledge 229.131 still remains operative and requires sanders on outboard axles in direction of expected movement:
(EDIT: this is the up-to-current-enforcement eCFR version of what I see Jeff posted earlier - there would be no difference from what he and Zug said.)
As I recall, it did not matter when checking this whether there were holes or other damage in the hoses or pipes, as long as some sand made it to the railhead! (There was some provision for inspectors to cite under 229.45, ‘general condition’, if the leaked sand posed some other safety hazard, but it is hard to imagine what that might be.)
There is an interesting provision that says if you have a yard engine that develops inoperable sanders (on either end) working in a location with no ‘sand capabilities’, the railroad has 7 days to rectify the issue. I would presume that applies to ‘inoperable due to empty sandboxes’ just as for breakage…
I do not think the exception for establishing bidirectional sanding capability on an engine coupled ready on a road consist ever applies to yard engines, though.
Here is a picture I took in Sacramento last year.
-Kevin
