i guess you didn’t get it. i also have 2 dogs named spot and 3 boys named charlie.
grizlump
For similar reasons, the UP uses the reporting marks from companies it took over in the past - there are UP cars with (IIRC) “CNW” “CMO” “MSTL” and “CGW” reporting marks. Even before UP took over the Chicago NorthWestern, CNW used the old CMO, MSTL and CGW reporting marks. (These are/were on NEW cars, not old cars that actually had belonged to the old pre-merger railroads.)
Dave’s previous post reminds me an occasion at Mojave, CA when two opposing Espee freights met. The Westbound didn’t have the required dynamic braking to descend Tehachapi for its weight. The power on the two trains was switched around to meet the demands however the lead locomotive on the original Eastbound ended up at the point of the Westbound. The Espee used warrants, they buried the questionably numbered unit in the locomotive consist to avoid any confusion. Like maybe the whole train had turned and was now running back down the “Hill” to Bakersfield.
Have Fun, Rob
On similiar lines, what is the X in any steam and some diesel numberboards, notably 4449 and the UP steam fleet, but others had it as well?
Rightm but that was after a while if I have my local RR history correct. The pic of 201 is on the point of either an office train, or more likely the INRD Dinner train, which was a while after the initial CF7 purchase.(IRR 'round here refers to the Indiana Rail Road that was Interurban, INRD is the current Indiana Railroad) 200 still exists as a heritage unit on th eINRD, as does a GP7, both in the Monon-esque scheme. The CF7s ended up being mostly throwaways for INRD. The stories go that they’d put 5 engines on a two engine train in hopes that by the time the train arrived at its destination, two engines were still working. Hence why they didn’t invest a lot of money into the paint.
“X” meant an extra train, not included in employees’ timetable, e.g., not a scheduled train. The number of the train was based on the lead engine’s number. Train orders would indicate the train’s direction, such as X4567 East or X4567 West.
Mark
There is a nice book about the INRD. “The Indiana Rail Road Company” by Christopher Rund. He writes the CF-7 have been made in the Texas sun (Cleburne) to operate in areas like sunny California doing switching and lite road services.
The INRD had to use them in cold winter weather to run heavy coal trains. That was too much for them to sustain. However, it is great reading about a success story.
Actually its to desgnate them as yard and local service engines. The UP has less than 9999 engines.
They use those ID’s to identify certain series of cars, not because they have run out of numbers. The cars may be a certain type, equipped with certain equipment, may be in a specific trust agreement, on a specific lease, etc.
In a similar vien, the NS and CSX used “NYC” and “PRR” not because they ran out of numbers but to divy up the CR cars prior to merger.
Yep, a copy was given to me by the INRD’s General Operating Manager. [:D] But they had devils trying to get them to run in a lot of other climates too, though none of them Hot and arid.
Mark: Duh. But I thought I’d seen the Xs in the numberboards during SP regualr trains. I’ll double check my saved pics though.
To expand slightly on many railroads, probably the majority, the number boards repeated the locomotive number. But some, and I believe the SP was one, used the number boards to identify the train. So engine 1234 might display X1234 if it was leading an Extra train, 17 if it was leading passenger train #17, or 2-56 if it was leading the 2nd section of train 56.
John
I’m not sure if anyone mentioned this or not in a previous response but as I understand it a railroad could technically have some locomotives or cars with duplicate numbers. When roads merged, the “new” bigger railroad came into ownership of the smaller lines equipment. For example, Union Pacific owns the Southern Pacific, Rio Grande, C&NW, etc equipment from their merge. UP also owns the respective reporting marks, which would allow them to roster, say, two identically numbered pieces of stock under different reporting marks. One car could have SP marks and the other UP, but they are still both owned by Union Pacific and the reporting marks are like a prefix or suffix to the non unique number. Its late, hopefully that all makes partial sense.
Cahrn
What matters is not the number, but the intitials and number. So it doesn’t matter if the the numbers duplicate as long as they have different initials.
In train order times, it was assumed that the initials of an engine were the home roads. So on the MP, an order to an extra train with the MP1865 as the lead engine would be addressed to “Extra 1865 North”, the “MP” was assumed. If it had the UP1865 pulling the train, the order would be addressed to “Extra UP 1865 North”. With track warrants and the number of mergers and trackage rights operations, the initials are now always part of the address.
To CX500
Not sure what you are trying to say here! Are you saying for example that Extra 1234 West will have locomotive X1234 as it lead loco? If so, what if a particular RR did not use prefixes to their numbers and some “did not” use prefixes at all. Besides it would not be feasible for the engine shop to hold all X-prefix locos for exclusive use on Extras.
Additionally, number boards do reflect the loco numbers. The are not changeable. In your example, Loco #17 (on the number board) will always be Loco #17 and it would rarely if ever be used on Train # 17 as identified in the timetable.
Anthony
The letters that follow Southern Railway Locomotive Numbers have nothing to do with running out of numbers.
Those letters are technically called “check letters” (or sometimes “check digits” eventhough they are not numbers). There is a specific mathematical formula that is used taking the numbers of the locomotive and adding and multiplying them together in a certain way then reducing the product to a single digit to arrive at which letter will be applied to that unit.
A, F, H, J, L, K, R, T, W, X are the 10 letters that are assigned to 1 thru 0. 0 is used since 10 would not be a single digit, obviously. A is 1 and X is 0, and the rest should be obvious.
There are a number of stories associated with WHY Southern implemented this, on being that they wanted to see if Clerks were actually watching trains by their stations. You had to physically see the locomotives to see the check letter and record it on your train data sheets. Of course if a clerk was clever, he’d know the formula and could cheat anyway, and just sit back and relax as trains passed. This was of course before all the scanners that are wayside these days…back when everything was written down. Another story says it was a way to identify whether a number belonged to a Southern Loco or a Southern Freight Car. I’ve never really known for sure what the real reason was. As far as I know Southern was the only railroad who ever used such a “lettering” system a
Anthony:
“Extra 1234 West” will have Engine 1234 leading. Extras are named according to the lead engine. Always.
Now some railroads like SP and UP DID have changeable numberboards on steam and early diesel locomotives. They’d have the numberboards display the train number. If it was an extra then it would be “X1234”
Take a look at the boards on top, with the individual segments.
About 20 years ago Model Railroader had an article in their “Computers and Model Railroading” column with a short program to properly calculate those check digits. I have that issue in my stash somewhere.
I actually have a printout that was given to me by a friend who received it from a NS computer tech. I don’t know what kind of language this is supposed to be in though. I’ll paste it below, though I don’t know exactly how it’ll format in this forum…
But I also have an old DOS program that someone wrote and turned loose in the wild many years ago called SRCHECK. Very simple to use…from the DOS command line you simply type SRCHECK ####
With the #'s being the 4 digits of the loco of course…if it happens to be a 2 or 3 digit loco number, you simply insert leading Zeros to make it into a 4 digit number. I’ve checked this program against hundreds of photos of SR locos, and it has never generated the wrong check letter. Back when I bothered to custom paint locos, I used it some to verify those numbers too…but usually I’d work from a photo too. All the recent releases in Southern that I’ve bought that have check letters on them all match what this program says as well.
Anyway, I mentioned the printout of a different program, and here it is:
SOUTHERN RAILROADS CHECK DIGITS
EXAMPLE: 2710 H
STEP 1: MAKE THE FOLLOWING CHART
ENGINE-DIGIT-1 (ED1)
ENGINE-DIGIT-2 (ED2)
ENGINE-DIGIT-3 (ED3)
ENGINE-DIGIT-4 (ED4)
CHECK-DIGIT-1 (CD1)
CHECK-DIGIT-2 (CD2)
CHECK-DIGIT-3 (CD
Anthony, your accusatory tone isn’t appreciated. Nevertheless, I’ll explain.
If engine no. 1234 was to lead an extra (not-in-timetable) train, the train would be identified as “X1234” and for certain the Southern Pacific Railroad would have "X1234 on the number boards. Scheduled trains would have the train numbe on the number boardsr, regardless of the locomotive’s number.
Mark
i think what some people may be missing is that the train i/d boards on up and sp locomotives were like the price signs at gas stations and the numbers could be changed to reflect the identity of the train the loco was being used on. the regular engine numbers were permanent and stayed the same regardless of the train i/d.
grizlump