I see things I don’t understand, so I ask questions. I don’t know any better ways to do things, but I wonder why things are done a certain way. Here’s a switching operation that makes me wonder.
Setup: a train has a car to deliver and a car to pick up at a random lumber yard on the prairie. The locomotive must push the cars about a half mile on the customer’s spur.
Here’s the way it was most recently switched:
1)Locomotive and full car are disconnected from the front of the train
2)They move forward through the switch
3)Switch is thrown for the spur
4)Locomotive pushes full car a half mile
5)Full car and empty car are coupled
6)Locomotive pulls both cars back a half mile through the switch
7)Switch is thrown for the main
8)Empty car is coupled onto the parked train
9)Empty car is uncoupled from full car
10)Locomotive and full car move forward through the switch
11) Switch is thrown for the spur
12) Locomotive pushes full car a half mile
13)Full car is placed for customer
14) Locomotive pulls back a half mile onto the main
15) Switch is thrown for the main
16) Locomotive is coupled onto the parked train
17) Train heads on it’s merry way.
Now the dumb questions:
Why did they push the full car in first?
If they started with just the locomotive, wouldn’t the switchman have ridden the loco 3 times and the car once? Loco in/ loco out/ car in/ loco out?
The way it was done, with the locomotive and full car from the start, wouldn’t the switchman have ridden the loco 2 times and the car 2 times? Car in/ loco out/ car in/ loco out?
Is there a preferred or mandated order to switch the cars?
For what it’s worth, they had a switchman on the ground that came in a crew haul
Unless there was a siding on the siding, a place to stick the one of the two cars while handling the other, the way you described was about the only way to do the job.
The other option would have been to go in with the locomotive, pull the empty car, run back out to the train, pick up the load, with the empty still coupled to the loco, then push both cars back in to spot the load.
I think I’d rather push one car than two.
Someone has to be on the point of the push moves. Aside from that, riding the loco when possible would have been the safer alternative.
I’m not as good as Zug, and I hate switching problems (I find Allen’s Timewaster an invention inspired by the Adversary, second perhaps only to the Tower of Hanoi or those idiot lacing toys as a silly pastime) but it seems very obvious why they did it the way described. You couldn’t get ‘around’ the empty to deliver the full car and leave it any other way.
They could always demand you put a runaround track on your lead on your side of the derail (or refuse to switch you) …be content that you have an older legacy facility and just watch the conductor’s decision making process.
Like I said in the first paragraph, I’m just curious why they do something a certain way. For what it’s worth, the facility was built 12 years ago. The spur was built with consultation from the BNSF and from the land developer, who owns the D&I railroad.
I’m not sure I follow the part about derailing. There’s a curve, but the locomotive is pulling the empty car out. Once it’s back on the main, it’s pushing the car into the parked train to couple it. Is that where you’re talking about?
What’s a runaround got to do with anything. It’s a standard old trailing point spur from the sounds of it. Maybe a bit longer than others, but that doesn’t majorly change things up. Trainmen ride shoves longer than that.
In the current fuel saving times going in first with just the light engine would use less fuel since you would only be moving the loaded car once. And as Murphy Siding said a crew member would only have to ride a car once. That’s the way I would do it.
Pull up to the switch. Tie the train down (but put the handies on the cars behind your new load). Test your handbrakes. Run lite engine into the siding, and pick up the empty. Run back out and grab your load, take it in and spot up. Run back out, do your air test it, knock off your brakes, and be on your merry way.
Unless the siding is on an extreme curve. Then you’d take a car in to make it easier to couple up (drawbars on lumber cars usually move more /easier than engine ones).
If you pull MTY first, come back to train pick up load and then shove load first then empty back in to spot, you have the empty in a more vulnerable spot than would otherwise be the case.
Those green teflon pads or whatever they are sure make drawbars slide easy. Except when they fall out and don’t get replaced…
Along these lines, we had a customer who loaded cars with tightlock couplers and would always leave them right at the top of a hill and in a curve (the joys of cramped industrial sites). Sometimes the height difference between loaded and empty cars plus the angle of the hilltop meant that the couplers wouldn’t go together, and the engine drawbar was stiff sometimes you couldn’t move it over enough.
Sometimes we had to prop up the loaded car’s drawbar with a rock (the customer had a couple burly employees who were strong enough to lift it), but shoving in with a different car was a better option.