Folks,
A simple question here: I have not been able to find out why locomotives are placed forward and rearward facing while pulling a train. Is it because the rearward facing units are for braking? Do they help in pulling, thus run their motors in reverse during pulling?
What determines how many units are going to face rearwards?
Thanks for getting me going the right way.
Todd
Welcome to the board Todd.
Mechanicly it does not matter what direction the unit faces. It acts just the same facing either way. In many situations you would want the locos on either end of a consist to face away from the consist because there are not that many turning facilities anymore. So when you get to the end of the line and don’t have a place to turn around you ste the consist up to be run from the other end and then the crew will move to the other end and run back in the direction they came from (or more likly the next crew). It is possible to operate with the long hood forward but this is a very undesireable situation. And the short hood is not always the front of the unit. Some railroads, most notably Norfolk & Western and Southern, bougt there units set up to run long hood forward to offer the crew more protection in grade crossing collisions. Some units even had dual controll stands and could be run in either direction and still have the engineer faceing forward and on the right side of the cab. You can tell which is the front end by a letter F on the end of the front of the frame.
Aww, thats what the F was for.
it dont make any real differance what way they face… most of the time the one on the lead will have the F in frount for forward… but the other units…it dont matter… alot of times the power buro (the ones in charge of locomotives) will deside what direction they want each locomotive to face… alot of times it is done so when a unit gets to a terminal that dosnt have any way to turn an engin…the units can be broken up and rebuilt for outbound trains with a number of units faceing 1 way…and a number faceing the other so they can build consists with at least 1 faceing the forward for evey outbound train…
csx engineer
The reasons have been expained well but let me add one point. You’ll often see Amtrak running the engines elephant style (nose to tail). This is to make things easier in the event of a road failure of the lead engine. In that case the trailing locomotive can be run around and become the new leader. If they were back to back the problem would be more difficult as you’d have to get the trailing engine turned somewhere.
Yes, all the locos are powering their traction motors in the same direction for pulling, and dynamic brakeing. A control in the cab selects which end the trailing loco gets its control signal from through the MU (multiple unit) cables from the lead loco.
Welcome aboard, pull your belts tight and hold on for the ride.
Adrianspeeder
Sometimes tourist railroads, with only one engine and limited (or non-existant) turning facilities will back the engine for one leg of the round trip and then run the engine to the other end to run forwards for the return leg. It’s a bit rough on the engineer’s neck but the engine works fine.
dd
Who decides which units go where? If you make the wrong person cranky, do they put the junkiest engine on the point?, or is there a protocol of some sort?