Can someone set me straight on headlights? It is my understanding that model railroad locomotives are wired and configured so that the headlights come on to designate which direction the locomotives are going BUT that the prototype doesn’t operate this way.
How does/did the prototype operate their headlights on both steam and diesel? Was the front headlight always on and the rear headlight on only when the locomotive was traveling in reverse?
Thanks for the education…
Tom
Tom, this is paraphrased from Peter Josserand’s Rights of Trains.
A locomotive (or the end loco of a doubleheader or diesel consist) which is moving or about to move is required to have an operating headlight faced in the direction it is going to move, no matter whether the movement is forward or reverse. A standing locomotive awaiting a meet or on secondary track should have all headlights off. If standing on main track, approaching a station, approaching an oncoming train on multiple track, approaching a train order point or interlocking. or passing a yard where yard engines are employed, the headlight should be dimmed. (Back in '65 i ‘flashed’ a Santa Fe train on track parallel to old Route 66 at about 3 AM - the engineer dimmed his headlight for me!)
Yard engines making frequent reverse moves should have headlights lit in both directions.
Granted that Rights of Trains was a 1959 rewrite of a 1907 original, but the procedures described probably still apply.
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
Up until the 1940’s or 1950’s (varied by railroad) headlights were only on at night and were off during the day.
Starting in the 1940’s and 1950’s trains had headlights on by day and night. The rear headlight is only on if the engine is traveling in reverse by itself (and the headlight on the front is still lit unless it is coupled to cars) If the rear of the engine is coupled to cars, its off. Read rule 17 in the rule book for your favorite road.
The headlight may/must be extinguished when the train is stopped in a siding clear of the main track. It can be dimmed in yards, at passenger stations, approaching train order stations, meeting points etc., or on two or more track when passing another train
Hi Tom
As with the above the approching train will turn his lights off a few hundred yards before he passes a train held on a main line siding, to help to prevent night vision of the held train, then turning his lights back on after he shoots by. This totaly caught me by surprise on my first night trip and was for those few moment’s very spookey to me, may or not be in a rule book, may be just a courtisy… Take Care. John
Also, back when trains had cabooses, on some roads it was common for a train coming up behind a stopped preceding train (where flagging was not required) to extinguish the headlight to let the rear-end crew know that he saw them and was going to stop in time. A courtesy to the man standing on the rear platform wondering “is he going to get stopped in time?”
The engineers I work with would turn on the front and rear headlights and would dim the headlight facing the trailing unit and just use the number board lights on the trailing units.
As far as headlight use that comes under Rule 17 and company rules…There may be state laws as well.
Thanks again for the replies, fellas. [:D]
Tom
Quoting from “The Sparkplug and the Rathole”; TRAINS, January 1961, p. 23 (J.P. Lamb Jr. and Bruce R. Meyer): “In the cab of the last unit, the infinite blackness was broken by the rear headlight’s reflection off the bulkhead of the first box car.”
Since the authors were riding on the train that they were writing about, it appears that in the not-too-distant past, rear headlights WERE left on during operation.
(By the way, this story refers to the CNO&TP, a component of the Southern Railway – which was/is known as the “Rathole Division”).
/
It was not particularly unusual to have a rear headlight left on. It might needed when the units were making a back-up move while making a lift or set-off, and an engineer would neglect to turn it off. In daytime a headlight on the dim setting would not be noticeable to the crew in the cab. As far as I know there were no rules stating that it had to be turned off.
John