While watching crews do flat switching, I’m always amazed that it works out as well as it does. What keeps the engineer from kicking the second car onto a track so hard that it rams the first car at high speed? If a crew is kicking cars into a siding, do they have to stop occasionaly and bunch the cars up at the far end? A couple weeks ago, I saw a car kicked that looked like it rolled for 2 blocks. It went out of sight behind some other cars. I waited for a big car-rash! sound, but nothing happened. Now that guy, must be good at kicking cars
You have to use judgment as to how fast to let a car go during a kick. Yet kicked cars sometimes do not roll far enough to couple or strike another car. Also, a car sometimes does not roll far enough to clear the switch from fouling, but far enough to allow you to throw the switch. If you do throw the switch with a car fouling and kick another car, it will make a nasty contact with the fouling car to the sides of the couplers. It is called cornering a car and it can do considerable damage including derailing or tipping a car over.
yep, switching is one of the most impessive skills on the rairoad. It’s hard to learn now because new guys don’t get to see it much. The rules are too restictive so the old guys who know rarely display it. It requires alot of judgement and knowledge of the teritory, yards that is.
Lots of skill to switch many cars in short time with no damage. RR Company doesn’t like it because how do you replace a good yardman when he’s off on rules training ? And a good switchman doesn’t like the mess left by spare men either hehe.
I heard a “good switchman will make a good roadman, but a good roadman doesn’t make a good switchman.”
The engineer just makes the engine go or stop, unless it’s a RCO job. The switchman pulling the pin makes the decision on how fast to kick a particular car. I’d say that Ed is the expert on this subject, but I’ll say skill, experience and if all else fails, plain ol’ dumb luck.
Of course sometimes the luck isn’t the good kind and over comes skill and experience enough that you can hear the joint being made on the other end of the yard.
Jeff
When I was assigned to a yard job 3rd trick switching out the rip tracks as the engineer it was forward backwards stop when the switchman wrer ready to kick it was throttle notch 8 and wait to hear stop then go to idle and apply the independent brake it is just that easy (lol).
Rodney
I’ve seen it done a couple of times. I’d imagine a good crew develops a sense of what needs to be done when and requires a minimum of communication to make it happen.
I recall seeing a picture once of a locomotive with what appeared to be an air powered pin puller. Seems like that would let the engineer be fully in control of the kick, with the rest of the crew focused on throwing switches, etc.
Planning, and being familiar with your yard and the tracks, how they do and don’t roll makes all the difference in the world…
I can teach anyone how to pull a pin and kick a car…teaching them how hard or soft is a totally different matter.
What keeps the cars from rolling out the other end of the track is a “bumper” car(s), one or more cars tied down with hand brakes that you kick against.
Now, depending on the yard, if it is a bowl shaped yard with a deep depression in the middle, you can simply let a few cars roll softly into the tracks…and they will see saw back and forth for a while, then come to rest close to the center of the track.
You then take into consideration whether those cars were loads or empties, and if the next few cars you are going to kick against those car(s) are empty or loads, you adjust your kicking speed accordingly.
There are a few tracks in one of our yards where I never tie a brake on a car…simply use the inertia and mass to keep stacking them up against each other.
It all is based on timing…my engineer will notch it out, and hold it there as long as I want, because he trust me…but if we get over 10 mph for more than a second or two, he will shut it down.
That’s because we discussed it a long time ago, and if we have to kick cars that hard, then we have a problem somewhere, and might as well shove the track instead of trying to “knock” it in the clear.
The real trick is he consistently gives me the same “kick” over and over, so I have his rhythm and he has mine.
So I don’t have to worry about our speed, I simply adjust the amount of time between me telling him to “kick ‘em 152” and “that will do, 152”…the longer I wait between the two commands, the faster the car will be moving.
You take into consideration whether it is a load or empty…trust me, a loaded car will roll a long, long way if there is nothing in its way!
Our
When you kick cars into tracks, you need a couple cars at the far end of each track with hand brakes set to act as a stop so the kicked cars don’t roll back out the far end where they could split switches or run off the end of stub tracks. Even with the brakes set on a couple cars, you have to be careful about the weight of the kicked cars and/or kicking them too hard, which could result in the cars blocking with hand brakes set failing to stop the kicked cars. And the kicked cars do not necessarily couple or even make contact, so you need to take the engine into a track and couple them all up every once in a while. What I always thought was uncanny is how cars can roll along at a couple miles and hour for hundreds of feet. That characteristic is what really makes flat kick switching work. They roll slowly enough to not do any damage when they hit, yet they roll a long way.
Kicking can be challenging, but what really takes skill, judgment, and communication is a drop. That is when the engine pulls a car, eases up so someone can pull the pin, then accelerates hard to pull away from the rolling car as it follows. The movement is toward a facing point switch, so when the engine passes the switch, the switch is thrown, so the following car then follows the switch in
A good switchman can get 8 hours of switching done in 5; a lousy switchman can turn 4 hours of work into 12.
Ahhh, yes–kicking cars. Something that shouldn’t be necessary where I work, but is almost inevitable.
In our yard, a smart crew (or RCO) will couple on to the offending cars (all of them, especially if they’re on a curve), check them for brakes (either hand or air), move them to a point where everything is on straight track, then let them go at about 4 m.p.h. Our yard is on a slight downgrade, so the cars should roll right down solid to the rest of them.
If they don’t check for brakes, they’ll have to deal with 'em again (sooner or later), if they don’t couple the curve, chances are they’ll have to deal with a passed-drawbar derailment, if they don’t get the cars in on straight track, somebody else will have to deal with the passed drawbars. And if they kick them too fast, you hear it–and might see the bad results.
If I mention to the other retarder operators that a car going by me has a brake (something I detect by the way the car is rolling and often backed up by visual observation of the brake cylinder and/or the brake wheel), people are wise to pay attention! The operators in the lower towers will let them go a bit faster to get them off the lead, if possible, and the RCO will be told that there is a brake on the car to be kicked.
I used to be impressed by kicking cars when I was younger, and had seen it from nearly every angle before I ever went to work for a railroad (I was also familiar enough with drop switches to participate with confidence where I knew the territory). I remember seeing one car roll much, much further than I expected it to (without losing appreciable speed); it was thus that I was introduced to the significance of roller bearings. I also was on (more accurately, in–it was a caboose) a car that was kicked at an unbelievable speed at one end of the yard, so it would travel clear out the other end–it
When I get up to 10 mph, I usually stop when kicking. Although, with the cold and snow lately, they barely make it into the tracks. [:(] The lead was surfaced over the summer, so things don’t roll so good. In other properly graded parts of the yard 5 mph is enough.
They finally bid 2 conductors on the yard job now, so we can get something done. One guy can watch shoves, lace up tracks (make up the air hoses) etc. Somethime we kick a guy down a track. One pulls the pin, the other rides at the handbrake.
Isn’t this also known as “Switching on the fly” or something like that? I have seen it done locally and it is interesting to watch. Sounds good too.
I think a drop is also called a flying switch.
I feel there are three kinds of drops. One is the gravity drop. Cars are on a hill, engine is out of the way, and the brakes are released.
Next is the power drop. Car is behind the engine, but needs to get in front, facing point switch. Accelerate, slack for pin, then go faster to get in the clear. Should be a 3rd man at the switch.
Last is the Dutch drop. Cars behind the engine, want them in front, coming to a trailing point switch. Get the cars rolling, pin, run ahead over switch, back into clear, reline switch. Virtually impossible to do. The crew can end up in Dutch or worse when this move fails.
I was up in the Santa Clara, Ca tower one day and saw an engineer kick an empty boxcar so hard that it hit the stop cars so hard that it derailed and rolled on its side. The language of the Yardmaster over the radio was something to hear. We laughed so hard we nearly had an accident. The engineer got a week off without pay. The Yardmaster had to call the Bayshore yard and get the big hook down to rerail the car. I never heard, but I bet that their was a LOT of explaining to do to the Trainmaster.
A drop is just a drop. What you are speaking of is “swinging” a car by.
We also refered to kicking a car from one end of the yard track to the other as “Air Mail” because of the speed needed to get all the way to the other end. Air Mail can also apply to the need to swing a car a long distance too.
A place nearby uses the gravity drop technique to move cars into place. The siding is on a hill and NS leaves the cars that aren’t being used on the downward part. Someone from the plant then releases the brakes and lets the car roll down and bump into position while shoving the others out of the way. Seems dangerous whenever I see it, especially since the railroad isn’t involved in these maneuvers. I
I didn’t understand the technique for the power drop that was described.
Speaking of mishaps, thirty-five to forty years ago I saw one at an interchange. The AT&N had a car to deliver to the GM&O. The engineer gave the car a little boost to get it fully on the interchange track, and a brakeman rode the car to stop it. However, the handbrake did not work (who had failed to inspect it? I don’t know), and the car rolled over the derail–and stayed on the track! What do you do? You send a brakeman over to the GM&O section foreman’s house (about 300 feet away), find him at home, ask him to come over and unlock the derail so you will not foul the track the car should not be on, pull the car back after he has taken the rabbit off the rail, and make certain that the brake is on. Then, you tie up until it is time to go south again. No, I was not on the engine that time; I saw the event from the ground.
Johnny
Thanks Ed for the explanation.
It sounds pretty easy: The switchman simply has to consider the weight of the car, how far the car needs to be kicked, the lay of the land, the prevailing wind, the acceleration of the engine, and the response time of the engineer. Then, he simply processes all that info in his head, and signals the engineer at the exact, correct moment. No problem! [;)]
On an average day, do most of the cars go in where you want them to
Knock it in the clear?
NOT to scale!
A. Locomotive is in wrong position to push car into siding. Starting a given distance from the switch, they start rolling (right to left).
B. Trainman on footboard pulls the pin and locomotive accelerates past the switch.
C. Another crewmember on the ground throws the switch after the locomotive passes, routing the car into the siding.
We’ll assume they have the necessary control of the free-rolling car…