The other day I was in Porter Country In. near I-94 and US-20.
There was a MOW train with a full load of continious rail.
The two CSX engines sat idleing. Four days later I returned.
The train never moved off the siding. The engines were still idleing.
The railroads are complaining about the high cost of fuel. Why do they leave two unused engines idleing so long?
Why don’t they shut the engines down and lock all the brakes?
Railroads are getting hip to fuel saveings so look for this to change more and more.
The main reason is if a engine is shut down and it’s cold enough to freeze it will do serious damage to the locomotive. Plus starting a locomotive is not like turning a key in your car. Batteries need to remain charged, air pressures maintained, ect. Besides (if I’m not mistaken) starting a cold engine sends a lot of pollutants into the air and may do more polution damage then if it were left running.
These days there are many locomotives being purchased / equiped with auto staRT SYSTEMS THAT MONITOR things like charge and main res pressure and start the engines automaticaly. They run till everything is charged up and warm and then shut down again till the next cycle.
Some engines, like the EMD H series, also run with anti freeze now also. They never did that in the past.
They probably should have been shut down. I’m sure CSX has a shut down policy that would cover this one. Could be the crew that got off was expecting a recrew shortly and left them running. The recrew never happened and shutting the locomotives down fell thru the cracks.
What’s to say, that sometime during those four days, they hadn’t been turned off and then back on ? Maybe even more than once.
Odds are that the units were never shut down–the most likely place from which a crew would come to recrew this train was Grand Rapids (had there been a New Buffalo crew, the train should have been brought there or never left).
I’m still trying to figure out, though, how one “locks the brakes”. I’m sure a sufficient number of hand brakes were tied on the train while it was left, in accordance with whatever CSX rules or orders call for.
But yes, the units should have been shut down. No reason to start them until a crew comes on board to move it, and an automatic start system wouldn’t have been triggered in the weather we’ve had around here.
Hi Carl, Can you give us an idea of what the cycle times are (roughly) in the various weather temps?
Like at 32 degrees every X hours (or minuets I don’t know) it runs for X time
Say at 0, 32, 50s, 70s…
I do most of my fanning on the main and I don’t think I ever saw an autostart in action.
When there is no air on a train for more than 4 hours, a complete Initial Terminal Brake Test must be performed. Shutting ‘all’ the engines down on a train would reqire this extensive, and time consuming brake test to be performed.
Normal practice when a ‘TRAIN’ is tied down is for one engine to be left running to keep air on the train while the others are shut down. Some engines get tagged ‘Do Not Shut Down’ account having starting system issues and decisions in place that they are not yet ‘shopable’. There are rules in place for each carrier on when locomotives are to be shut down.
Not all work trains work during daylight hours. Due to traffic considerations there are many MofW Curfews and other track projects, that require Work Trains that work at night. Just because at train is parked at a location for several days, does not mean that it has been there 24/7 for the time you have seen it there.
Not really, Chad–we in the yard don’t often see a diesel idling enough to be put on the system. Over 50, the engine could safely be shut down. Down at zero, you wouldn’t want to risk it. I’ve noted one unit on the auto-start system once, and it went through a couple of cycles in the few minutes I was nearby–no idea what the temperature was.
Well, since railroads run 24/7, there is no telling what they did with that train in four days.
A welded-rail train would be easy to figure–if it was in the same spot, with the rail loaded to the same height, there’d have been no movement (in fact, the train is useless if it doesn’t move!). I suspect that if it were partially unloaded (or loaded), it wouldn’t wind up at the same location.
BaltACD probably has offered the best reason the railroad would have to keep at least one unit running (one would be enough). But I think there would come a point at which it would be more economical to shut down the train, then recharge and test the brakes after a long period of non-use. Of course, they probably didn’t know how long the train would be sitting when they left it there.
Trains at ‘outlying’ points are not normally accessed unless another crew is called to move the train. Today’s railroad, with their capacity issues, also have crew issues as a part of that capacity problem. Weekends, especially Holiday weekends, have the tendency to be from Thursday to Tuesday when it comes to crew availability. Another ‘crew’ issued could be the MofW personnel necessary to handle a rail train. Rail Trains and the MofW personnel and equipment to handle the rail trains do not travel together, MofW personnel work in one location of rail train activity and then travel to the next area of rail train activity. Rail Trains travel from Rail Welding plants to the area where the rail will be laid. Getting both entities to the same area, at the same time, without one waiting on the other is a rareity.
It’s easier to just let em run.
They leave em for days near where I am on the main also sometimes. It’s almost as if the railroad says “Ok” park em here to the state line and use the Cotton Belt to get em through or something.
I recall never shutting a engine off for 6 months or more. Especially in winter. Specifically in winter or bad weather. A cold dead engine just might cost a life or two.
Most auto start systems don’t run on a timer…they have sensors in the main air reservoir, engine block water jacket and in the battery system…one reads the air pressure and will start the locomotive if the pressure drops 5 psi…the others read the water jacket temp and battery charge level…if either drops below the minimum requirements or settings, the auto start will start the engine, run it till the air pumps up, engine warms up or the batteries are charged,(or all three) then shut the engine down.
Locomotives with bad batteries are usually tagged “Do not shut down” to prevent them from being shut off and then not restarting.
Yes, you can jump start a locomotive from another locomotive, and there are jump start trucks…but it is expensive, time consuming, and the train crew cant do it…this falls into the realm of crossing craft lines, only the shop forces can jump start the engines.
If they were older locomotives, SD40s and such, it is less costly to leave them idling than risk them being shut off and not restarting out side of a yard environment.
As for “locking the brakes” no, but you are required to tie “sufficient hand brakes to prevent uncontrolled movement”…on my railroad that is translated into one railcar hand brake for every ten cars in your consist, plus each locomotives hand brake applied.
The engineer is required to do a full service train line reduction, apply the independent brake, remove the reverser and isolate each locomotive, leave headlights on dim, and turn off the ditch lights.
All of our locomotives, MK1500Ds, have auto-start/auto shut down…you can disable the auto-shut down with a breaker, if you need to leave the locomotive running.
It does have a timer, but not to start it up, instead it is to shut it down…if no control surface is moved, throttle, independent or train brake and such, ten minutes after the last control surface movement, if all conditions are within specs, air, ba
Thanks, Ed, for the thorough explanation. I didn’t mean to imply that these shutdown/startup cycles are timed–they are, of course, based on factors within the locomotive.
if not mistaken after 4 days even if engine was running you still need a brake test . and on the ns a railtrain is 100% hand brakes. but i wouldnt push it if i was the crew getting on there just set and release and go.
For us, if a train sits longer than 4 hours without a running locomotive, we are required to do the full initial terminal air test, walk the whole thing and all…if it has a running loccomotive, and the consist has not been disturbed, we can do a set and release, if it is a yard to yard movement…if it is a outbound to a Class 1 and we are handing it off to their crew, the full deal is applied…