Kicking Cars

Trains Magazine General Discussion
1

OK - here’s another question I had that I’ve been wanting to ask that’s about
what I thought (and mind you - I’m not a RR professional) was an unsafe
practice.

When I worked in downtown Cedar Rapids I kept a close eye on all the
activities in the Illinois Central and C&NW yards in town - near the Quaker Oats
plant and the power plant there just off 1st Ave. The C&NW operated the old
Rock Island yard and the IC had their own and the former MILW and WCF&N
yards too. I saw CRANDIC (Cedar Rapids & Iowa City Rwy.), Iowa Northern
(operating the old Cedar Rapids-Waterloo-Manly stretch of the dearly beloved
Rock Island), UP and Chicago Central & Pacific as well. Cedar Rapids was a
much under-mentioned train-watching hot spot.

Anyway, on more than one occasion, I saw the CNW switch crew give a car a
shove and set it rolling on its own into the former ROCK yard. A brakeman
was riding on the car and I saw him turning the hand brake as he was
obviously slowing the car so it would collide at a safe speed with the standing
cut of cars. Since he wasn’t screaming for his mommy I assumed this was
not an accident.

The yard they were operating in was not a hump yard (nowhere near that big).
I have to believe this is a practice that would be frowned-upon for obvious
safety reasons, is it not?

2

SOP for switching. In most cases you don’t have somebody riding the car you just let it roll free to a joint.

Dave H.

3

Well, it sounds like a hump style operation, so I guess we could cause it “level Humping” (No profanity involved)

4

I’m in conductor school right now, so I’m up on the procedures. There are two types of ways to move the cars, one is the hump style, which is newer and more efficient, and there there are Flat switch yards in which kicking is how you move the cars where you need them to be. On CSX, the conductor signals or radios to the engineer to pu***he cars, when enough speed is maintained to let the car(s) roll on their own the conductor radios or signals for the engineer to stop, and the conductor pulls up on the cut lever and lets the car(s) roll to the awaiting cut or destination. Technically, in school we’re taught that we never have to ride the equipment for kicking, but as long as the conductor holds onto the side ladder and not on the end ladder he is okay. The conductor also needs to face the movement of the car(s) so that they don’t get suprised by something and fall off. The experienced RR employees can correct if I’m wrong, but that’s what I got out of Monday’s lesson.

Nathan

5

I thought that was illegal even though I have seen Norfolk Southern do it many times.

6

In Fremont the other day we got stuck by a switching train. Three or more times the engineer shoved the cars hard and sent a few of them rolling on their own. I think it may have been the same thing you saw.

7

Kicking cars is not a rule vilation. we kick all the time the only time its not legal is if the consignee or shipper dont want it done. otherwise kick at will.

8

Any of you working guys still drop cars?

9

Uhhh,
Yup, we still drop cars.
Not in front of any officers, but yes, it still goes on.

Kicking cars is what I do for a living.

The FRA frowns on, but does not prohibit riding cars to make a bumper in a clear track, they just perfer we didnt.

I kicked over 200 cars today, and several times kicked my helper down a clear track to set a bumper.
The trick, of course, is to make sure the brake works before you kick the car.
That old missing component in most things, common sense, should kick in right about then.

Before we kick to make a bumper, we tie the brake, then shove on the car some, which lets us know if the brake works.

If it does, we pop off the brake, wind her up and kick em…

A trailing brake is better than a leading brake, because if something does happen, say the brakeman falls, he falls off a car moving away from him.
But it isnt against the rules.

Odds are the example given had the brakeman riding the car to make sure the joint made, and didnt hammer the car it was coming against.
It is possible the standing cut had no brakes on it, and he was being cautious, which is good.
Would also bet these guys work the same place all the time, and know where every little bump and dip in the track is, and what will and wont work there.
Stay frosty,
Ed

10

As has been said, kicking cars is not against the rules and is a standard practice. On most railroads operating under NORAC and GCOR, dropping cars is against the rules.

I have seen and used the method of riding cars back, although rarely. This is because on my district our yards are all quite small (8 tracks or less) and we have quite a few nasty little grades in our yards meaning cars get a nasty habit of rolling out at you if you don’t give them enough of a kick. Given this background we usually don’t ride. Kicking cars is not permitted in one yard and in the others we usually set a car in for the block with a good handbrake, before bleeding the cut and kicking in the rest. This works well as we usually only switch five blocks at a time. It also saves us the potential embarassment of having one get away.

LC

11

WE had one “yard” on the short line I worked on that was switched from the downhill side but had a small hump at the far end. Since we were working a 2 man crew, I would make my first cut the rear end of the train, set the windup toy (hand brake) on the rear 3 or 4 cars, and boost them into clear by about 3 or 4 cars. Then build the rest of the train against them, making a joint with the engine and then boosting them up the hill The brakes would keep the cars from running amok over the crossings at the other end of the “yard” (actually, a siding and a main). I would have made the initial shove or kick to send the cut to the far end, but with the oposing grade, didn’t feel I really wanted to have to sort out a sideswipe between my own train and my own train if the following kicks didn’t make the joint.

Now, someone mentioned that these cars “colide”. No. They do not colide. They make joints. 0-4 MPH= a joint. 5-10= hard joint. Can cause damage to lading. Free Floating loads shift and sometimes fall off the car. ( You can actually transfer a load from one car to the next, but the load is always in very bad shape afterwards. It’s an amazing thing to watch.) Above 10 MPH you have high overspeed joint. Two trains heading toward each other at 100 MPH will make a high overspeed joint. Or perhpas, you could call it a collision. High overspeed joints usually cause the cars involved to derail. Seeing a fully loaded 125 ton car levitate about 5 feet off its center pins is, well, yes it is. Depending on how close to that car you are. Or if you were actually riding it.

And we never humped cars. We did have a high capacity gravity sorting facility for freight cars, but not a hump.

Kick-um high, kick-um low, kick um where the should not go!

Mookie will not permit me to continue. [V]

12

Thou shalt not ‘kick’ haz-mat cars, nor should’st thee ‘kick’ into haz-mat cars, lest thou desirest eternal oblivion.

13

Ed, LC, Thanks for the response on dropping. Way back when during my brief tour braking, I worked road switchers (locals), and I seem to recall doing a drop several times. It may have been against the rules, but it was the way a plant could get daily service on an assignment that was up one day, back the next. Of course it is a minimum 3 man task, and everyone had better know exactly what they were doing.

14

We are still allowed to do what they call gravity drops. That is leave the cars on a grade then allow them to roll by after the locomotive is in the clear.

15

Drops are interesting to watch, but jeaton is right and there are ample opportunities for something to go wrong.

16

I should point out that the rule against drops that I am familiar with is contained in an ETT Special Instruction and is not in the Operating Rules. Of course, other RRs may have it in their rules or special instructions.

LC

17

Can I put a deviation in this topic: What is the status of what used to be called a “Dutch Drop” where the car is dropped from behind the loco and a switch is changed between the loco and the car? Also, is there a politically correct name for this? Is there a high-falutin’ name for it that will obscure what actually happens?

18

Your Dutch Drop is what is being refered to as a drop. A true Dutch can be done one of two different ways, both dangerous. It is used to run around a car or cut of cars when you only have a single ended track. Method one is to kick the car ahead of you up a grade, duck the eng into the spur, let the car roll by you, and then chase after your car. Method two is to do a regular drop, run the engine back down the main and let the car roll out of the spur to the engine.

19

Hi David,

Eric’s explaination of a dutch drop is right on.

You can drop the cars down the main, duck the motor into a sideing, then, after the cars have passed the sideing, back out and go chase them down.
Was the switchman helper on a move like this, once.
Scared the crap out of me!

Never did a up hill drop, Houston dosnt have to much for hills!

A simple drop is where you cut away from the cars on the fly, speed up past the switch where you want the cars to go, line the switch so the cars enter the sideing or the lead into the industry, then stop the cars with the hand brakes.

The poor switchman who lines the switch is in charge of stoping the cars.

It is a easy and quick way of putting cars in a single ended faceing point sideing or plant lead, saves having to figure out a way to run around the cars and shove them in.

Done right,a simple drop works great.
Done wrong, make a mess.

A dutch drop is designed to get the cars in front of the locomotive(motor) often because the sideing is too short to do a straight drop, and there is not enough distance to get the cars stopped before they hit the end, or the crew needs to do a long shove to a faceing point switch, and there is no way to run around the cars.

You find the need to do drops when you work single mains, with stub ended sideings, all facing the normal direction of traffic, or a main where the sideing are several miles apart.

Where I work, we drop cars through a crossover main to main all the time, but little danger exsist, the mains are straight for several miles, so even if it “gets away” from us, chaseing them down isnt a major chore.

Keep in mind most industries are designed to have their “spot” cars shove into the plant, and the “pull” cars are, well, pulled out.
Rare is the plant where there is enough trackage to drag in, and run around your cars.

Droping cars is a alternative

20

The most amazing move related to this that I’ve ever seen:

Local freight is instructed to help spread ballast on a new industry spur; the hopper is already there. It’s a facing point spur.

Engine cuts off the train, goes into the spur, spreads the ballast, empties the car.

Engine backs out of spur with the car, backs down the main, then kicks the car back into the spur, with two crewmen riding it. Third man throws the switch, and engine proceeds forward up the main.

Free-running hopper is braked to nearly stopping, then brake is released, and both crewmen get off, and put shoulders to car to get it moving in opposite direction. Car rolls out of spur, onto main line, ties onto train. Engine backs down main, ties on to train, brakes are checked, and they’re on their merry way, with the empty ballast car in tow.

Something like that, though exceedingly unusual, had to be well thought out in advance. They had to have known that the car would roll clear out of the spur, or there would have been real complications (probably involving poling, which was frowned on even then). This was a friction-bearing hopper, by the way.

Tall tale? Not a chance!