When did the requirement for beacons on locomotives start? When did the requirement end/change? What trains are/were required to have beacons? When were they used (i.e. only at certain speeds, locations, all the time)?
If by “beacons” you are referring to the “bubble gum machine” amber rotating lights seen on the top of many locomotive cabs, they have NEVER been required by the FRA or the ICC when they regulated safety. Many railroads equipped their locomotives to improve visibility. The FRA has mandated “ditch lights” in conjunction with a center headlight. This was actually the first “requirement” related to the placement of lights on locomotives.
Nothing beats a Mars beacon on the front of a locomotive. Watching one come toward you sweeping the sky on a dark, clear night, is an eerie, wonderful experience. Thank goodness we still have them on the Metra locomotives, but the current variety have nowhere near the impact I remember as the ones on the Burlington Zephyrs in the 1960s.
Here is a thread on beacons from last year.
http://www.trains.com/TRC/CS/forums/874528/ShowPost.aspx
I have not seen any Mars lights since the 1960s, but I agree they were really something to see.
Is it correct that a Mars light and a Gyralite where different? Seems like one swept back and forth, whereas the other did a figure 8 type of configuration.
I loved the old C&NW GP-7’s and 9’s w/ the amber beacons. I grew up about 1/2 mile from the tracks and you’d see the beacons picking through the lineside trees as the trains trundled through (circa mid-70’s).
The WSOR Exec E’s still had them last time I had a chance to photograph them. Cool effect at night w/ a time exposure. All of the bulbs show up as lit at once in the photo.
…Yes, a Mars Beacon is awesome to see at night…The most attention getter light{s}, on an engine I have ever witnessed.
Right around '69 to 71 in Kingman, Az they were on almost every passenger train approaching that station and the sight they provided was something {anyone}, would pay attention to.
The E’s still have the beacons. The lights are stationary. There is a circuit in there that does the flashing, so that it looks like it is rotating, but with no moving parts to break.
Most now a days, the railroads only have the beacon lights on Remote Control Motors. This is so you know when the RCO is operating in RCO or not.
Lesser-Known Beacons and Strobes.
Back in the Seventies CP applied a Single Flashing Yellow ‘Beacon’ in the Centre of the Cab Roofs just behind the Bell on SOME of their EMD La Grange-Built SD40-2s.
http://www.mountainrailway.com/Roster%20Archive/CP%205600/CP%205655.htm
Regarding Strobes;
In 1976 the Two D&H ‘Sharks’ Each Received Two Strobes, One on each side of Cab Roof at Front after these Units came over from the MRy.
http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=173258&nseq=7
The Brackets are probably still there.
http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=194756&nseq=10&showcomments=true
Their Horns were Wonderful, Part of the Lore of the ‘Water Level Route.’
The Mars light is an amazing thing, I remeber seeing them on commuter trains around Chicago when I was a kid.
One thing I always wondered was why LED lights haven’t caught on with railroads yet. In most major cities now if you look closely at traffic signals, you’ll notice they are actually made out of dozens of small LEDs, instead of one large bulb. From what I understand, LEDs are brighter, require less electricity and last longer than normal lights. So why haven’t railroads jumped on that for both crossbucks and at least the ditch lights on locomotives?
Cheers!
~METRO
I remember the SF installed yellow beacons during the 1970’s, man were they bright at night. In 1989, SF began removing the devices and by 1994, no engs no longer had them while employed in ATSF service. In my notes, I came across a comment from Oct 1989 that gp20 3002 was seen working as the North Wichita yd job the eng was missing its strobe beacon (the first SF eng seen w/out a beacon).
Some crossing light do have LEDS. Mostly newer installations.
IIRC, LEDs are not quite powerful enough yet for use as ditch lights or headlights. Could change pretty soon, though. They are getting more powerful all the time.
I don’t think we will see LEDs in ditch lights, or locomotive lights in general, for a while yet. They are easy to see, but the fact is that it is harder to see with them. The locomotive lights are meant to illuminate the track;ditch lights are meant to illuminate the ditches. LEDs don’t do too good a job illuminating the area they need to see.
Phil
…Using LED’s for lights to see with is coming…Several new automoble headlights will feature LED type lights.
They certainly use less current. I have tailights on our bicycles and each one is powerd by 2 AAA batteries, and they are set up to blink 3 or 4 different ways or stay on constant…It is indicated they will work on those batteries {in blink position}, for 100 hrs…! And they can be seen {bightly}, for a long distance.
I’m not sure what “beacon” light means,but I think some of the early streamliners had a lighy that was pointed straight up in the air.Possibley the IC Green Diamond and others.???
The problem with “white” LED lights is that, presently, they give off only 3 very narrow bands of light frequencies; Red, Yellow and Blue. But we humans, with our eyes, associate wide bands of frequencies with what we call each of those colors.
When an LED is aimed onto a surface, “IF” that surface totally reflects any of the particular frequencies emitted by the LED, then the surface is easily seen. But most surfaces do not necessarily reflect those particular frequencies. Even what we would call a “red” object may not reflect the LED’s “red” frequency, and thus would be “dark”.
The same is true for any of, or combination of, the 3 LED frequencies vs. the spread spectrum of an incandescent lamp
This presents a problem in automotive (car) LED headlights. Make them bright enough to be able to see light reflected from objects that don’t happen to reflect much light at the 3 specific freqencies of the white LED, and you totally blind an oncoming driver who is not seeing reflected light, but is seeing the LED directly.
I have several LED flashlights, some with a dozen “bulbs” and they are really bright for signalling someone in the distance, but do not illuminate the path directly in front of me so I can see where I am going.
The same is true for the light from your TV, or computer monitor… nice and bright when you look at it, but it is hard to read the newspaper using the light from it. The TV and computer monitor only give off Red, Green and Blue light. You see “yellow” because the screen is emitting Red and Green and your brain calls it yellow. Ditto for all the “other” colors you THINK you see on your TV or computer monitor.
LED’s to illuminate things will only be useful when an LED is developed that emits thousands of frequencies of light, including frequencies both above and below what