I have looked at trains over and over again for some sign as to why certain engines point forward and others backwards… A truly curious person, I am.
What I want to know is are these conscious decisions, how the locomotives are in the yard when they are assembling trains, are some sign of the direction the engine needs to travel when broken away from the train?
Also, how are trains turned today without turn tables? Is there a manuever or certain type of train set-up?
Curious in Florida,
Shawn
Well, on the main…they always have the lead loco head first(duh) but (if im wrong yell) they just grap them the way they are in the yard. And if they need them pointing a certain direction they would just turn them in the yard before they left.
eg…to a spur or branch line
but if it was to another yard(large) they would just turn it there
Hello Shawn,
I have posted my reply here in the other thread where you have your question. But, if you check here first, here it is. The Southern Railroad was one of the few who decided to run their lead power backwards, the term is “long hood forward.” The practice was done for crew safety as they were not sitting up front. That practice continued until Southern and Norfolk Western merged together in 1982.
Hope this helps [:)]
Thanks for the replies! It does help clear things up for me.
It all depends on how the locomotives end up. Most class 1s use turntables and wyes to assemble their power to their specific trains needs. I happend to work for a shortline that didn’t have this luxury, although we did have a wye we used on occasion, but had to move storage cars off it to use it each time.
I can remember “running backwards” many times, in fact my biggest memory of this was releiving another crew who was an eastbound, only to find I had FOUR WEST FACING UNITS[:(!], We all would rather run fowards all the time, but there are cases where you don’t have the luxury.
–Rusty
yea, a lot of yard jobs that are transfers and road switchers will have no choice but to run backword one way…cause what are the chances the industries have their own wye?
From what I know, it doesn’t really matter what direction the units are pointing, however, they try to have one unit in the consist pointing the same direction as the lead unit so as if the lead unit fails, theres another unit in the consist ready to take the lead.
John
Beyond trying to make the forward engine run face first I doubt the railroads care about how the rest of their trailing units face unless there is a special reason to such as helper districts, switching needs (on manifest or locals) and very occationally publicity.
A couple of observations from southern Ontario:
VIA Rail seems to run all their locos facing forward, except for the trains where there’s a loco on each end (that was with LRCs and they’re all gone.)
CN runs local freights with 2 chop-nose geeps hooked up every way. I’ve even seen them with the two noses coupled. [:o)]
I saw a passenger train (8 cars or so) last week with two locos, one in back, one in front. The leading GP40-2 loco was coupled backwards. So it was going rear-end first[:)]
I do not know why that happened. Oh, and that was on the mainline too.
I’ll lay odds that at the end of the line they had no way to turn the engine or no practrical way to “run around” the train, so, by putting one at each end facing “outward” from the train, then you drag the rear engine to the “end of service” point, the engine crew changes units, and then “return to sender”. It has always been a rule that you never ever operate a carbody unit (such as F7, F40PH, E8) backwards because of the severe limitation on visibility unless you absolutely have no chioce and it is an emergency.
Amtrak runs all the Chicago-Milwaukee Hiawatha trains that way (engine at each end, 4 passenger cars in middle) so they don’t have to waste time turning the train.
All that is true, and Alaska Railroad does that (put locos on both ends) because the train has to stop at the airport which on the spur 4 miles off the mainline. And then it has to continiue to downtown Anchorage, but since there is no way to turn the train around they just hook two GP40-2 locos to each end, and one acts as a generator for passenger cars (HEP). But that one day i saw the front loco pulling backwards, which is kinda unusual. [:D]
I once observed in the Santa Fe yard in Raton, NM that groups of locomotives seemed to be coupled so that the end units were facing in different directions. The idea seems to have been that as long as these engines were mu’ed together, there would be no need to turn them, the crew could just operate from whichever unit was “forward”.
Actually, at that time, I took a number of Amtrak trips, and the practice of having the lead and trailing units of mu’ed locomotives facing different directions, by my observation seemed typical.
I have seen back to back locomotive consists on VIA’s
And oh…when 52/40 and 56/42 get to brockville and split…you sometimes back a nose to nose cause the montreal train is sooo long and needs 2 engines.
And yes…cn in their yard locomotves dont give a crap how theya re…but CP is sooo perfect its always back to back
I have looked at trains over and over again for some sign as to why certain engines point forward and others backwards… A truly curious person, I am.
What I want to know is are these conscious decisions, how the locomotives are in the yard when they are assembling trains, are some sign of the direction the engine needs to travel when broken away from the train?
Also, how are trains turned today without turn tables? Is there a manuever or certain type of train set-up?
Curious in Florida,
Shawn
Well, on the main…they always have the lead loco head first(duh) but (if im wrong yell) they just grap them the way they are in the yard. And if they need them pointing a certain direction they would just turn them in the yard before they left.
eg…to a spur or branch line
but if it was to another yard(large) they would just turn it there
Hello Shawn,
I have posted my reply here in the other thread where you have your question. But, if you check here first, here it is. The Southern Railroad was one of the few who decided to run their lead power backwards, the term is “long hood forward.” The practice was done for crew safety as they were not sitting up front. That practice continued until Southern and Norfolk Western merged together in 1982.
Hope this helps [:)]
Thanks for the replies! It does help clear things up for me.
It all depends on how the locomotives end up. Most class 1s use turntables and wyes to assemble their power to their specific trains needs. I happend to work for a shortline that didn’t have this luxury, although we did have a wye we used on occasion, but had to move storage cars off it to use it each time.
I can remember “running backwards” many times, in fact my biggest memory of this was releiving another crew who was an eastbound, only to find I had FOUR WEST FACING UNITS[:(!], We all would rather run fowards all the time, but there are cases where you don’t have the luxury.
–Rusty