Expect the Unexpected.
Here is one for the record books. We had a train going south, 33 loads and 59 empties. All the loads were on the head end. Had a green conductor with me that day. Speed limit on the track of 40 mph. We were coming along on about a 2 mile straight stretch with last one third of the train coming on a slight downhill. We hit a rough spot in the tracks and started bouncing bad. We had 2 old, worn out, should have been scrapped ten years ago, 8000 series CSX SD-40-2’s. Well anyways, the air goes into emergency. I bail off on the engine brakes, but we are not slowing down at all. I look back and it is all dark behind us. I brighten the rear headlight and there is the second engine and the rest of the train catching up to us, fast. I keep the engine brakes off and hit the throttle. By the time we stopped, it was almost a third of a mile down the tracks. We bounced so hard that it uncoupled the 2 engines. Lucky I had enough witts about me to look back and see what was going on or we would have gotten a nice bump in the rear.
Lessons that I have learned in almost 4 years.
1 keep abreast of your soroundings at all times when you hear hot rail on the adjacent main pay heed.
2 do not get in a rush little thing can and will be forgotten and they can turn to 1 major oh sh**.
3 always have good coms with the whole train crew this keeps everyone on the same page.
4 learn as ED and LC stated above things are not always the same way twice.
5 check your self to insure that route lineups are right and that the right car or cars were spotted or pulled.
6 have some fun I know easyer said than done nothing like getting held out for 2 or more houres or more by making jockes that some one stole the big picture and your not in it.
7 ask questions when doing the job no such thing as a dumb question the dumb question is the one that did not get asked.
8 in 6 above make fun of the hot shot crews that are behind you when your train is doing about 7 mph going up hill and they are whining to the dispatcher wanting to get arround you.
Rodney
After 37 years working on New Haven, Penn Centrel, Con Rail and Amtrak The most inprotant thing is saftey. Expect a train at ANY TIME in ANY DIRECTION !!
A lot of the rules in the rulebook seem obscure and unnescessary but…
Ignore a rule long enough and sooner or later you will find out the hard way
just exactly why it was put there!
I wasn’t guilty of this… but, when kicking cars it’s a good practice to make sure you are kicking cars into a track that already has cars in it. I was told by a fellow conductor one night that he kicked two seperate cars down an empty track (with a downward grade); he didn’t realize what he had done till about 5 minutes later. He jumped in his truck and found one of the two cars at the other end of the yard with two run through switches. The other car was several miles down the track. Luckily for him, the car rolled out onto an unoccupied running track.
This one has been mentioned several times, but double check yourself out there! In the dispatching office we had a track light go on. We discored that the conductor of a grain train had opened up a hand-throw mainline switch without permission. Needless to say he has some time off to think about it.
The railroad is the most dynamic environment I have ever worked in and changes more than the Midwest weather. Things haven’t changed since I’ve joined the dispatching ranks. I may have this great plan to run all my trains without slowing down any one of them only to have a train go into emergency and my plan just went to ashes. Always plan your work, then make a backup plan. Then, you better just have a backup for the backup, LOL.
on a less dramatic, more fun note I learned how to cook a can of soup in the engine room of an SW 1500! Having a nice hot meal is also very important when working nights on a switching crew.
Dave, it’s funny you bring that up. I worked with one engineer that cooked filet mignon and baked potatoes on the sidewall heater. When we were half way to Chicago we took everything off the sidewalls and had a meal fit for a king.
Sounds great. We weren’t so high tech. Pizza subs do heat up really well on SD40-2 sidewalls. We used to get them on our way to get the train when I ran the east pools. Philly cheesesteaks were good that way too…
Basically, anything with some fat content (the higher the better) and some good tin foil works great on the sidewalls. Stuff that is low fat doesn’t fare too well, tends to burn. Also, remember, the sidewalls do not work well to brown or toast things. One conductor of mine had all sorts of elaborate schemes for a frame and tin foil to make a dutch oven, but it never worked.
LC
Used the compartment above the radiators on a dash 9 to heat cans of chili along with the side wall heaters.
Rodney
A rolling boxcar has no conscience.
Safety is a way of life, one man crews make it that way, you only get to daydream one time. Keys left in a switch lock are the results of a mind that is occuppied by something other then the work at hand.