I was stopped at a crossing yesterday as the Ellis & Eastern switched a few cars into a spur. I noticed that their Geep had a big ol’ rear view mirror mounted on the outside of the engineer’s window. Is this common for locomotives that do a lot of switching? How useful would it be, considering the engineer is on the radio with the men on the ground?
(1) Yes
(2) Radios fail or get “stepped” on (Plus hoggers are sometimes Bi-)
(3) Queue up Wabbo and EdB for a redux.
Was told many years ago - for engineers to admire themselves…
Almost afraid to ask for a clarification on #2.
Directional[:^)]
As the others have said - very useful. For switching, it allows you to see what’s going on (if you are on the same side as the work). There’s been times I caught stuff the conductor missed just by using the mirrors.
And if you are running long hood out, mirrors are great. Beats having to try to be a contortionist to see out the back window.
Are the mirrors mostly just used on locomotives used for switching? Most pictures I see of road units don’t have them and truthfully, I can’t remember if the ones I see in person do or don’t.
Not bi-partisan?
Well that’s admirable.[8-|]
I put a mirror inside the cab for that purpose…
Our F’s have mirrors, but they’re so small and close to the carbody that you don’t see much.
Many old heads, and a few younger ones, are of the opinion that the less said over the radio, the better. Once they had instructions to use hand signals when moving light power around the yard to cut down on the radio chatter. Most now use radio for everything. It’s a rare pleasure to get a trainmen who prefers hand signals when they are visible.
Get two or three jobs all working at the same time within radio range and it gets interesting. Often one job might be able to go to another channel, but sometimes it’s not possible. I’ve stopped before because I couldn’t clearly hear my conductor’s radio instructions.
Most of our engines have mirrors. About the only ones that don’t are those equipped with bay-window type storm windows.
Jeff
Most if not all CSX units have them. They are useful for keeping an eye on the train without have to turn around so much. The bigger ones give a much better view than the small ones.
Mark Vinski
There are only 60 seconds of air time available on the Road Channel every minute. With multiple trains operating in the same geographical area the Road Channel can be overloaded with various communications in very short order. In such situations it is advisable to use hand signals for ground-locomotive communications so the chance of confused instructions is minimized. Voices between people communicating on a radio channel are often confused.
Early in my career, switching with radios was a Efficency Test Failure.
It seems like you’d have a ginormous blind spot when backing up that locomotive. Wouldn’t most of what’s going on occur near the couplers in the area you can’t see?
That is the reason you have brakemen on the point of shoving moves in either direction - to give voice and/or hand signals about the distance to the coupling and to insure that the coupling is not made at an excessive speed. Moving locomotives is really not a one man job.
Yes, but … how much of this isn’t even more true for the same locomotive type in tha same place WITHOUT mirrors?
The ‘better’ alternative is a reasonably high-resolution camera with wide field and some Pan/tilt capability on each end, in conjunction with the mirrors. That hasn’t been popular so far, for some fairly predictable reasons and rationales.
I will answer what does “stepped on” mean. Its when another individual (C) transmits while you are trying to either send or receive thus stepping on your (a-b) conversation. I have no clue as to the second part of (2) .
Oh it was hard to be quite this long!
He means some engineers are bidirectional…they don’t turn around, just watch you in the rear-view mirror…and yes, leading a light (locomotive only) yard movement around with a radio is silly.
Yup, stepped on is when another radio conversation occurs on the same channel and at the same time as yours and is louder or stronger than yours, blocking out your transmission, or “stepping” on you.
We even have a rule about that, you are supposed to listen before you start to transmit, to be sure you don’t step on someone…but that often ignored!
By the way, some engines, like the older GE Dash 9s, have their rearward view blocked by the radiator wings, and their seats don’t swivel around either…combined with the desk top controls instead of an older style control panel, this makes the engineer sit sideways in the seat and bent down if he wants to see out the rear, very uncomfortable at best.
Or he can face forward and just use the mirrors if he wants…lots of engineers will not run any distance long hood front in such situations.
I bet if you look more closely, you will see mirrors on almost every locomotive, and I can almost guarantee them on yard and line switcher locomotives.
As a foot note, when I hired out, you had to be able to lead a engine around the yard, stop, start, come ahead and back up, distance and all of that before they issued you a radio, and you were discouraged from using the radio even then…
We even had a hand signal for going in-between and cutting in the air, and of course we also had to get on and off moving equipment too, but that’s another story.
I have done entire shifts and maybe spoken on the radio three or four times…and that was to the yardmaster.
I run an amateur radio “net” once a week, and participate in nets at other times. It’s not unusual to have two or three people try to respond when we call for check-ins. Sometimes only one radio will get through at all, and occasionally, if they are about equal in strength to the receiver, you’ll hear “intermod.” There’s a certain timing inherent in keying up, making it that much more likely two folks will key up at once.
We’ve run “radio free” days on the railroad. Some people have a real problem with that - they just love to talk on the radio. It’s not unusual for one of the crew to suggest going to hand signals if we have two trains in proximity around the yard. Our trains are fairly short, so oftimes even someone at the rear of the train can still work with hand signals.
We had a hand signal for “three step” as well as cancelling same, but our FRA inspector indicated he’d rather hear the request on the radio, so that goes out on the air now.
Three Step, or “Red Zone” as the GCOR railroads put it, must now be a radio transmission, no hand signals allowed anymore.
Which I really don’t like, when my engineer is looking right at me.
Now, if a signal, especially one like red zone or three step is requested on a radio, then it also must be acknowledged and released via radio.
Same applied way back when…if you asked for a red zone or gave an in -between signal by hand, then the engineer would only accept a release or clear signal by hand, and the same via radio.