I had to measure noise levels outside a drag strip this weekend and noticed rather odd locomotive operations that occurred throughout the weekend. The drag strip parallels a secondary line of the BNSF just west of a yard facility. BNSF had three large road locomotives in a consist spotted between my measurement position and the drag strip all weekend long. These locomotives never moved but started up every few hours and ran at different throttle speeds for about an hour or so before shutting back down. I was too far away to notice any crew aboard or around, and too busy to watch whether a crew arrived or departed. Does anyone know what this intermittent running was all about? Was this performed remotely or would there have been a crew aboard all day seemingly doing nothing but burning fuel? As this occurred in 75 degree weather, I couldn’t see any real need to keep the locos hot, especially since they were never moved. Since the only other rail movements I witnessed all weekend was a single freight train performing very limited switching movements, one five-loco consist running light, and several non-BNSF commuter trains, what operations could these three locos be backing up?
Probably were idling/suht down until the air pressure dropped, then fired up when the air compressor kicked in and ran until the air was charged back up, then went back to idle/shutdown mode.
SWAG would be that they were off a bulk train (grain or coal) and were held on hand until the train was unloaded.
I hate it when they do that! [:(!] Our GM built Class 66s sit there ticking over while you walk by them, you check before crossing and then they run up when you’re half way across. [:O] The trouble is that the charging sound is almost exactly the same as the noise they make when they are about to roll… Not so bad in daylight but they can really make you jump in the dark.
[:P]
There must be a way of deactivating this feature. What happens when a mechanic blue flags the units. I sure as heck would not want it to start because of a loss of air pressure while I am working on it. The idle shutdown timers on our trucks are programmable to what ever idling time I set for them. Usually 15 minutes. The driver can restart the timer by stepping on the brake or the throttle pedal. Once the engine shuts down it will not restart until the key is switched off and then back on again.
Pete
Well sure there is.
Thanks for the responses all. So, I take it that this start-up/shut-down cycling is an automatic feature for which no crew presence is needed? One other sound I observed was a short whooping sound every once in a while. Any ideas what that could be?
One of the funnier things I heard about the situtation I was documenting (the drag strip noise) was that the local residents swore that the railroad was actively conspiring to help the drag strip by sounding their horns louder and longer than they needed to when in the area!
Probably the air compressor starting up.
Well there´s no surprise there! I have dealt with “sound sensitive people” in the past myself, there was in one instance a Dragstrip adjacent to both an airfield and the railroad. The people who lived nearby (who had moved there and built their houses knowing what was there…) complained about the dragstrip making the worst noise! After some measuring it was revealed that both the railroad and the airplanes made much more noise than the dragstrio ever made. We even had a Nitro Top-fueler there to make the worst noise possible! The people there wasn´t happy with the result and started lobbying to get the noises away.
They succeeded and both the airfield and dragstrip is today closed. In their place is now a Housing project with 10 story houses and the previous residents have suffered a 50% loss on their house-values… AND, the noise from the railroad still prevails and as they have made some buildings adjacent to the tracks, the trains have started to use their horns much more than before. What do you know…
Next they will probably try to make it a ‘quiet zone’ so the trains can’t use their horns - if they have such silly things in Sweden, we have them over here. That will last until someone is struck by a train not sounding its horn because that’s what the law said. Then it will somehow be the railroad’s fault, and so on.
Back on topic, the old way would have been to leave those locos idling constantly. By having automated startup and shutdown when needed, they use less fuel, produce less emissions, and make less noise.
–Randy
That’s too long to just pump up the air pressure again, which would take a couple minutes at most - seems more like keeping the engines warm enough so that they will start easily, which might take an hour to accomplish.
Or they could have just rigged them with a ‘plug-in’ arrangement, same as diesel trucks do in wintertime . . . see:
The case of the plugged-in Train Master
Trains, August 1973 page 46
uses electric heater so it can be shut down at night
( FM, H24-66, N&W, “RICKERSHAUSER, PETER”, TRN )
- Paul North.