Hello everybody. New to the forums and to model railroading.
I’m planning (and planning, and planning, and planning) my layout based on Bethlehem Steel’s plant in Bethlehem PA. I just picked up a Walther’s SW1 to be used in the Coke Works, and I was wondering when they started using Radio Controlled loco’s. I’ll be modeling the plant as it operated in the 70’s.
Any insight on Radio Controlled operations is welcome, doesn’t necessarily need to be BSC oriented.
Thanks in advance!
Jason
Jason - Welcome to trains.com! [C):-)]
Jason,
Just guessing based on vague memories, I’d say that radio remote operation was probably in use by the 70s. I know that the Southern and CP used radio controls by then for mainline operations, so the technology was available. IIRC, the dangerous conditions in some mill rail operations was one reason that this was undertaken.
Most early radio control switchers I’ve seen have some arrangement of colored lights to indicate what mode they’re in so that the operators could confirm that commands were received. Looking for photos that depict this could be one way to verify the use of radio controls on specific units or prototype operations.
Probably closer to the 2000’s.
Gidday Jason, [#welcome] to the forum.
For what its worth the following is from Wikipedia.
“In the United States remotely controlled locomotives have been in use since the 1980s. In 1988, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration issued a Hazard Information Bulletin regarding their use.[2]By 1999 Canadian National Railway had 115 locomotives equipped with remote control equipment, covering 70% of flat-yard switching and all of its hump yard operations. Canadian National estimated a savings of CDN$20 million per year vs. traditional switching operations.[3]”
Cheers,the Bear.
Did a little more digging. Here’s a 1977 pic of well-worn Baldwin #38 deep inside the old Geneva complex in Utah by an online acquaintance of mine, Jim Belmont:
http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=398690&nseq=0
You can see the lamps I mentioned earlier on the side of the cab.
There are at least two generations of RC locos. The first ones used around steel mills were long enough ago they might have even had tube-type radios in them, but were most likely transitorized in the 1970s. AFAIK, these were restricted to special locations like steel mills where the expense was worth the improvement in safety.
Then there’s the later generation units that are basically manpacks designed to allow regular locos in service out on the line and in the yard. These started being available in the 80s, but have faced opposition from labor because of safety and other concerns. Still, they’ve been widely adopted by a number of lines, as they let one person be the engineer and brakeman at the same time.
Gidday again, should have dug a little deeper myself. Here’s a link to a 1984 newspaper referring to the use of remote controlled engines at Bethlehem Steel.
http://articles.mcall.com/1984-07-22/business/2435181_1_steel-plant-bethlehem-steel-railroad
Cheers,the Bear.
USS Oliver Iron Mining in Minnesota in 1963, possibly tests earlier. Their locos were primarily SW’s and Alco S’s and RS’s. I don’t know if they ever adapted the system to their Baldwins.
Neighbor Erie Mining Company, partly owned by Bethlehem at the time, on their RS 11’s about the same time. Again, I don’t know if they adapted their Baldwins.
Reserve Mining Company also used RC, but I don’t know when they started.
USS also had RC tracked front end loaders for work in hot areas like slag pits in the late 1970’s and probably a lot earlier.
The systems at Oliver/USS were supplied by General Railroad Signals (GRS).
Redore,
Thanks for the details. I’m still learning about the iron ore roads, after the wife and I started visiting the UP/Duluth areas a few years back, so I wasn’t aware of the RC loco use on these roads.
It makes sense, given the close corporate association between them and the lines at the furnaces and mills, for the technology to spread among these sister lines. I know they sometimes swapped locos around between lines owned by the same company and likely there was some vice president in charge of transportation somewhere upstairs in management who helped propagate ideas like RC between different divisions of the same outfit.
For what its worth ARMCO Steel in Ashlad Ky was using R/C EMD switchers in the 70s.
I suspect Bethlehem Steel was using R/C in the 70s as well.
I remember hearing ARMCO in Butler PA was using R/C in the late 80s, when I was a kid.
Its not surprising. Radio control was mature technology by the late 40s. I mean in general, not specifically railroad applications.
“Mature” might be a stretch in terms of RC control in general in the late 40s. Yes, it was possible, but still left much to be desired.
Here’s an example drawn from my research as a Cold War historian. Getting fresh “hot” samples from nuclear tests was critical in evaluating the bomb design being tested. Given there was little known about the effects of such radiation exposures to flight crews, during the early tests the Air Force used old B-17s and other aircraft operated remotely under radio control to fly into the mushroom clouds and grab samples. Even with the massive resources and advanced technology available in the nuclear testing program, the Air Force ended up very unhappy with the performance of these early drone aircraft.
Then one of the manned samplers tasked with getting less “hot” samples flew through one of the test clouds “accidentally.” Since the crew didn’t drop dead, the Air Force decided to go back to manned sampling aircraft because of the problems with the RC drones. A few remained in use, but for the most part during the remainder of US atmospheric testing, which ended in 1962, human crews did the job.
I have a brief memoir written by the pilot of one of these manned samplers at one of the first H-bomb tests, which were exponentially bigger explosions than the earlier fission bomb tests. The official histories claim that the crews only had brief exposures over the limit, which IIRC was about 20 rem total before an individual pilot was taken off the duty list. The sampler pilot noted in his own papers that he had received well over 100 rem. Might still be a good place for drones inside that very scary cloud he was in for more than a half hour, but the Air Force preferred humans versus what they regarded throu
Is radio control and remote control the same thing?
I did a little more digging. Oliver’s system was based on a similar RC system installed on Morenci Copper’s locomotives in Arizona previous to 1963. These were also 1200 HP and 1750 HP switchers and road switchers used in their mine.
Gidday, In the context you’re referring too, Yes.
Cheers, the Bear.