I have a couple of questions regarding remote control locomotives.
How are they operated?
What does anyone here think of them?
Doc:
I’ve had occasion to run remotes, and wasn’t impressed. There was a delay in the transmitting of what you want to do (ie brake response, throttle response), radio failure was always shutting everything down. Set the brakes, the train would go in emergency every time. Useless. I’ve seen it used on the UP here in the LA area and many times, seeing (or hearing on the radio) a crew calling for help to get the things running again. Once the pair of remote engines a couple tracks over from where I was sitting were roaring away as high as they could go, belching, spinning wheels, for 10 minutes trying to move a cut of cars that they obviously couldn’t. That’s what happens when you put a belt on a couple guys who’ve never run an engine and have no idea how. No sane engineer would ever try such madness as hard as it is on equipment. UP seems to have fallen in love with remotes systemwide (the upper management anyway).
They aren’t safer, either, as the carriers would have the world believe. The ground guys have enough to do, reading switch lists, lining switches, getting pins, carrying lanterns, riding side of cars, etc. without having to now also concentrate on turning knobs on the bulky transmitter strapped around your belly. Just last week, a UP remote operator here got three fingers crushed in a coupling HE was making with a remote!! Bottom line is…accidents will happen, remotes or no remotes. How many stories have we heard or seen of “minor” accidents where a remote crew pulled into the path of another train, sideswiping it…another just last week in North Platte. Just hasn’t made national headlines because the trains they’ve swiped haven’t yet been loaded with chlorine or LP gas!
As for efficiency, no contest. If you want cars switched and switched fast, you can’t beat a conventional 3-man swit
[:)]
Two years ago I watched a worker use remote control in East Syracuse, NY. It seemed to work well, but I noticed that he never rode on anything. He walked everywhere.
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I have worked around remote engines for several years , and I have seen them cause many accidents and derailments . However they seem to work best in flat yard switching situations , but even here they are not great . I was involved in accident with a remote engine , and had there been someone in the cab it could have been prevented .
As I said on the other post about remote-control operation (and operators):
Just about every accident I’ve seen in which an RCO was involved (and we’ve had them for many, many years now) would have had a similar outcome with an engineer in the crew. The cause, if it’s a human failure, is usually a rule violation that the process cannot be blamed for. We have also found out that you don’t make a good RCO out of a klutzy switchman.
Failures have happened, and could have led to disastrous results under the proper circumstances. Most of our crews are capable of thinking their way out of rough situations, however.
As for always being out walking, I believe we used to have a rule prohibiting RCO access to the cab. That was rescinded in short order. An RCO still has to be right at the joint when he’s making a coupling, but for other purposes, anywhere on the leading unit (or within an engine-length of the leading end) is adequate for point protection.
IMHO, RCOs should only be allowed where they are physically separated (by special derail and lock) from any other movements. Nothing more disturbing than sitting in a yard and watching some robo-geep heading towards your train as you sit and pray that the operator is paying attention to it and not busy shuffling through his switch lists.
Of course I’ve seen crews of 3 and 4 on these remote jobs: 2 or 3 on the ground, and one person in the cab making sure they don’t hit anything. Real savings there… And that’s not to mention the tracks they tear up as they sit spinning their wheels. Or what is not reported… real scary stuff out there. Safety last…
Give me a hogger any day.
You say “just about every RCO accident would have had a similar outcome with an engineer in the crew”. With all due respect, Carl, I’ve seen a LOT of RCO accidents that absolutely would NOT have happened with an engineer in the cab…a LOT. The technology is not at fault, and as you say, it involves rule violations, lack of proper point protection being the most abused. However, it is the concept of remotes (no point protection) that are causing these rules violations, so I have to say it IS a fault of the technology!!
Many of the accidents I’ve seen involve the remote engine colliding either head on or sideswiping another train…simply because no one was on the engine!!! Hello! A REAL engineer is pretty darn good point protection!!! There was an incident in Texas where a remote engine repeatedly backed up and rammed into an auto rack car THREE times before the autorack finally derailed. CSX in Evansville, TN ran remotes into the side of a moving train (luckily no hazmat tankers), tearing up the sides of cars causing derailment. Pine Bluff, AR and Tacoma, WA, same thing, ENGINES running into sides of moving trains…no engineer in his right mind would have repeatedly backed up and rammed a freight car till it derailed. These are only incidents off the top of my head, there are surely others.
It’s only a matter of time until that railcar being rammed or sideswiped is a chlorine tanker and kills a bunch of people. THEN the FRA might take notice.
[#ditto] I personally never liked the idea of a locomotive being controled from the ground. A conductor I talked to said that his honest opinion was that they were dangerous pieces of (crap). From what I’ve heard on here, I’d say he’s right!
Remote Operations seem at best to be pretty problematic…The major savings is in the Salary and Health and Welfare benefits that do not have to be paid to the human crewmembers by their employers…
http://www.osha.gov/dts/hib/hib_data/hib19880808.html
- Information Date: 19880808
- Record Type: Hazard Information Bulletin
- Subject: Remote Control Plant Locomotives
And from the guys/gals who should know about Locomotive Ops here are some headlines from their link, They seem to feel that Remote Ops are more than a little problematic!
I know this site has been referenced here before, but there are quite a few good pics of RCO “mishaps” here… http://www.csx-sucks.com/pictures/
I think the ones that amaze me the most is how the locomotive will just sit there spinning its wheels until it actually “burns” down through the rail.
Awwww man! I thought that there were just alot of people in a building somewhere turning the knob on the power pack!!!
[:P]
[quote user=“razzy24us”]
Doc:
I’ve had occasion to run remotes, and wasn’t impressed. There was a delay in the transmitting of what you want to do (ie brake response, throttle response), radio failure was always shutting everything down. Set the brakes, the train would go in emergency every time. Useless. I’ve seen it used on the UP here in the LA area and many times, seeing (or hearing on the radio) a crew calling for help to get the things running again. Once the pair of remote engines a couple tracks over from where I was sitting were roaring away as high as they could go, belching, spinning wheels, for 10 minutes trying to move a cut of cars that they obviously couldn’t. That’s what happens when you put a belt on a couple guys who’ve never run an engine and have no idea how. No sane engineer would ever try such madness as hard as it is on equipment. UP seems to have fallen in love with remotes systemwide (the upper management anyway).
They aren’t safer, either, as the carriers would have the world believe. The ground guys have enough to do, reading switch lists, lining switches, getting pins, carrying lanterns, riding side of cars, etc. without having to now also concentrate on turning knobs on the bulky transmitter strapped around your belly. Just last week, a UP remote operator here got three fingers crushed in a coupling HE was making with a remote!! Bottom line is…accidents will happen, remotes or no remotes. How many stories have we heard or seen of “minor” accidents where a remote crew pulled into the path of another train, sideswiping it…another just last week in North Platte. Just hasn’t made national headlines because the trains they’ve swiped haven’t yet been loaded with chlorine or LP gas!
As for efficiency, no contest. If you want cars switched and switched fast, you can’t beat
In all fairness I have track inspecters tell me all the time about burn marks on the main line, where remotes are not allowed.
Laclede Steel in Alton Illinois switched the entire plant with remote controlled Ge 44 ton engines with 44 ton slugs attached. They would cut one off at the frame and load it with billets. They ran around like scalded dogs with a guy hanging on the footboard with a radio control pulling four or five cars. A portion of the plant may still be in operation and there is a public road that bisects the plant from which pictures can be taken. I sent mine at request to a guy who worked for Kalmbach and he either quit or was fired and never returned them.
Funny you mention that, I was talking to one person who actually thought that’s how they worked.
Remotes are not the best to say the least. There are some conductors and brakemen on the ground that have never watched an engineer pull a train out of a track. In fact I was talking to a conductor a few weeks ago, he was saying he was underpowered. He was using one sw1500 remote unit to switch the yard. I had told him to get the geep that was sitting in the round house and connect it to the remote. He thought that the alerter on the geep would put the train in penalty braking everytime. But any way, most of the people in here are saying the same thing, The KCS have 3 remote yard jobs and half the time the remotes are out. The person on the ground will go from a dead stop to putting the remote in max, trying to pull a train out of one of the tracks. They never touch the said or throttle down to keep the wheels from slipping. So there are plenty of rail burn marks out in our yard. Heck with in the past few weeks the drawbar on the remote had broken at least 2 times that I know of.
As far as the whole person watching to make sure the remote does not hit anything. If there is a remote zone in affect then no trains should be not be fouling any part of the track the remote is operating on. Now, if the remote was operating with out a zone in effect, then there should be a person a head of the movement, or if they are smart in the locomotive cab with a view of everything around.