Would a switch crew ever have a car on both ends of an engine at the same time? I would think for safety reasons they’re not allowed, but I want to know for sure.
The answer is yes. I’ve seen crews switching with cars on both ends of the locomotive many times.
Jerry,thanks for the list of rules.I added it to my favorites. Joe
Speaking as a former brakeman we would not push a car ahead of the engine and train unless there was no other way.The reason being somebody would need to ride that car in order to protect the shove and flag crossings.Now in order to flag a crossing the man riding the car would need to swing off the car,run ahead and stop the street traffic and then swing back on the car as it passes.The above does not apply to a routine switching move where a run around move was made to switch facing point industry(ies) of course the street crossing(s) would still need to be flagged.
Yeah, I was thinking about needing to put one car each on two different facing spurs. If it was unusual to move both cars at the same time (ie leaving one car attached to the loco as it did the runaround-if space permitted) or if rules limited that at all.