I’ve heard that - but it wouldn’t play well with family-friendly audiences.
I often hear the EOT referred to as the “marker,” as in “looking good on the roll-by, marker in place…”
I know I have lots more respect on my yacht and someone refers to the pointy end of the boat.
Maybe, sort of, not always.
M.U. is also used as a verb and an adjective where I work.
“Hang on, I have to MU that last engine; then we’ll be good to go.”
“No you don’t. I already got it. All the engines are now MU’ed - so let’s get going!”
The long and short of it, is that railroad vocabulary differs from carrier to carrier, region to region, even yard to yard. Nobody will ever figure it all out.
Yes, NS had their own thing going. And what a mess those EOT’s were. I never really understood why they didn’t go with the industry standard. They were more often than not a problem, with many times not being able to link up with the HOT. I think everyone was glad they when they changed over to what the other roads were using. So, actually, NS finally caught up with the rest of the industry.
As for FRED, again I think I read that term first in TRAINS.
I have heard career railroad employees refer to locomotives coupled together as a “lash up” and those same folk refer to the tall box on the end of the last car as a “FRED”… and at least one of these fellows HATES “railfans” and is NOT one himself (and in no uncertain terms will let you know that if you infer he might be!).
But considering that there are a lot of people that don’t know the difference between “Then” and “Than” and confuse the use of the terms. And a lot of people think that “Sublime” means something is “understated” and miss going to see some sublime view because they don’t know it is “grandiose!” And that there are many people that don’t know the difference between “Dual Main” and simply “Parallel tracks”. I can’t see that there is any cause to categorize anyone based on their word usage, except to say that some folk have been taught and others learned from experience… And experience is not always the ‘best teacher’, it is just the most common teacher and often produces indelible memory of the experience!
When I came here from the Midwest I was helping switching and giving car counts they way I was used to:
3 to the joint…2 to the joint… one more, half , that’ll do. They thought I was retarded.
Instead they use “hitch” 3 to a hitch etc…
Evven during the transition from steam to diesel on the Boston and Maiine, the word “motor” was never used for diesel locomotives. Possibly it had been used for the electrics in the Hoosack Tunnel electrification, but I never heard the word used for a diesel-electric locomotive. Other railroads definitely did usse the term, differentiating steam locomotives as lccomotives from diesels called motors. The B&M did usse the words motorcar and motor-train for a doodle-bug by itsel and with one or two trailers.
Then there are front portch, grab-iron, target, waybill, all of which have alternative names.
Three step, set and centered, red zone, going in…