So I’m around Joliet watching trains last night, and I hear over the radio on occasion a train being referred to as the rustbucket.
I guess by chance, the dispatcher asked this train what they actually do. The engineer responded that they are a 26 car train with just filled ballast cars that 6 nights a week makes a trip up and down certain portions of the old Chicago - St. Louis alton route to keep the tracks shiny so Amtrak can shunt properly while going 80 mpg. The gave mileposts between which they run but I don’t remember.
Is this for real or was that a joke? Seems kinda wasteful to run a special freight just to keep the rails shiny…
Ask a question, get a snotty answer from Railway Man.
If RWM were interested in being helpful, he might elaborate on what is accomplished by “keep(ing) the rails shiny” and explain why the ballast cars should have been “just filled.” (The last suggesting the absurdity that new loads are required for each run.)
I think that if you substituted “only loaded” for “just filled” ballast cars in the original question, you might come closer to what was being asked.
As for the “snottiness”, it was begun by the “seems like a waste” comment. That can (doesn’t always, but certainly can) rub a weary railroader the wrong way. And that–particularly in connection with matters of safety–is not a good thing to do to someone who strives to keep himself, his co-workers, and the public safe.
Maybe when the frequency of passenger trains is increased on this corridor, they’ll be able to keep their own rails shiny. Or perhaps Phase 3 of the corridor upgrade will include this stretch. Until then, please be grateful for someone who knows what it takes to operate safely.
I think it is an incredibly interesting question. I believe the topic of Amtrak locomotives failing to shunt the crossing signals has come up before on this forum. I can’t remember the context, but by what was said here or what showed up in googling the topic, it seemed to be an urban myth. So I take the OP’s commentary to indicate surprise that such a rail-shining practice would be necessary, and I share the same surprise.
Incidentally, I once knew a seasoned railroader from the Midwest who refused to believe that railroads scooped water on the fly when I explained it. He said they would never do something like that.
I think the question should be “Why DON"T Amtrak locomotives shine their own rails?”
I have watched trains on lightly used lines almost clear the tower before the track occupancy light turns on. Fortunately, the run down clock locks the setup until occupancy gets detected. If the locomotive doesn’t get the rail clean, the rolling wheels of the following cars have little scrubbing action, but a whole lot them can get the rail clean. And the length of an Amtrak train is ? ? ?
And modelers in G scale outside get so tired of ‘shining the rails’, they go to battery power, not feasible for Amtrak.
I had a hard time believing that there were trains that had high pressure water sprays to clean the leaves from rails until I saw one. Now I’m a believer.
So you are telling me that the rails get rusty enough in ONE day that they need a special train so the signals work? Either this is BS or GE has a serious problem with their locomotives. Rust does inhibit the lights from going off but you do not get enough rust to do that in a 24 hour span.
I suspect that UP just routes this ballast train on that track since otherwise the track might not be used at night. The consistency of the loads and maybe need to assure the ballast stays properly stable may be a factor? Just because the engineer said it does not make it so. However I cannot think of a better type train (heavy cars) to polish the rails than a ballast train other than a coal train? Also loaded the train would exceed the tons per operative brake requiring a slower speed and the ballast train might slow down intermodal hot shots on other routes?
Excuse me! I’m not a railroader, and I know each industry has its inside jokes and quite frankly I didn’t know if this was an inside joke or not, hence my question.
We had dispatchers that would line us into a siding to meet someone. then change his mind and route us right back out the other end. Then we’d all joke about “cleaning the rust off the rails”.
Since the OP mentioned that a certain area was involved, could that area be one that’s close to a water way? They may have more problems with rust building up there.
I imagine that Amtrack engines and cars do shine the rails quite nicely. The thing is they want the rails a bit shiny before the passenger train comes thru. If they are operating at 80mph I bet they want the crossing signals to start as soon as they hit the circuit, not half-way thru it.
On a related note, I remember reading in different rules/special instructions of some railroads that a single engine by itself was not exempt from providing flag protection in automatic block signalled territory even though other trains were. The reason being that a single unit, even on a regularly travelled line, might not shunt the signal system sufficiently.
It’s not BS. It’s not a fault of locomotives. This is a common problem on lightly traveled commuter railroads too. It’s not so much that the rust builds up in just 24 hours, its that a handful of short, fast, light axle-loaded trains in some climates never knocks the rust off in the first place, and it builds up over several days, and pretty soon intermittant shunts and shunt failures start to occur.
And, these types of trains can shunt poorly compared to a freight train to begin with. If you turn down the adjustable resistor on the track circuit to get a reliable shunt from the passenger train, then every time it rains or the temperature drops, you get a false shunt from current bleeding through the track structure, and all the crossing signals activate on their own or fail to deactivate. By the time you turn up the resistors enough to make sure you don’t get false activations, the passenger train may not be enough to reliably shunt at all.
Also, passenger trains are traveling at maximum authorized track speed as they enter the track circuit and thus there needs to be a shunt happening at the very end of the approach circuit (immediately beyond the narrow-band shunt) in order to activate the crossing signal immediately, or the signal activates without sufficient warning time. Freight trains, in contrast, are rarely travelling at subdivision maximum authorized track speed and thus the Grade Crossing Predictor (GCP) can “see” the freight train for some time before it needs to activate the crossing signal. By that time there have typically been
It’s the same equipment, day after day, week after week, month after month. It just goes back and forth.
Any train of heavy cars would do. This is just a case of using the cheapest equipment available with the most stable lading available. Ballast doesn’t deteriorate, or readily freeze inside the car, or catch fire, or attract thieves, or pollute anything if it accidentally dribbles out of the car, or pollute anything if the car turns over and spills, or poisons anyone accidentally. In short, it’s the perfect “can’t fail” lading when what you want is simply weight and lots of it.
TPOB limits rarely come into play in flat territory like Illinois.
To corroborate a couple aspects of what RWM posted above:
About 20 -25 years ago there was a nasty grade crossing accident with fatalities on SEPTA’s Newtown Branch (lower Bucks County), supposedly caused by rust preventing actuation of the crossing signals. The daily traffic was only 2 or 3 round-trips of RDCs, 1 or 2 cars per train, so that’s believable to me. Someday I’ll see if I can find out more details of that one - the question has come up before.
At about the same time, Trains had an article about the last days of the Rock Island’s Rockets. There was a ‘sidebar’ (on the left page, in a gray background) about some lightweight passenger cars that were used on them for a while, and how it failed to shunt the signals. As best as I can recall*, the solution mentioned was to turn up the voltage. But, part of the route was along a river that often had low-lying fog, and that led to the track being shunted even when no train was nearby, and so the signals went red. Nevertheless, the Rockets would pass the signals at track speed. A quote from a signal maintainer or supervisor in the article was this, as near as I can recall: “I don’t know what the ICC would have done if they’d seen that. I suppose we’d still be paying the fine.” (The RI had gone bankrupt and was liquidated by then.)
(*RWM, I’m going from memory only, and as you know I don’t speak ‘signal’, but that is my best recollection and I’d say it’s about 90% faithful to what was printed. I’ll make it a point to look it up and confirm or correct the details as appropriate.)
That said, running an otherwise pointless and unproductive shuttle that consists of at least 1 locomotive, 1 crew-start, and 26 cars seems a less-than-economical method to achieve the desired result - unless it can also be used as training or re-qualification for the crew, locomotive 'shake
While I am no expert on the oxidation of iron, I would be very surprised if oxides don’t star forming immediately after the train goes by. The pertinent question is how thick the oxide layer becomes in 25 hours, not whether it forms at all. Something else that may make a difference - most passenger cars use disk brakes so they don’t have the tread cleaning feature of tread brakes as found on freight cars.
Based on my experience with contact resistance of electromechanical relays, I’d wonder if electric railroads, especially 600VDC lines, would have less trouble with maintaining good contact. Passing a high current through a contact usually does a good job of blowing out oxidation.