Hello people. I’ve been a watcher on Trains dot com for many years and now decided to register as an active participant. I really like the new look for the website. [:)]
My first forum question to get things going is this:
As I travel between cities out into the country area and I’m pretty much parallel to a two track railroad, sometimes I see freight trains stopped on the main (not a side track) and was just wondering why.
Thanks
G
There are almost too many reasons to list here.
Most of them have something to do with the Dispatcher not having a place for the train to go. These causes could be, but not limited to, any of the following: they were waiting on another train so they can cross over to the other main; a maintainer has permission to occupy the next block; a train is stopped ahead; the yard is not ready for that train; the crew was at their 12-hour limit; the defect detector said there was a problem; they “lost the air” in the train line and the conductor was “walking the train”; and others that I can’t think of right now.
Like rrnut said, it could be a ton of reasons, but I would hazard to guess that 9 times out of 10 it is just simply a red light on the signal. Check right in front of the train for a signal next time you see one. The stop signal could be for numerous reasons itself.
[#welcome]
There are a lot of reasons. It could be a red signal, as mentioned before, or the crew could have gone off their hours of service laws, (dead on the law) or be having mechanical problems.
Not exactly in nowhere, but: Last Sunday in DeWitt IA an E/B coal was stopped with the pusher fouling the crossing. Two UP guys in a pickup were looking under the hood, kind of. It must have been there for a while, because the police had detour signs in place. I would have stopped for a pic, but traffic was heavy and policeman had a sour look on his face.
First and foremost [#welcome]
Carl can most likely give us much more information here, but in the western 'burbs of Chicagoland we have the U.P. mainline and between Rochelle and Chicago there are usually very many eastbound freights sitting in the “parking lot” waiting for access to the various metro yards and/or transition to one of the other railroads like the EJ&E, BRC, etc.
Carl, care to add to this?
the most common is being stopped at a stop signal or a hold out point to keep from blocking roads or waiting for a yard to accept the train the next would be some other problem such as train went into emergency due to an airhose breaking or some other problem or passed a detector and got a bad reading so the crew would have to walk the train if its at a siding usually they are changing crews as the first one whent dead for time they usually don’t like tieing up a main line while a train gets recrewed but its not to say it doesn’t happen
Thank you for the reasons. There were many listed I hadn’t thought of. I did think of a red signal light ahead and also that perhaps the sun was setting directly behind the signal making it very difficult or impossible to read, but I’m not sure if this thought is plausible. The train was going westbound when I saw this take place last summer and it was nearing sunset.