The current (Nov. issue) Trains Magazine has an article about UP’s Sunset Corridor. It mentions some train operations in the West Colton, California yard, but the comments are written in traineese, so I don’t quite understand: “We were not capable of trimming and setting trains at the same rate we could hump them…” Translation anyone?
Trimming is just what it sounds like…trimming up the yards bowl tracks, cutting out cars that were switched to the wrong track, pulling out bad orders, clearing out tracks when they fill up or dragging tracks down farther into the bowl to make more room in them, things like that.
Setting trains means doubling up and or setting over tracks to build up an outbound train.
Setting or setting out can also refer to spotting the newly made up train on an air spot, so the car department can work ground air (an independent compressed air source separate from locomotive supplied air) and pump up the train line, and do an initial terminal air test with out the need for the motive power to be attached to the train.
What the author was telling you was they were humping or switching cars faster than they could make room in the bowl for them.
Thanks Ed. If this were the case, isn’t it just a matter of adding more equipment/workers to the crew? The article seems to say, that they couldn’t work the hump to designed capacity. Since yards are said to be the bottlenecks, wouldn’t a problem like this receive priority for improvement?
Second question first, Murph–there are times when all the extra hump crews in the world won’t push the cars over any faster. I’m sure we could come a lot closer to a “design speed” if we didn’t have to make special arrangements to handle some of the cars we get in the shoves (shiftable loads, loaded autos or stack cars, hazmat), or if all of the cars rolled the way they should. We don’t have the problem they had down south–we’re usually humping as far as we can go, waiting for the pulldown end to make us more room.
Having said that, up here in Proviso, the trimming is done on our end of the hump–covers kicking cars that stop short, retrieving in-wrongs, or shoving tracks “into the corner” to give ourselves more humping room. What passes for trimming in most other yards is done by the “pulldown” crews. Just a difference in terminology.
That’s interesting. Can the train be aired up (?) by the ground air, then have the locomotive hook on and go?
That’s the idea. The car knockers perform their inspection with ground air. Then a crew comes along with the power:
- Takes the ground air off (preserving the air charge, so the crew only has to build up 20 lbs or so of air instead of the full 90)
- Couples up
- Arms the EOT
- Does a continuity test (to ensure there is air on the rear)
- Does an apply and release on the rear car (to ensure the brake signals carry to the rear and that the rear will stop if train breaks apart)
- Pass the tests and away you go.
Nick
How long are we talking about, from the time the locomotives couple up with the train, until it’s ready to go? How does that compare with starting from scratch?
From the time the locomotive couples to the train if its just one track maybe 2-3 minutes to get air up to within 15psi of regulating valve setting, making sure the ETD shows a rise on the rear end and continuity, a lot of engineers will also do a set and release to make sure ETD pressure drops 5 psi and recovers 5 psi, covering for a possible situation of an overcharge in the brake pipe. Overacharge in the brake pipe usually occurs in cold weather where yard air can get the train line to a much higher PSI than the locomotives can.
If the cars are not pretested, even a small train of 50 cars can take 1-2 hours to do class one air test. The yard air allows the carman to do a class one air test.
Can someone describe what happens air-wise when you set out bad orders on a train that is ready to leave town fully loaded. How is the air affected and how long does it take to build it back up? Is it “saved” in the preceeding cars so they only have to redo the ones behind the cut?
Mook
Short answer to the last question: yes.
The other question will have to be answered by someone who remembers how much time per car it takes to pump up the air from an emergency application (which is the same as dumping the air when the cut’s made).
longer answer…
I beleive there are valves (sometimes called “stopcocks”) at each end of the car, which can be used to shut off the air. (That’s why you don’t need a caboose on one end and an engine on the other to pump air…)
To change from “Yard Air” to “Motor Air” you would shut off the valve, swap hoses, and turn the valve back on. I dont believe you would be able to change the glad-hand safely with the air still on…even if you could force the hands back together, you would cause an emergency set of the train brakes, and have to pump it all back up again…
So, to set a car out, you just isolate the car with both valves, and the valves on the cars ahead/behind it, spot it where you need it, bleed the air, set the hand brake, then when your train is back together, reconnect the train line and open both valves that were closed to isolate the car…
I would imagine a safety conscious engineer would also do a short brake test, to check the air pressure on the EOT device, as described above, before attempting to decend any decent grade. Might even be mandatory after splitting a train like that…
Please pardon me while I…[xx(]
If there is something incorrect in my post, it would be more informative (both to me and to other forum members) if you would advise me which part is correct and which is incorrect.
Any time the brake pipe has been changed by adding cars, setting out cars or changing engines etc, an application and release test is required. It must be determined that the brakes on the rear car set up and release. This can be visually or by seeing at least a 5 psi drop and rise on the EOT. If car(s) being added aren’t already air tested, the A & R can be the same one done for the air test on the cars, it doesn’t have to be separate.
You also don’t want to close the angle cock on cars left standing, thus “bottling” the air. You either let them go into emergency or during cold weather follow an approved method to bleed down the brake pipe to a level that won’t cause the control valves to go to emergency before cutting away.
Yesterday I brought a train out of a yard where there is no yard air plant. They have to use engines to do the test. We arrived at the train just as the car men where finishing the brake test and dropping the blue flags. We didn’t have any bad orders to set out. All we had to do is release hand brakes and go.
If we did, the conductor would have gone back to the portion of the train to be left, after releasing hand brakes on the head end. He would then put on a sufficient number of hand brakes to hold the portion left behind. Then he would have me release the air brakes to see if it holds. If it does, I would make a 20 psi brake pipe reduction and then he would close the angle cock on the end of the car to be setout, where the cut is to be made. (This is assuming that the problem requiring the setout isn’t with the brakes not releasing on that car.) We then would cut away letting the rear portion go into emergency and set the car over to wherever the yardmaster would specify. If the car was going to be left alone, the hand brake applied and tested. We would cut away from it and go back to
So it would appear that the time between the rear of the train going into emergency and reapplying air after the car is set out is short enough to not have to recharge the reseviours totally…and thus not take near as much time as starting from scratch…which of course simplifies the operation a bit…
On average, how long will the brakes hold once a cut has gone into emergency? A matter of a few hours or as long as a day?
Jeff or anyone - I know each car has its own hand brake. So can you collectively release all of them from the cab? Is this done by releasing the train brake? I am going to assume that if you apply the brakes by hand on any car, you need to release them by hand, also.
Mook
I’ve seen cars set out for a few days or a week with most of the air brakes still holding. They must hold for 3 minutes minimum for the air test. After that, it just depends on the condition of the car’s brake equipment. They just don’t want someone to depend on the air brakes only holding a car or cut of cars. In some cases doing that resulted in big headlines in the news.
Jeff
No, each hand brake on the cars and engines need to be released by hand. You are correct that each individual hand brake is applied and released by hand.
It seems somewhere I read someone working on a power assisted hand brake using I think air tapped from the train line. This was quite a while back and either didn’t work out or the extra effort to equip and maintain wasn’t worth the cost to do so.
Jeff
Okay–I’ve been out to Rochelle for recuperation, so I can tackle this the way it should have been done (short answers were due as much to lack of time as anything else).
Anglecock, as Jeff states. A caboose had no air-pumping capabilities, so I’m still confused here.
Wrong on so many counts. Bottling the air is a rule violation. You’d close the anglecock on the rear end of the car you were setting out, make that separation (applying the required number of handbrakes to the standing cut to keep it from rolling), move the bad order to wherever you were spotting it, close the anglecock on the rear of the car ahead of it, and cut away. The brake on that car would go into emergency, making it a lot easier to crank up the handbrake. If it were found at this point that the brake would not hold the car, you’d have to chock the wheels or leave another car with a good hand brake to hold it. When you tied back onto your own train, you make the joint, make the hose
OK, I think I followed it all up to this point. What does this statement mean? Thanks.