I railfan the Norfolk Southern Lafayette District extensively (It’s a great piece of railroad to railfan if you like Midwestern themes), and of all the radio conversations I hear one piece of Trainspeak has stumped me to this day. The word is “checkbox” I hear the dispatcher tell train crews they are good for four (or however many) checkboxes. I think this may be a signal or a hotbox detector but not sure.
Any clue?
-Justin
The term may be related to the forms used for track warrants.
“Check box”, not “chekcbox”, refrers to checking a box on Form D’s and track warrents when being read to the train crew and when the crew reads back to the dispatcher. “Checks box lines, 2, 3, and 4” which are specific pre printed or pre existing instruuctions.
Kind of. Check box is exactly how it sounds, you are checking the box, or marking it. You could say Mark box, check box, X box, etc. All it means is that you are making a mark in the box adjacent to a line on a track warrant.
Ex: “Check box 2, Proceed from CTC TH Jct, Switch no, to MP 3 on main”
On Form D’s, we circle the appropriate line number(s). There are no boxes to check.
“Circle line two, operate in both direction(s) on ADIX Main trk between Camp and Carter.”
Just sayin’…
You NORAC fellows do some odd things…
That ain’t the half of it… [:P]
I’ll take NORAC any day of the week. A line for just about any situation. Sure beats checking boxes until you can’t check any checked boxes to check.