When I was a teenager, I was invited into the cab of a Septa MU for a brief cab ride (between 30th and Suburban Sta.). I got to sound the horn and get a great view of the intricate trackwork leading to the stub end, high level platforms of the PRRs Suburban Station.
It was a very short trip, but great because I shared it with my dad and it was my only cab ride ever it has always stuck with me.
How about you - what was your experience like?
Ummmm, going over the St.Croix Highbridge,(in the WC days) with my Uncle and Randy. Its fun.
Alec
The only one I have ever had, when I got to notch out a SD45!
Oh, and welcome to the forums!
Adrianspeeder
I got a ride in a geep at the Anaheim Wye.
My first one,which was on a UP GP9 while switching an industry near my home.
I have had alot, the but the most memorable was the most recent. Last Friday, riding home after volunteering at the NSSR/LSRM we were running the newly repainted SOO LINE GP30 #700 and the horn is LOUD. The cab is huge and how we got a NS seat is beyond me. Come on down!!!
I have yet to get a cab ride in any loco [:(], but it’s one of my goals in life. A ride in a mainline safety cab would be like winning the lotto, but at this point (I’m 51 years old) I’d take anything. Hey, coborn35, if I show up in Duluth someday, could I get a ride in that Geep?
Can’t talk about my most memorable…might end up in some trouble. But my first one was when I was a teenager. The local switcher would run around shale cars and deliver them to the brickyard, then go out and get back on the rest of it’s train. One afternoon, even before getting home from school, the crew was running around the train and asked if I wanted to go…well of course I did. and after getting the train together, they dropped me off right in front of the house.
Well, OK, so I do get paid to do this. I liked the MILW electrics really well but the boxcabs were in many ways my favorites. Were these things antiques or what? I got to ride in them from 1969 to 1974. No leg room, steel box for the engineers seat, steel straps with padding for the brakeman. A heater that was full on powered directly from the 3300 vdc trolley or off. Pipes every where and manual window wipers. Wood and steel all around. There you were right over the front pilot, what a view. On the way to Avery in the dead of winter with snow as high as the cab side window.
If you ever are in Duluth go to the museum and take a tour of the E50 A&B and see what I mean. If only you could feel them move the way only then can.
Well the DHRR ran a special for there customers from Newark NJ to PRR station in Philly. Came down the old Reading mainline doing 60 MPH behind the DHRR sharks. [:o)][:p][:)]
My company also leased a Conrail loco on a weekly bases & I was the contact so I use to operate the loco often & would take it for rides while my company was unloading/reloading the cars. My kids also operated the loco when I would hire it for a weekend gig. [:o)][:p][:)]
[quote]
Originally posted by paulsafety
My most memorable cab ride huh???
My last trip before calling it quits.
Virlon
save your ticket… the P.E. will rise again.
I volunteer at a railway museum, so I get “cab rides” sometimes, but the only actually on a railroad was in January.
I was riding the southbound Surfliner from Santa Barbara to Los Angeles. The train was P-A-C-K-E-D with UCSB students, so they opened up the cab car, and the engineer left the door to the cab compartment open, so I waltzed over with my timetable and scanner. The train was late because of all the rain, and then we operated at restricted speed for a while because of a joint track-and-time authority, and we were even later. I talked with the engineer quite a bit, and at the end of the run, he gave me the track bulletins we had been operating under (there were quite a few). I technically had my feet on the floor of the passenger compartment, but it was essentially a cab ride, though I was standing.
-Daniel Parks
Can’t cop to em’. If I did I could get someone in trouble. I’ll just say there is nothing like cruzin’ down the main at speed in a brand new loco in run-8. Can’t wait to do it again.
Come down on a friday between 8:30 and 2:30 and sure.
Ask for Max.
As a retirement gift from my fellow workers in 2002, I rode in the “Dixie” shay on the narrow gauge railroad at Roaring Camp (near Santa Cruz, CA.) Most memorable is that I was the engineer operating (that is, controlling throttle, whistle, etc.) on an uphill segment of the run on each of three roundtrips the train made that day, carrying several hundred passengers. There was also a trainee fireman (a young woman) on the board (so there were four of us in the cab), who managed to blow the safety valves as we were leaving the summit on the third trip. I concluded that the job of fireman was more difficult than that of the engineer.
My greatest cab ride was when I was little I got to move an amtrak train. Up to the station so passengers could start to load the train. It was soooooooooo fun to do that. I wish I could do something like that again[:D][:D][:D][:D][:D][:D][:D][:D]
My second (or equal because any cab ride is awsome) would be riding the shay at the Yosemite Mountain Sugar Pine RR.
Well, last year, in Historic Sykesville, the Loram grinding train of the ISO 9001 division just so happened to be maintaining the CSX main after I got of work. And the crew was nice enough to show me around, let me get pictures, and so on. The crew chief allowed me to go into the cab, and I got to sit in the big engineers chair, and blow the horn. Well, I didn’t get to go for a ride, but it was fun to say the least. I have pictures of it at www.freewebs.com/trainfreak409 .
Westbound Empired Builder on GN between Seattle and Mukilteo WA summer of 1969. The engineer ususaly worked freight between Seattle and Wenatchee and was reported to be the best man in the pool. It was said he could stop a freight train anywhere on the line within 10 feet without roughing up the boys in the caboose. Since this subivision has the toughest main line grandes on the entire Great Northern, this was high priase indeed.
The SDP-40’s were brand new and typically replaced the F units on a two for one basis so we probably had two SDP-40s and one F unit with 14 or so cars.
We left Wenatchee about half an hour late. That would put us out of Wenatchee at 3:40AM. Between Merrit and Berne we saw forest fires on the ridge to the south. At Skykomish I noticed we were only about 10 minutes late, which means we had made time up on the 71 mile crossing of the Cascade Range. I was riding on the Fireman’s side and had not noticed any unusual speed. In retrospect I think he was running 5-10 MPH over the speed required to make scheduled speed.
Below Sky the grade moderates to not more than 1% (generally descending) and curves are generally good for 50-60 MPH. The line had been extensively reworked within the previous few years from above Index to Gold Bar to eliminate sharp curves. About a mile below Index the line crosses the River on a new bridge, climbs 20 feet or so and then drops on about .4% grade for five or six miles to Gold Bar. Speed over the bridge was about 50 MPH and it is tangent track from the top of the little rise to the West end of Gold Bar where there is a 60 mph curve.
Shortly before we crosssed the river, the engineer went from dynamic to power for the little hill. Over the hill he stayed in power down the grade. After a couple of miuntes I got curious and walked over to the other side of the cab. The speedometer was peged at 80. The engineer had his watch out and was studying it intently. He made a comment to me about how nice the