I saw a cab ride vid. Yesterday of an engineer in the cab of an F7.
He was quickly depressing some lever over, and over again. It almost looked like the ind. Break handle.
NOW, on my Rail Driver cab controller, I can move the ind. Handle over (to the right) as well. Does this have anything to do with controlling the breaks? Was I seeing things?
Thanks!
Justin
It is the independant. It’s called bailing off. When the engineer makes a brake pipe reduction, all the brakes including the brakes on the engine will apply. In order to keep the engine brakes released the engineer will push down or push right(on desktop control stands) on the independant to “bail off” the engine brakes. Keeping the engine brakes released keeps the train from slamming into the engines and also keeps the engine’s wheels from locking up and skidding.
It was the independent lever; he was bailing off the brakes on the locomotive while maintaining the brake application on the rest of the train. I’ll let an engineer explain why this is needed sometimes.
Depending on how old the video is, he may also be acknowleging the alerter. I know some engineers that like to reset the alerter by bailing off, instead of hitting the reset button. (one of my biggest peeves with MS Train Simulator is you can’t reset the alerter by bailing off). Some also do it by notching up or down on the throttle.
Bailing off releases the locomotive brakes while keeping the train brakes applied. You want the brakes on the locos released to control slack, and prevent the loco wheels from sliding (the loco brakes are more powerful then car brakes).
Nick
On BC Rail locomotives keying up the engineer’s radio handset also resets the alerter.
Is straight air used to apply locomotive brakes?
There is the story of the student fireman who was told that a certain pipe on the engine was the “straight air pipe,” and he wondered how straight air could be run through such a crooked pipe.
Johnny
Yup…the Independent is straight air.
Nick
However that is not to be confused with railroads such as the Missabe and Erie Mining which used an alternative form of braking called Straight Air in addition to Train Air and the Independent.
Keying up the radio resets the alerter? That’s a handy feature to have.
I confess to being surprised when I discovered using the on-screen features on the newer locomotives also reset the alerter, i. e. distance counter, stopwatch, etc.
OK, thanks all. I’m off to TRAIN06’ to test it out!
I am not an Engineer. My understanding is that Alerters are supposed to be reset by any activity that indicates the Engineer is alive and has motor function in his extremities…deliberate accessing of any functional control mechanism is supposed to fullfil that requirement. Your mileage and carrier may vary.
I understand that Chessie System at one time took away Alertor capabilities from the sanding valve, because sleepy engineers were leaving it on.
Same way with CN’s dead mans petal. Engineers would use there lunch box, and put on it. That caused a crash between a passenger train, and the freight train. The conductor in the caboose was charged for the accident. He didn’t pull the E-break.
Actually on all RR’s with deadman’s pedal’s there was some variation of the lunch pail trick. Signal flag’s were also a favourite.
The wreck you are speaking of was near Hinton, AB in February 1986. There was massive amounts of money spent both on a company and then a government inquiry, and after all the money was spent nobody to this day actually knows why the freight blew a red board. There was plenty of blame to go around about why nothing was done to stop the freight but as to why the signal was not obeyed? …
What is significant about this wreck and why it has had documentaries made about it, is that after the inquiries were over organized resistance to cabooseless trains ended. Having a man at the end of a train is not necessary if he is not going to take corrective action if a problem occurs. And rightly or wrongly a culture had developed where the tail end man didn’t second guess the engineer. Five years after this happened cabooses were gone on long distance trains in Canada, although some wayfreight jobs still use them.
AgentKid
Alerters are programmed to reset when the automatic brake is bailed off by holding the independent handle down (or on desk top brake controllers to the left) but only for a short period of time. If the handle is held in bail for a long period the alerter will resume its count-down. This is to prevent the operator from wedging the independent handle in bail thinking that the alerter will be permantly supressed. In the time before modern alerters it was a common practice for engineers to wedge down the Independent handle to keeep the locomotive brake constantly bailed then there would be no chance that the locomotive automatic brake could apply brakes.
How could anyone on the caboose have prevented this? The guy in the caboose is a mile or more back and probably couldn’t see any signal ahead of the engine. A little unfair to blame him I think. I remember reading about this accident as well…and what I recall is that neither train crew took any correective actioni.e. no brakes w
Ahh yes, but no. This was still in the days of three man crews and there was the hogger and a brakie in the front and the conductor in the caboose.
The culture of not questioning the engineer prevalent at the time should not have applied in this case anyway. What the inquiry seemed to find, but was never able to prove, was the conductor slept through passing the red board in his caboose. He countered that he was awake but chose not to override the engineer’s decision.
The passenger had green boards all the way to the end. The show “Disaster’s of the Century” presents a somewhat stilted view of what happened. In order to explain what was happening, it makes it seem like there was more time to react than there really was. And at the closing speeds involved, by the time there was visual confirmation there would be a crash, there would have been very little time for anybody to apply braking.
AgentKid
[quote user=“Ulrich”]
How could anyone on the caboose have prevented this? The guy in the caboose is a mile or more back and probably couldn’t see any signal ahead of the engine. A little unfair to blame him I think. I remember reading about this accident as well…and what I recall is that neither train crew took any correec
Justin, we must have hit the post button simultaneously. See my post above. The signal was red and the conductor did not react to it.
AgentKid
the brakes on a engine will not slide the wheels if you make a automatic brake reduction, the perpose of bailing is to help keep the train streched while in power and to keep amperage down from the drag of the the brakes. Now if you make a emergency brake application or if train goes into emergency then you bail the brakes regaurdless if you are bunched or streached because now in emergency the air can build up and slide the wheels. if train is bunched you can use the independant to control the head end to stop,