This is actually a safety question.
Hypothetical situation, you are out on the rails rinning between 2 cities. A 4 engine consist, and engine #3 fails.
Who goes back to restart it? Engineer? Conductor? do you stop the train during the process or do you keep the train moving throughout ?
Depending on the situation, you would not even have to restart I believe.
If you have too, then the conductor would do it, and the train would keep moving throughout. Though if it failed in the first place, it may very well not start up again.
Conductor usually goes back to restart the unit, unless conductor has an engineers card, and engineer wants to restart it. Usually you can keep the train moving, I have taken a 40 mph walk back to restart units, it’s not fun, but it’s legal. The only time I wouldn’t restart the unit is if the crankcase pressure button popped, for obvious reasons. In the wintertime, you want to keep them running as much as possible to prevent freezing. Usually that means isolating the unit.
As a side note, I have had an M.U. cable go bad enroute, then you have to stop the train or, in my case, let the hill stop you. Thankfully, I had a spare cable that day.
Randy
well…all depends on why it went down…if it is something that the conductor knows how to reset… alot of times they will go back and find the issue… reset it…and fire the unit up agin… but if its something that the conductor dosnt have a clue about… yes…sometimes you do have to stop the train and find out what the problem is… if you have to stop for any reason…you tell the dispatcher what the problem is and that you have to stop…that way he can make a plan on what to do as far as running other trains… also it has a lot to do with the kind of train (tonnage) and the type of terriroty (hills or flat lands) will determan how critical it is for you to stop and get the unit started agin… if the unit realy isnt needed for power (the other units in your train can pull it without any real issues)… and its not put the unit at risk that it will freeze… you just keep going and at the first place you get held at…you go back and take a look… but it dose help to send someone back to atleast isolate the unit to shut that annoying alarm bell off…even if it cant be or donst need to be started right away…
csx engineer
Put her in the shop
This has been a very interesting thread I have learned a lot… Thanks
That was part of my curiousity…thanks.
With the ever increasing focus on safety by the RR’s, I was wondering if they required the train to be stopped.
I suppose that if a conductor was blown off such a train, the RR would find a way to cite the employee for improper proceedure?
thats why they put handrails on the cat walks…
csx engineer
[quote]
Originally posted by TheAntiGates
I suppose that if a conductor was blown off such a train, the RR would find a way to cite the employee for improper proceedure?
Of Course…
Virlon
Step one of the proper procedure is don’t get blown off the train.[swg]
Which makes perfect sense.
OSHA, however, doesn’t always make sense.
When moving from one locomotive to the next, what is the proper prescribed ‘safe’ proceedure?
I’m not sure if it was osha in general, or cal-osha since california protective laws are more stringent, but just in example, the PROPER means to move from one STATIONARY platform to another (as was impressed upon me during my last job out there) would require a safety lanyand be clamped onto one platform while you step to the other (since there is no protective rail spaning between the two.
Clearly, this would be absurd, so I was half wondering if the RR’s required a full stop.
I guess they are not as safety/liabiliy paranoid as I had come to suspect?
well im sure if i dig deep enought into my rule book…i probly would come across some rule that says that walking on the catwalk while the engin is moving at a high rate of speed is not alowed…but on the other side of it… its one of them things that if it is aginst a rule… you do what you got to do to get the job done…
csx engineer
You guys make it sound like this happens often. Not here on the Confederate Southern Xpress. We have the top motive power in the world. We got all the great Chessie units while they took all the junk CONRAIL power south. And if you believe that I have some swamp land in New Mexico up for sale too.
There is not a fixed railing however, there is a chain. It is not tight (can’t be, must allow for slack going around curves) but it is better than nothing.
Another issue no one has brough up in relation to this one is the fact that there can be a height difference between one locomotive and another. These days railroads are running everything they can get their hands on so you may have a new 70Mac running with an SD40-2, or a Dash 8 and an SD40-2. The drop off from one locomotive to another may be about a feet, so be careful. (Eyes on Path.)
You are talking about the chain in the center of the handrails , as shown here, correct??
Yes.
When locos are lashed together the chains go from one loco to another so the crew can have something to hold onto and prevent falling.
AntiGates: OSHA has no say in the matter, FRA does.
Virlon: Anyone who has spent time on Cajon Pass knows the story about the engineer who fell off at Blue Cut while re-starting an engine and then called SanBerdoo to hold the train until he got back on. Yardmaster (S.O.) at Berdoo was asking the conductor if he knew where his hogger was.[(-D][(-D][(-D]
i would get more engines.
Well now, the rent a wreck business is booming. [;)] Take a close look and see how much power is on a train that is not the railroad’s own power. Look more closely at locals and other less important trains.
Well, Gates, it’s kind of like the whistle posts, those walkways have been essentially the same since the switcher-type locomotives were first built, nigh onto fifty years now. Sometimes, you do what you have to do to get across the road. I have personally known two individuals that did fall off, one landed in a snowbank and I’m not sure what the other landed in but both lived to tell the tale and both railroaded again.
Waltersrails, getting other engines isn’t always an option and you don’t get to make that decision, anyway.