Although I am an advocate of working safely, My personal feelings are that often the “safety lobby” goes way overboard in prescribing safe work practices.
I see nothing wrong with moving from loco to loco, as far as my personal feelings go.
but at the same time, it would not have shocked me to hear that the Liability conscious RR’s would have an official rule against anything that exposed them to too much liability.
Especially with the attitude I’ve perceived NS to have. That hiring session I went to last spring coincided just a day or two after some wreck they had down south. And the guy leading the session offered the observation that HE KNEW that once the investigation was complete, it would be determined that the cause was because ~somebody~ didn’t follow the rules.
Which, seemed rather arrogant, considering the guy knew no more than he read in the paper (his own admission) and no fact finding had yet been done…yet he’s gonna stand there and say that it COULDN"T be the RR’s fault.
No no, the RR must have forseen this possibility and had a rule ready to prevent it,…and clearly it must be the employee’s fault for having failed to follow those rules etc etc.
So. the moving between locos scenario wouldn’t surprise me to learn that the RR has
It depends on who my conductor is, if they are green I will stop the train and go back check it out and restart, if the conductor is seasoned I will slow the train down and let them check the unit out and restart it.
One physical realitiy that is being overlooked…if the engine that fails is actually needed to move the tonnage that the train has…the train will slow down as a decreased level of power is now being asked to shoulder the whole load.
The sight of someone walking back amongst the engines as the train moves at 50-60 MPH is not something that occurs. When an engine fails and it’s power is truly needed for the tonnage the train will shortly slow to the 20-30 MPH range or less…if the train is on the ruling grade for the territory it will very shortly come to a stop.
If the failed engine is not needed to handle the tonnage of the train, the occurence of it’s death will be reported to the Dispatcher and the train will continue, if the weather will not harm the shut down engine. If the weather is cold enough to harm an inoperative engine, the train will stop and appropriate actions will be taken to drain the engine cooling system to prevent a freeze up. The train will then continue with the remaining working power.