Who stole our switchers?

Trains Magazine General Discussion
1

Our local BNSF yard, for as long as I can remember, has done yard switching with a pair of SW switchers. If one or both had to be shipped off for repairs, inspections, whatever, loner SW’s would show up from another yard.

About a month ago, the pair of switchers flat disappeared. Now, the switching is done with the GP38’s and GP39’s that are used for the locals. Was this a power upgrade? Would this be related to articles I’ve read, about retiring old EMD equipment? Did they just wear out? Did Mookie steal them? They were that attractive pumpkin orange that I’ve heard her rave about.

2

BNSF is probably the last Class 1 with a sizable block of 567-powered switchers, mostly SW1200’s. They are slowly being retired so a lot of them are being replaced as you mentioned. Metra’s 14th Street passenger yard used to be switched by a BNSF SW1200, it’s now being worked by a GP38 rebuild (2038).

3

eeewwwww…

I complained about the ugh orange so much, they boxed up a whole bunch of the orange motors and stored them in a closet somewhere. There was quite a group of ugh orange motors sitting around the diesel shop and they have disappeared! [^]

But now that you mention it, I haven’t seen or heard our old SW10’s and SW15’s for some time. Having said that, I haven’t heard too many whistles from any alpha/numeric combo lately, either.

4

If those ex-BN switchers (Santa Fe’s are long gone) have no tight radius curves on lightweight rail to contend with any more, a 567 engined anything is looking like a goner. The coupler swing on those small engines, combined with their short length, made them about the only thing that could negotiate and couple in curves over 15 degrees.

5

So they’ve probably gone to that great big grain elevator in the sky?

6

Some of them have turned up at NRE in Dixmoor.

7

Do American railroads run wayfreights (locals) where they run modern power but tow an old switcher dead until they need to fire it up to work a spur with tight curves or switches like I’ve seen and heard CP does?

AgentKid

8

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9

Not that I’ve seen. Most of the really tight curves and switches were in older urban areas where the industries have disappeared over the last 40 years or so - and what’s left that is active either already was or has been built / rebuilt to more of the modern / broader curve and switch standards. If there are any left like that which need frequent rail service, then there’s usually an SW1200 or SW1500 still nearby.

Around here for such mainline locals NS likes to use push-pull pairs of [pick two] GP38/ GP39/ SD40 (and newer SD’s, too - I just can’t remember which specific models) for power, 1 loco on each end. The GPs - being B-B’s - are pretty flexible. If there’s a situation where even they shouldn’t go, the crew uses a “handle” of other cars from their train to reach into the sharp curve areas to do their switching.

  • PDN.
10

For example, today’s eastbound edition on the Reading/ Lehigh Line at about 2:20 PM had a D9-40CW (I think, or maybe it was a D9-44CW), about 15 or 20 cars, and then SD60M 6783 trailing.

  • PDN.
11

And the beat goes on,[#dots] like it has for the last century and a half.

The spurs I was mentioning in my earlier post are sometimes several miles long. And too far from a terminal to send out a switcher on its’ own, for too few cars. They would need a fairly large size “handle” of cars![:O]

AgentKid

12

Ahhh - I see now. For curves that sharp, like up a valley a few miles to mines and the like, that are not practical to relay to a broader curve ? I wouldn’t envision long curves that sharp on the plains at a grain elevator, for example.

Then, maybe it’s time for the industry and the railroad to sit down and re-visit and perhaps re-negotiate the terms of and operations under the industry’s sidetrack service agreement.

If the spur is truly entirely the industry’s from the clearance point at the main line all the way back to the plant, then the railroad might just refuse to take its power beyond that point - physically impractical, not in compliance with the railroad’s current sidetrack curvature standards and specifications, unsafe, and all that with those sharp curves, you know. No currently mass-produced motive power can negotiate those curves, so it’s unreasonable to continue to provide service that necessitates uncommonly special equipment that’s not being made anymore. Industry could then either obtain its own SW-type switcher or an ex-Santa Fe CF7 (are there any left around ?), a “critter”, or a Trackmobile-type motive power, depending on grades, length and weights of cuts of cars, etc.

If it’s the railroad’s spur, or if the industry has a better negotiating position, then maybe there’s a corresponding downward adjustment in the rates as well to compensate for the change in responsibility for that portion of the move - or it becomes a shortline, or maybe some other arrangement. Let’s see if anyone else here has any thoughts on that.

  • Paul North.
13

There are two reasons for sometimes needing smaller power. The one already mentioned is curvature, but really this is mostly an issue of heritage industrial areas. But, as late as 1975 I laid out a siding into a Toronto area loading dock with a 30 degree curve (it was eith

14

BNSF still will require a 4 axle unit ONLY on some backtracks due to curvature & light rail/tie condition…Rocky Ford CO on BNSF’s Pueblo Sub comes to mind… Old Sugar Factory…(15+ degree curves, rough ties, 85# jointed rail - this is the place that had the ex- DRGW F-Unit as a switch engine)

Railroads will often not operate beyond a certain point for reasons of curvature, clearances, trackwork, weeds/trees or contract considerations. Not that uncommon. As discussed often in other threads, Architects and Engineers plus herds of JoeBob agri-dummies and miners do all kinds of stupid things that render a track useless. Things like staircases off docks, fire valves, elevator piping, handrails and other add-ons kill off industry tracks on a regular basis. (There are some rather well known grain & ethanol outfits that still don’t get it. -cheap and stupid over-rules safety and common sense design with those people.)

Between Pueblo & Canon City, a large lumber outfit expanded a wallboard plant (RWM knows it) and succeeded in making it impossible to serve for rail grade and curvature reasons…Both railroads that could serve it walked away - It’s been a mostly empty warehouse now for 20 years.

15

I don’t know the particular spotting features of that model, but that very well could be what I was seeing as one of a pair of units, the other being an SD40-2. They were carried on a regular basis as there was no place to “base” them at the sites they were used. Old branchline stubs were indeed one of the locations as mandated by government’s to continue some service to those locations. The other situation I recall are lines to gas plants to handle sulfur loads.

I volunteered from about 2002 to 2005 at a location where you could see the Macleod Sub. and you would see the above scene on a regular basis.

AgentKid

16
17

Interesting variation on “standard” operations, Ed. Thanks for sharing that description. A few more thoughts:

  1. It’s kind of a hybrid between a pure “road job” and a local.

  2. No reason why instead of 1 “drop”, there couldn’t be 2 or 3, if the volumes and geography worked out.

  3. The opposite way could also work - individual jobs out, work, tie up in a siding, and the road job collects them all on the way back in. But the way your outfit has it set up is better because each crew can absorb whatever the variations are in the actual working time at their location, without holding the others up. Of course, there is some delay inherent in the outbound job having to set-up the 2 jobs before it leaves, but somehow that seems less disruptive and more manageable to me.

  4. Could the Class I’s do something like that without having to pay one crew or the other an “arbitrary” like an entire 2nd day’s pay for handling a 2nd train during their shift ? That may a question more for the members who work for them.

Neat trick. Thanks again.

  • Paul North.
18

A long time ago, along the wharfs in Philadelphia and Baltimore were some curves in the 150 ft. radius (38 -degree) range, which were served by the “Docksider” type of 0-4-0 tank steam engines, or PRR’s B-class (I think) of 0-4-0 switchers with slope-back tenders. Later, Trackmobiles and GE 44-tonners were used. But even at that, I understand that often the cars had to be pushed in w

19

Worthwhile illustrations of the problems from the real world, as always - thanks for sharing.

What it really comes down to is who is responsible for the situation, and how the costs of fixing it should be allocated or shared, with the idea of not killing off either the industry or the railroad. Sharp curvature and light-load rated bridges are historical and can be expensive to move to a new alignment and rebuild or upgrade, so it might be in everyine’s interests to find a substitute locomotive as a way to avoid having to do that

But light rail and bad ties are a relatively cheap fix, esp. if it’s limited to a few curves, and that ought to be the industry’s responsibility, rat

20

On the PTRA, unless the industry has contracted with us for track maintainance, our responsibility ends at either the industry side of the switch into th eplant, or 50" past that point…a lot depends on when the contract was performed.

And not to argue, but some of these plants have grow up and around tracks that have been there since 1924, in some instances, 1910.

Changing the alignment or curves is impossible, without rebuilding large parts of the plants.

Buried petroleum and natural gas pipelines, over head pipe bridges, even buildings would have to be moved.

Good luck getting any of these plants to shut down even a tiny corner of production for something like that.

In some instances you would be talking millions of dollars a day in loss production.

Examples are…

If you know what you are looking at, you can see why the track can’t be moved.

For those of you who have never been inside a refinery…this is the PTRA South Shore main through Lubrzoil on the left, and Shell Deer Park on the right.

All the little signs on both sides of the right of way are burried pipelines…intra plant feed stock lines, customer feed lines, full of natural gas, liqufied petroleum gas, and a bunch of really awful stuff I can’t spell!

When this track was first laid down, this was the front of the refinery, and oil came up Buffalo Bayou in open wooden barges…

Overhead pipe bridge inside Shell…no way to move that with out a major shut down.