I was watching a couple of NS gp38s moving some grain around the yard and they had to double the train because of the weight. How would a Yardmaster of Trainmaster determine yard power.
Doubling means to cut a train in half and take one section over a mountain grade and return to get the other section and bring it over the summit.
Doubling a train in a yard due to weight? You might have seen normal switching in action.
Yard power is not important. Road power is and will always recieve careful consideration.
I thought i have heard the term doubling to pull a train out of a yard. I could be wrong though. Anyway it seemed they didnt have enough power to pull the entire train.
In a yard, doubling a train would mean putting it on two leads in the receiving yard or departure yard because of its length.
[banghead]
Roight. I forgot. So sorry.
During RCO training we blew up or SD 40 here in Galesburg ( it was a shop queen anyway) so they gave us the GP 38 and promised we would only pull "small"trains out of the bowl. HA HA 16,000 tons later we are screaming along at 3 mph heading out to pull past the departure yard to shove back in.Was in full power all the way and watched the ammeter peg all the way out.When stopping all I had to do was shut her down slow to the standby mode where the engine brakes start setting up. Needless to say we tied up the yard for over an hour.
Most of our yard pull out jobs are like I said SD-40’s. Hump sets are 3 SD-40’'s. Our little GP 38? after that movement the powers that be decided to MU another GP 38 to her so now shes a double unit.
When I’m back in my hometown of McCook,NE, I like to go down to the yard to see whats happening.For they switch engine, they now use two GP38-2’s where they used to use one SD9. How’s that for progress! I wonder if the crews would rather have the SD9’s back?
doubling tracks also means taking one track of cars and coupling them up to another cut of cars… to build one longer cut… road trains where will take a track for a pickup and double it to another track for an outbound train…or double it back to there inbound train and take off… doubling also dose pretain to making a hill if you dont have enought power to make it in one cut and no helper service to give you a shove…
csx engineer
Yard power is whatever I can beg, borrow, or steal.
Nick
In Northtown, they use two SD40-2s (BNSF 6332 and the 7821) as the pull out jobs. They have the 7039 and the 8030 (SD40-2s) as Pullout/Hump power. We have two sets of Hump Power also, SD39s with Slugs.
Alec
Someone tell me the best justification or the worst no-no’s for using two yard tracks to recieve an inbound train or to depart a outbound train that is longer than any one availible track. I know that the train will need not to block the mainline when trying this exercise.
amen to that… and the whole time your praying that what ever you get your hands on stays running long enought to get the work done and finish your shift befor it dies…lol…
csx engineer
alot of times they do block the main in some terminals… train has to take head room at the end of the yard in order to back off a cut of cars onto another track once one track is filled up… and the other way when makeing a double out of the yard for an outbound train… when building a train that is 140cars long out of 2 75 car capasity tracks the train has to get head room some how if the yard donts have a long lead to take head room on… where i work out of… alot of our yards tracks dont have the lenth to hold realy big trains…so they have to be broken down and put away on more then one track… and vic versa when building a train that is leaveing…
csx engineer
The new rule on 4 axle yd pwr for yd service-- if it can move, take it!