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TRAINS, watching, recording and discussing.


Dave A

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I suspect that might be a display loco, because of the silver-painted trucks.  I suspect that few of that Road’s locos are so pretty.  They wouldn’t stay that clean-looking for long if the unit was in daily service. 

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If anyone is curious about GM freight locomotives from the Fifties to the late 1980s, I could answer some questions, because I spent 12 years repairing and maintaining them, and I remember some of it.

 

If you wondered whether a locomotive could do a burnout, yes, some of them can.  The later high power road units have Positive Traction Control, and they’re very heavy, so they won’t do it.  However, the little 1200-1300 hp yard units could.  Just keep the brakes applied and throttle up!  At some point, the wheels will begin to spin, and the Wheel Slip light in the instrument panel will start flashing.  It’s hard to miss, because it’s the same size of incandescent bulb as we used to have in most of our indoor home lighting.  As well, the locomotive will start to hop up and down a bit.  I only did that once, so I didn’t take notice of the speed the wheels reached, maybe 30 mph at most.  Those little locos don’t go very fast anyway, because they’re on full-time service in the yard, shuttling boxcars and locos in and out of the repair shops, and almost never go on the main line, except to be transferred to another yard in town, town being the GTA (the Greater Toronto Area).

 

You can’t do that for long, of course, because you could wear some dips in the tracks, and that would soon be noticed, and/or there could be some wheel damage.  Loco and car wheels start out quite thick, but as they wear, their profile goes out of spec, and then they have to go on the wheel lathe to get turned down to brand-new profile.  Then, of course, all the wheels on the loco or car have to be pretty close in diameter, so they’ll be turned to match, because swapping axles or motors takes more time and labour to do, instead of a bit more time on the wheel lathe.  Eventually, of course, the wheels are turned down to minimum size, at which point they’re scrapped, like the drum brakes on old cars.

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On 8/28/2022 at 10:43 AM, billybob said:

Netflix had/has an engineer view of an electric train ride from Bergen to Oslo.

Think it is an 8+ hour trip.

Watched it in 2 hour intervals.

Pretty decent...:

 

https://www.tvguide.com/movies/slow-tv-train-ride-bergen-to-oslo/2030227730/

Youtube has a ton of cab rides from around the world. Some of the more interesting ones I have seen are

 

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On 8/30/2022 at 4:47 AM, Racer X said:

Remember seeing in an illustrated book on locomotives that some had a sand tube to drop sand on the track to enhance traction and prevent wheel slip.

 

Yes.  On the yard units, which were mostly built in the Fifties and Sixties, the sanders were manual, but the newer units all have automatic sanders.  There would be a steel tube with its exit in front of each wheel and a couple of inches above the track.  In the yard, they would occasionally be tested to be sure they were working, but I don’t know how much they improved the traction.

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22 hours ago, Islander said:

I suspect that might be a display loco, because of the silver-painted trucks.  I suspect that few of that Road’s locos are so pretty.  They wouldn’t stay that clean-looking for long if the unit was in daily service. 

So I looked this one up and it is a post card from years ago.

 

 About 80 miles from me is a pusher district and many times trains require help to get up the grade.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwisqfamgPD5AhWzF1kFHeDEDrwQtwJ6BAgHEAI&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DhuE6OIdVeSI&usg=AOvVaw2NpEZu1V01tziCnCtAc7h7

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On 8/30/2022 at 7:17 PM, Dave A said:

So I looked this one up and it is a post card from years ago.

 

 About 80 miles from me is a pusher district and many times trains require help to get up the grade.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwisqfamgPD5AhWzF1kFHeDEDrwQtwJ6BAgHEAI&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DhuE6OIdVeSI&usg=AOvVaw2NpEZu1V01tziCnCtAc7h7

 

I’ve heard that in some situations, like twisty mountain sections, a couple of locos will be installed in the middle of a long train, because using high power in the twisty sections found in some mountain passes can push the train off the track, or maybe even pull it off.  Having power in the middle of the train effectively cuts its length in half (actually two halves, of course), greatly reducing the risk of a power-induced derailment.  One particular example would be backing up when the train is partway around a curve.  Pulling the train around the curve, with judicious application of the throttle, is fine, but if the engineer has to back up for some reason, with all the load he’s pushing against, a bit too much throttle can push some of the cars off the track, and that can be a big headache.

 

In case you were wondering, when a consist (a set of locos) is coupled together, they’re connected electrically by the 27-pin cable running between them.  These cables are a couple of inches in diameter, and maybe six feet long, with a female head on each end, which couples to the 6” diameter male connector on each loco, just in front of the walkway and above the coupler.  On the wall behind the engineer is a switch that allows him to set the loco to drive in unison with the lead loco, or to just idle, or even be moved with the engine shut down, in the last two cases if the power is not needed.  Each loco must be set at its switch, then the lead loco can control it.  If the locomotives are physically separated, like at the middle or tail of the train, the units will be radio-controlled from the lead unit.

 

The locos are described as power.  If Power Control, the department that assigns locomotives to trains, calculates that train X needs 6,000 horsepower to make the run, that can be can be done by three 2,000 hp units, or two 3,000 hp units.  Same total power is just fine.

 

That brings up something.  Each loco is required to put out its rated power; no less, and no more.  During a full tuneup, the injector timing is set, and the governor is dialled in.  If the unit can’t produce its rated power, the problem is found and corrected, whether it be mistimed injectors or a damaged power assembly (these are modular engines, so a power assembly is a cylinder and head (with the head bolts pre-torqued), plus piston and connecting rod).  Pull out the bad power assembly and pop in a new one.  Just a few hours work, and nowadays it’s done single-handed, with the help of the overhead crane with the pendant controller.

 

On the other hand, if the unit is putting out too much power, that must be corrected too, because it can result in a higher than normal exhaust gas temperature, meaning the engine could be spitting out glowing cinders of carbon, not a good idea while driving through the forest, maybe where the resultant fire would not be spotted for a while.  Normally, that would be done by dialling down the governor.  BTW, the governor on a Diesel engine is not a simple speed limiter.  It sets the idle and top rpm, and all the settings in between.  The 645V-16 GM-EMD (Electro-Motive Division) engines idle at 125 rpm and redline at 990 rpm.  Peak power is 3,000 hp at 900 rpm.  This makes them a mid-speed engine.  Motorcycles, cars, and trucks, are high-speed engines, while the huge engines used on ships are low-speed, sometimes redlined at 125 rpm.

 

The 645s have been replaced by the 710V-12 engines, which make 3150 hp.  The first three digits refer to the displacement per cylinder.  The last two digits are the numbers of cylinders.  These are big engines.  Now, the engines make up to 4,000 hp, and wear on the tracks is an issue.

 

So how do we know how much power an engine is making?  The old engines go to the load box, a dyno room that’s all-electrical.  The room has resistor banks that can absorb the electrical output from the alternator, which is what drives the electric motor on each axle, which oddly enough, look like giant versions of the motors on R/C vehicles.  The loco gets hooked up, the electrician throttles it up and makes a note of its power output, and that’s it.

 

With the “newer” (post 1988 or so) locos, they have a self-testing mode.  Just switch it on the wall behind the engineer and throttle up.  The readout displays the hp (to the nearest 10 or 25 hp, I forget which) all the way up to 3150 hp.  It’s pretty cool.  No fuss, and you can do it in under a minute.

 

 

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16 hours ago, Islander said:

I’ve heard that in some situations, like twisty mountain sections, a couple of locos will be installed in the middle of a long train, because using high power in the twisty sections found in some mountain passes can push the train off the track, or maybe even pull it off.  Having power in the middle of the train effectively cuts its length in half (actually two halves, of course), greatly reducing the risk of a power-induced derailment.  

Distributed power is far more then that. On CSX for instance near me train sizes have jumped to nearly 200 cars at time. You are going to break knuckles pulling all that from the front end alone so mid train engines help stop that. You also have slack run out which in a train of some 200 cars means that the last cars get slammed hard by the time slack is taken up  to that point.

 

  Years ago they developed rules for what cars go where to prevent those curve derailments. You do not just put empty flat cars behind the engine with numerous full cars behind the flat cars for instance.

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On 9/1/2022 at 9:04 AM, Dave A said:

Distributed power is far more then that. On CSX for instance near me train sizes have jumped to nearly 200 cars at time. You are going to break knuckles pulling all that from the front end alone so mid train engines help stop that. You also have slack run out which in a train of some 200 cars means that the last cars get slammed hard by the time slack is taken up  to that point.

 

  Years ago they developed rules for what cars go where to prevent those curve derailments. You do not just put empty flat cars behind the engine with numerous full cars behind the flat cars for instance.

 

Good points.  During an inspection on a loco, the coupler is checked for “lost motion”, meaning slack, for just the reason you mention.  Once it exceeds spec, the pin will be replaced, or whatever it takes to get the lost motion within spec.  To check for lost motion, the overhead crane is used to lift up the coupler so it’s hanging loose and can swing. Then it’s pushed back and forth and the amount of movement is measured and noted.  I assume the procedure is the same for the cars, but the carmen, the mechanics who repair the cars, don’t necessarily work to the same specs as the machinists, the mechanics who service and repair the locomotives.

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1 hour ago, Islander said:

 

Good points.  During an inspection on a loco, the coupler is checked for “lost motion”, meaning slack, for just the reason you mention.  Once it exceeds spec, the pin will be replaced, or whatever it takes to get the lost motion within spec.  To check for lost motion, the overhead crane is used to lift up the coupler so it’s hanging loose and can swing. Then it’s pushed back and forth and the amount of movement is measured and noted.  I assume the procedure is the same for the cars, but the carmen, the mechanics who repair the cars, don’t necessarily work to the same specs as the machinists, the mechanics who service and repair the locomotives.

for those who dont know what a  knuckle coupler is ,  and a bit of History about the Railroad 

 

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7 hours ago, the real Duke Spinner said:

I worked a number of times at Alco Power in Watertown New York

 

Interesting.  There were quite a few Alco/MLW (Montreal Locomotive Works) locos assigned to the big Pointe St. Claire shop in Montreal, but where I worked, at the big yard North of Toronto, we had around 300 locomotives assigned, and nearly every one was a GM unit.  I liked the idea of 2-stroke engines with overhead cams, after riding and racing 2-stroke bikes for so many years.  I only ever saw one or two Alco units in the shop.  They were just passing through and stopped in for a small inspection.  One had an air starter, which I thought was quite a novelty.  One had an old 6-cylinder 539 engine, first built in 1939.  Seriously.  The one with the air starter was a modern road (non-yard) model, a V-16, I think.

 

So what did you do at Alco?  Were you building locomotives?  The GM units were built at a plant in London, Ontario, until Caterpillar bought it in 2010 and offered the workers a 50% pay cut.  Then, after getting $5 million in federal tax breaks from the government in 2008, and promising the government that they wouldn’t close the plant, they closed the plant and moved the work to a low-wage state in the US, and to Mexico.  That backfired, since they found that it was not so easy to replace over 600 highly skilled and experienced workers at the low wages they were offering.

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