Brand new auto racks parked at the newly opened KCS yard in Kendleton, Texas when the Macaroni Line had just opened in 2008.
That's really great! Old train orders like this one put back the human in the history of the railroads that fascinate us so much. That guy has very nice handwriting too. Back when legible cursive was still taught in schools.
Yessir some of the stuff those DS's conveyed on those old onion sheets was amazing. They managed a lot of tonnage that way. Its like looking back in time for me. Even more modern stuff like copying track authority, like Track n Time, Track Permit, or Block authority permits and such is really serious stuff. You have to copy then repeat verbatim, any error will result in some chastising, and a re-doing of same. I remember as a first timer BKMN, I got it wrong and the old grizzled DS, asked the conductor to do it, and he said NO, this BKMN has to learn this, and we will do it all afternoon till he gets it right. Thank goodness I got it right the second time, but it impressed upon me, how important the details are, there are lives at stake.
Until reading BoxcabE50's TO, I never realized that times were written numerically AND in words so as to assure there were no errors made by the DS nor the trainmen. Too, when I look at that TO, my head spins. That's a lot of important detail to keep in mind! As an Engineer, did you feel safer in automatic block territory or didn't it matter? When I've asked NS crewmen, they've said it makes no difference to them.
N&W 160809 double plug door boxcar at Columbus GA, 11/1989. I'm assuming the DF suffix indicated Damage Free load hardware inside.
That's a good question. For me it was about the amount of traffic involved, CTC was the best. TWC is poor man's CTC. They all work, but I have seen a lot of authority violations in ABS. But that may be because of 2 different main tracks, with 2 different mile posts for each track by a lot. In some territories you can have islands of CTC within ABS, or vise versa. It can get complicated In big terminals, you might not work with the same person for 3 months. Back when there was more than 2 people running a train, there were more heads in the game. Think about this. Your an engineer with 20 years of service over a territory, that needs multiple TWC warrants to get 90 miles over the road, on a 240 mile trip, and these warrants can change 20 times on a single trip. And your conductor has less than a year of service, your thinking 3 miles ahead of where your at, to try and not tear your train into pieces. Did the DS just ask you conductor to give authority up behind you for another train? Is the rear of our train past the mile post he just gave up? Again maybe 20 times a trip, for 16 trains. You can see how things can get ugly. CTC is the gold standard for block control for sure, the DS and you where your all at. I hope that answers your question.
Yes, and thank you. I'd never considered all of those complications. Perhaps PTC might also be on guard, but I read of its failures and if I were a crewman, I don't think it'd give me much comfort.
A train load of empty aluminum coal gons heading back to Wyoming after unloading at the The W.A. Parish Generating Station, a 3.65-gigawatt dual-fired power plant located near Thompsons, Texas. The station occupies a 4,664-acre site near Smithers Lake southwest of Houston in Fort Bend County and consists of two four-unit plants. One natural gas and the other coal. With a total installed capacity of 3,653 MW, it is the second largest conventional power station in the US, and supplies about fifteen percent of the energy in the Houston area. Years ago these trains were made up of steel ACF Coalveyor Bathtub Gondola with the reporting marks of UFIX for Utility Fuels, part of Houston Lighting and Power Company. HL&P became NRG and the old fleet of UFIX gons were worn out.
In April of 2001, the San Jacinto Model Railroad Club in Houston managed to arrange a tour of one of the rotary dumpers at the W.A. Parish Generating Station mentioned above. Since Nine-Eleven the plant no longer allows such tours. The road up to the plant. Two UFIX trains were being unloaded simultaneously at the two dumpers on the plant. We had to park outside the fence and entered ................"The Tunnel" where Gollum knew Shelob was waiting for us. The control station where the operator could control the train to spot each gon in the dumper and proceed to empty it. Outside where a mechanical arm would travel up and down a rail to move the entire train that had all its brakes released. The arm would drop down between two cars and latch onto the couplers. Then the huge motor driven cable drum would wind up the cable to pull the train forward. Different view. The other side of the dumper building where the cars entered. The arm mechanism. Can't really see much. I wish I had a photo of it retracted so you could see it. Looking into building with the top of the dumper arching across the top. A car is being rotated to dump it. Looking down into some gons that have just been emptied. A locomotive can be seen at the very front of the train just getting pushed along by the train. At non rotating coupler end of the train (the end without the colored strip on the end of the car), the locomotives have to be detached before the car is dumped or the locomotive will be turned over as well.
April 1989 at Gallitzin, PA. Interesting scrap steel bracing at both ends of the load. I'm thinking that 80-Tonner 65-00383 was en route to the Naval Weapons Station at Earle, NJ.
