Railroading is one of those industries where sooner or later, everyone earns a nickname. They never choose it. It is chosen by other railroaders and eventually it just spreads. It always starts because of a certain event. As time goes on, people forget the story behind the nickname, but the nickname sticks. If the stories can be remembered, they're usually pretty good, from a listener's point of view. For the person who made the story, they can sometimes be embarrassing. Fortunately, that is not always the case.
Yesterday, I earned my nickname. People have started calling me "lucky." For me, the story is not embarrassing. Looking back, it is actually quite funny, although I was not having quite as much fun as I lived it!
In training, they try to go over as many different situations as possible so that when challenges arise later, as they inevitably will, and you do not have someone watching over and guiding you, you will be able to handle them as effectively as possible. However, due to the nature of railroading and the length of the training program, it is completely impossible to gain experience in every possible scenario. That takes an entire career. As such, there are situations I heard about in training, and talked about, but never actually had a chance to work through and experience. Yesterday I was able to check a few of those things off the list.
Yesterday, I was assigned to train H-PASGAL9-17A, a high priority merchandise train from Pasco, WA, to Galesburg, IL. Merchandise trains carry just about anything, and have just about every type of railroad car in them. Some cars are loaded, some are empty, and everything is mixed in everywhere. Merchandise trains are well known for often having irregular handling characteristics and sometimes for having a bit of a mind of their own. That being said, this was supposed to be a straightforward assignment. The train had been rerouted, and since this was not the normal route, there were no cars to pick up or drop off anywhere along the way. At the start, it looked like this train would be as easy as a coal train!
We got off to a slow start. There were several groups of maintenance out working on the line. We left Forsyth behind the most notoriously slow engineer in Glendive, which did not help the situation any. We even dragged our feet leaving, so that we would not be too close behind him, but we still caught up to him within about twenty minutes. It was the warmest day of the week, with highs predicted to be 102 degrees. We would be moving slow, but at least we were sitting in an air conditioned cab.
About an hour into the trip, the air conditioner began blowing warm air. This happens from time to time, especially when the locomotive is idle. If the locomotive thinks it is idle, it turns off the air conditioner after a while to save energy. Fixing it is easy, you just move the air conditioner switch to a different position and then back, and it lets the locomotive know you are still there. That is exactly what we did, however, the warm air continued to flow. We tried that a couple more times, with no additional success. Finally, just to get air moving, we propped the front door open and opened the side windows. That forces air through the cab. While it was not any cooler, at least it was moving air, and it made the cab somewhat bearable. At different stops along the trip, we tried different things to get the air conditioner working again, but we were unsuccessful, and the broom held the door open the rest of the way to Glendive.
Eight hours later, we were still on the move, and crossing the Powder River. The dispatcher called us up on the radio to let us know that the mechanical department had spotted a hot journal bearing. They told us what car it was on and which axle and we stopped as quickly as we could to look at it. The journal bearing is at the end of the axle, and it is what supports the weight of the car. The axle turns in the journal. If they are working properly and lubricated properly, they only warm up a little. However if there is a defect in the journal bearing, it can generate more friction, and therefore more heat. If allowed to continue to operate, it can start fires along the railroad, and it can cause the metal to heat up enough to weaken it and cause the axle to break, resulting in a derailment.
Once we came to a stop, I grabbed my radio, infrared thermometer, and the work order, showing all the cars and their contents, and then I stepped off the train. My engineer started to pull up, so I would not have to walk, but another problem presented itself. He moved the train about three car lengths and then we heard a loud hiss, indicating that the emergency brakes had applied. The engineer let me know the pressure at the rear of the train showed zero. The air brake pipe had come apart somewhere.
At that point, I walked back to the car with the hot journal bearing. I figured I would deal with that first, and then try to sort out why the train had gone into emergency. Once I got to the indicated hot axle, I zapped it with the thermometer. The journal was 168.8 degrees, which is warm, but not beyond the normal operating range, especially on a day as hot as it was. I concluded that it was defect free. When the indicated axle comes up okay, the policy is to check twelve axles ahead of and behind the indicated axle, just to make sure one of them did not set off the detector. I did that, and found that they were all in the 150 to 170 degree range, so nothing was wrong there. I figured the hot journal bearing was a fluke, and I began walking. I still had to determine why the train had lost all air brake pressure and gone into emergency.
The train was 6,414 feet long, or about 1.25 miles. That is a long walk, even in the shade, when it is 102 degrees outside! Once the computer reset itself from the emergency brake application, the engineer placed the brake handle in release. The brakes would only release if the pressure could build up to 90 pounds per square inch and then be maintained. As the pressure started to build, the air flow meter indicated a leak. It indicated that we were leaking about 100 pounds per minute, which is quite high. That is a good indication that something came apart where it should not have.
About 50 cars back, or half the length of the train, I heard a hissing. Air was leaking. As I got closer, I found that some air was leaking out where the hoses from two cars were coupled together. I stopped for a minute to check it out, but determined that that was not the problem. It was a small leak, and small leaks like that are actually quite common and really do not effect overall braking or handling. I kept walking. About 70 cars back, I began to hear another leak, but it was more of a wooshing noise. It sounded like a much bigger leak. As I cam around the bend I noticed that there was about 75 feet between two cars in the train. Something had come apart where it was not supposed to! The 83rd car was the source of the wooshing noise. The hoses, and cars had uncoupled. When the cars uncoupled, the hoses came apart, letting all the air pressure out, causing the unexpected emergency brake application. When I walked around the end of the 83rd car, I instantly saw the problem. The coupler was missing its knuckle. I had no idea where the knuckle was, although I could see exactly where it had broken off.
I let the engineer know what I had found, and then I closed the angle cock on the 83rd car, so he could start getting the air pressure back up on the front part of the train. Then I got to work getting the remaining pieces of the knuckle off the car. This was a little more difficult than removing a whole knuckle, because there was nothing left to grab. Finally the biggest piece fell out, and the coupler was ready for a new knuckle. The only problem was the new knuckle was on the locomotive, over a mile away. About the last thing I wanted to do was walk that mile again, and then walk it a third time carrying a 75 pound hunk of steel! Fortunately for me, the track inspector who had been following us overheard our predicament on the radio and offered his help.
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| The broken knuckle, after extracting it from the rest of the coupler. Photo by James Ogden. |
Once all the work was done back there, it was time for the hike back to the head end of the train. By then I was completely exhausted, and completely drenched in my own sweat. I started hiking, and I immediately went for the second locomotive, because it had working air conditioning! I sat in there for a few minutes and just enjoyed the nice, cool, refreshing air! Once I had a couple minutes to cool off, I walked up to the lead locomotive, and we got underway again. We finally arrived in Glendive nearly 12 hours after we had departed Forsyth. It was a long day, but I guess it was one of those that turned into experience.
When we arrived at the yard in Glendive, we relayed the entire story to the crew van driver, and he was the one who decided that my nickname should be "lucky." His reasoning was that typically knuckles break six to ten cars back, and I got one 83 cars back, on my first one, on the hottest day of the week, when the air conditioning was not working, and while trying to inspect a hot journal. The really bizarre part is that the train was headed downhill. Irony is what he was going for I guess.
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