Saturday Slanguage: Kick

Today we talk about a kick.  A common railroad practice is to kick railroad cars.  Don't try what it sound like, you'll just hurt your toe!

In the yard, when trains are being assembled, cars often come in all mixed up on one or several trains.  These trains must be pulled apart and the cars sorted into various yard tracks to make up blocks of cars and eventually entire trains.  Cars are sorted by destination.  A series of cars put together, all headed to the same destination, is a block of cars.  A block can be as small as a single car or an entire train.  If the switch crew has cars mixed up all going to a few destinations, they will usually use each track to sort the cars out.  Rather than use the locomotive to move every car into the proper track, they'll save time by kicking the cars.

Kicking a car is when a locomotive gives the car a shove, and then someone pulls the uncoupling lever and the locomotive stops.  The railroad car keeps moving and goes by inertia into the track it was kicked to.

Before kicking, all the compressed air must be bled off the car.  This releases the brakes, and allows the car to roll freely.  Once coupled to the engine, the air hoses will not be connected, and the train will be controlled just by the locomotive brakes.  This is a common practice when switching.  The locomotives are equipped with brakes sufficient enough to hold quite a lot of cars if the track is reasonably level.

This is an example of what you will hear and see when cars are being kicked:
Switch Foreman: BNSF 9430, ahead with a kick.
Switch Engineer: Ahead with a kick.
The locomotive will then start to move forward, shoving the car or cars to be kicked.  The switch foreman will wait until enough speed has been reached to ensure that the kicked car or cars will couple to the standing cars in the track.  Once the car or cars are moving fast enough, he will grab one of the uncoupling levers.
Switch Foreman: BNSF 9430, stop.
Switch Engineer: Stopping.
The engineer will apply the locomotive brakes, bring the engine and any cars not being kicked to a stop.  The car or cars being kicked will continue to roll.  Usually the switch foreman will line a switch, and request another kick, and the process will repeat.  Once the kicked cars get to the standing cars in the track, there will be a huge BANG as they couple.


Cars can only be kicked into a track that already has cars in it.  This is to stop the kicked cars.  Remember, they air has been bled off, so they do not have any brakes.  They stop when they couple to the standing cars. If a car is kicked down a track with nothing in it, the car will roll for a very long time.  Last year, someone in Glendive learned this the hard way when they accidentally kicked a car 18 miles.  It went all the way through the track it was kicked into, out the west end of the yard, onto the main line, and it finally came to a stop at the second siding.