Engineer Training: Week Two (and Part of Three)

During the first week of training, the focus was on the Air Brake and Train Handling rules.  We focused on basic principles, like how to get a train moving and how to stop it.  During week two, things got a little more complex.  In the classroom, the focus was the General Code of Operating rules.  As those rules were reviewed, the principles we learned were added to our simulator sessions, and we were scored accordingly.  We started to have speed restrictions and maintenance to think about during the simulator runs.  We also started getting longer trains, which take longer to start and stop, requiring more planning ahead.

Honestly, the General Code of Operating (GCOR) rules is some pretty dry reading.  It seems to be the most effective cure for insomnia out there, but it is still important stuff.  It covers all of the basic rules that govern how exactly a railroad operates.  It goes over the specifics of operations in territory controlled by track warrants, centralized traffic control, and several other forms of control.  It is a general book, used by several hundred railroads in the USA and Canada.  Each railroad uses it as a basis for operations, and then adds supplements which are more railroad and territory specific.  Consequently, there are some parts of the GCOR that we cover in great detail, because it is used every day on the BNSF, and there are other parts that get skipped entirely, because they are not in effect anywhere on the BNSF.  Since GCOR governs even basic operations, we had to learn the rules in there in Conductor training.  That did make reviewing it a lot easier, because we had all been over it before, and we had all been using the principles for some time.  Most of the stuff in there is a lot easier to understand once it is practiced, as opposed to simply reading about it.  Since GCOR covers all the general information, which applies to many railroads, most railroads issue System Special Instructions, which include general information specific to that railroad, and each division issues an employee timetable, which has information specific to a single division or subdivision.  While GCOR was the focus of the week, we spent a bit of time going over some of the stuff in the System Special Instructions as well.

In the simulator we were given more realistic situations last week.  During the first week, we only ran on clear block signal indications, and there were no speed restrictions or any large hills.  That was not the case for the second week.  We started meeting other simulated trains, which gave us a variety of signal indications.  We typically had to stop several times in a single run.  We also had temporary speed restrictions to comply with, and they were usually in inconvenient places.  We had to plan ahead more than the first week, and decide how we would handle different situations.  Besides that, we had other surprises come up, such as dark signals, and clear signals that dropped to red at the last second.  Obviously, you cannot stop for a signal that just turns red with no warning, but you stop as quickly as possible and report it to the dispatcher.  After stopping, you have to proceed at restricted speed though, which means going slow enough to stop in half the range of vision, not exceeding 20mph.  Of course, when at restricted speed, they threw other things at us too, to see if we were actually going slow enough to get stopped in time.  They kept us on our toes during the simulator runs.

This week so far has been a little of everything.  In the classroom, we have been going over distributed power, mountain grades, and mechanical information.  They want us to be able to do some basic troubleshooting on locomotives when something goes wrong.  In the simulator, we had to practice bring a train down a 3.0% grade, with all the brakes working on one run, and then with the dynamic brakes cut out on one locomotive on the second runs.  As long as the train was under control before starting down the hill, it really was not too hard to keep things under control.  Today we had a simulator run with distributed power, so we could see how that handles differently.  The biggest difference is how coupler slack has to be managed.  The next two days we will practice operating with fuel economy in mind, and we will be scored based on how much fuel we burn.  On Friday evening, we all head back to our home terminals for three months of on the job training.