Winter Railroading

Several weeks ago, I talked about some of the challenges of railroading in the fall.  Since the weather has gotten colder since then, I thought I would share a few of the adventures we have had now that winter has arrived.  It always seems that winter time brings more break downs, equipment failures, and other problems.  It also seems that when things do go wrong, everything happens at once.

For the last few weeks, I have been working as a Conductor, since traffic levels have dropped and they do not need me as an Engineer.  On my first trip working as a Conductor again, we had a pretty normal trip up to Forsyth, but coming back things got a little more interesting.  We got called on duty before the train had actually arrived in Forsyth.  When it did finally arrive, the crew told us that the second locomotive had died on them about a half hour earlier, and they were unable to restart it.  The temperature outside was about 14 degrees, so if we could not get it running again, we would have to drain the cooling water out of it.  Locomotives on BNSF do not have any antifreeze in the water, so when it is cold out, and the engine is not running, the locomotive has to be drained to prevent it from freezing.

When we got on the train, we immediately went back to look at that second locomotive, and see if we could get it running.  We also called BNSF Mechanical on the radio to alert them of the dead engine.  In the cab, the computer said the engine had been shut down due to low cooling water, so that was the first thing we checked. The water appeared to be full.  Actually, it was higher than the full mark, and the person at BNSF Mechanical told us that overfilled was as bad as being low, and we would need to drain some of the water out of it, until it got below the full mark.  So, that is exactly what we did.  I am not sure how much water a locomotive holds, but it is a lot.  It took a while to get it below the full mark, and when it did finally get down to that level, the computer still said the water was low.  We called mechanical back and reported that we had drained some water but the engine still would not start.  He suggested we cycle the computer control breaker, to shut down and restart the computer, which is exactly what they tell you to do every time they cannot figure out what else to do.  When the computer came back on, the low water warning was still there, and the engine still would not start.  We tried cycling the breaker once more, at the instruction of BNSF Mechanical, with no luck.  Since the engine would not start, and by this time the water had already cooled to a temperature below the lowest mark on the thermometer, we decided we had better drain the engine.  We drained the engine, tagged the locomotive as being bad ordered, and then departed eastbound.

For the next couple hours, the trip went pretty smoothly, although the temperature continued to drop outside.  We had a meet at Marsh, about 20 miles west of Glendive, and that would be the last westbound train for quite a while.  The plan was to send us into Glendive after that meet.  We stopped at the west switch, so I could push the button and line us into the siding.  Normally it takes about 30 seconds after the button is pushed for the switch to line and the signal to change.  By that time, I was back on the locomotive, but nothing had happened.  We figured the switch must be frozen, because the last detector had said it was minus seven outside.  The switches are equipped with propane heaters, but they only come on when moisture is detected.  Since it had been dry most of the day, we figured the heater was probably off.  I grabbed a bottle of water, to dump on the heater and turn it on, and went out to line the switch by hand.  It had filled up with snow somehow, probably from the wind, and since the heater had been on earlier, but then shut off, causing all the snow that it had melted to refreeze and coat the entire switch in a layer of ice, beneath the snow that had blown in.

While I was chipping ice off the switch, something weird happened.  The Engineer kept flashing the headlights at me.  Normally, at night, that would be to let the Conductor know that we had gotten the signal into the siding, but since I had the switch on hand, and the points were floating while I swept it out, it was impossible to have the signal.  I was a bit confused, but got the switch cleaned out and lined for the siding, and then gave the Engineer a hand signal to proceed.  He stopped on the switch, and I put it back to power and locked it all up, and hopped back on.  When I opened the door to the cab, it smelled like something was burning in there.  He had the headlights off, but since our meet was sitting right there, that was not unusual.  As it turned out, they were not off by choice, and that had to do with the flashing earlier.  He had tried to turn the headlights on so that I would have more light while cleaning the switch.  When he did that, the headlight switch shorted out, which resulted in the burning smell that filled the cab with enough strength to make anyone gag.    He demonstrated this to me several times.  Turning the headlights on made them come on for about a second, then go out, with an accompanying crackling sound from the control stand.  We used a couple of flashlights to see ahead of us in the siding, and let the dispatcher know that we had no headlights, and until we could get some, we could not leave Marsh.  Seeing as the second unit was dead and completely shut down, we could not move that up front and use it, because the headlights would not have worked on it either.

We decided the idea situation would be to move the distributed power locomotive, on the rear, up to the front, and just use that as the new leader, because it was the only locomotive we had with everything working.  However, being as it was seven below zero outside, cooling off, and windy, neither one of us wanted to walk back to that locomotive, which was over a mile away.  The dispatcher agreed that walking was not a good idea and told us he would see about getting someone out there to give us a ride.  The only problem with that is that Marsh is 45 minutes from Glendive, by car, on dirt roads, and since it had snowed the night before, it was somewhat questionable whether Marsh was even accessible by road.  Eventually the dispatcher told us that one of our Trainmasters was on his way out, from Miles City.

Nearly five hours later, we saw headlights on a vehicle, coming our way.  For the last four hours, we had been wondering where the Trainmaster was, and if he could even get to us.  Turned out he had a story of his own.  He had originally tried to get to Marsh, by way of Fallon, and found snowdrifts as high as the truck he was driving.  From there, he turned around, drove to Glendive, and then tried to backtrack to Marsh.  He told us that he got a few miles out of town, to where the road turns to dirt, and the low tire pressure light came on.  He got out to check on the tires and said he could hear air leaking, so he turned around and drove back to Glendive.  When he got to town, he left the truck and borrowed the yard van and driver, and headed back out to us.  When they arrived, we hopped in the van for the ride back to the DP locomotive, and briefed the Trainmaster on what had happened so far.

When we got to the DP, we found that there was no FRED on it.  Technically, trains operating with distributed power on the rear, do not need a FRED, because the DP locomotive can monitor the brake pipe pressure and serve as a marker.  However, when a DP can no longer run on the rear, such as in our situation, there is nothing to monitor the brake pipe or serve as a marker, unless there is a FRED on the train.  At any rate, we needed headlights more than we needed a working engine on the rear, so we took the DP off the train anyway.  I managed to find a red flag on the DP locomotive, so I stuck that in the coupler, to serve as a marker.  We would be limited to 30mph without a FRED or device to monitor the brake pipe, but we only had 20 miles to go.

When we got the DP off the train, I had to clean out the west switch again, because the heater had turned back off and everything had frozen.  I have no idea how cold it was by this point, but it felt a lot colder than the first time I had cleaned that switch out!  Once we got out, we ran alongside the train on the main track, and then put the DP on the head end.  Fortunately, before the Trainmaster had arrived, I had gone and checked out the east switch, so it was thawed out and working properly for us when we got down there with the DP.  We put the DP on, did our air test, and headed east, finally!  When we got to Colgate, which is the last siding before Glendive, we had only a few minutes before we hit out 12 hour limit.  As we went over the west switch, we got a call from a dog catch crew, who was on their way out to meet us, there at Colgate, so we stopped at the crossing there and waited just a couple minutes for them.  I guess BNSF decided they did not want to fines associated with making a crew work over 12 hours!  Dog catch crews are significantly cheaper!

We hopped in the van and that ended an eventful day for us.  Most crews were getting from Forsyth to Glendive in well under six hours, and it took us over 12, so we were quite happy to be home.  And the thermometer on the bank in Glendive said -12 degrees out, so it certainly had cooled off more since the first time I cleaned out the west switch at Marsh!

Engineer Training: Week One

It is hard to believe the first week is nearly over.  It did get a late start though.  Last weekend, I flew from Billings to Kansas City, to attend the classroom portion of the Locomotive Engineer Training Program.  I was supposed to arrive last Sunday, however, due to delays and exceptionally poor customer service of a particular airline, I did not arrive until lunch time on Monday.  Fortunately, the four of us who were delayed had all been in contact with our Road Foreman, in Glendive, and the Training Coordinator, in Overland Park, KS, and we were able to work around the delay.  As it turned out, we mostly missed paperwork.  We went straight to class from the airport, and arrived just in time for lunch!  We spent a little time during lunch getting caught up on the paperwork we had missed, and then by the time the lunch break was over, we were on the same page as the other 12 people, who has all arrived closer to their scheduled times!

This week has consisted primarily of studying air brake systems, in significantly more detail than we ever did in the Conductor program.  Some of it has been a review, but a lot of it has been new information to us.  We have also been studying the basics of train handling, including how to stop and start trains on different types of grades, and different coupler slack situations.  One thing that has been emphasized a lot is to make gradual changes to avoid any violent coupler slack changes.

In our classroom, we have a train, of sorts.  It is designed to help us understand how the air brake systems on locomotives and cars work.  There are a series of audio visual carts, with all the brake equipment normally found on a freight car.  They are coupled together and have air hoses running between them.  One cart has a locomotive air brake system on it, and a control stand.  The whole thing is connected to a source of compressed air, and manipulating the brake levers on the control stand makes the brake equipment move appropriately.  At the end of this train, there is a Fred.  In class, we have used it only a couple times, but some of us have used it more during breaks or during lunch, to try to figure something out that was unclear to us.  It is a neat setup.  Each of the cars also has air pressure gauges connected to different parts of the brake system, so we can actually see where air is going when we do different things with the controls.

One of the features of a Fred is that it can dump the brake pipe air and put the train in emergency, simply by pushing a button on the locomotive, on a device called Mary.  At lunch yesterday, we were using the train setup in the classroom, and when we got done, one of us had the bright idea of dumping the air from the Fred.  Well, we have all heard trains go into emergency lots of times before, because it happens every time cars are uncoupled or locomotives are removed.  What we did not consider, when we pushed the button on the Mary, was just how loud it would be when done indoors!  There is a delay of a few seconds as the signal is sent, via radio, from Mary to Fred, and while Fred processes the signal.  We pushed the button, and nothing happened immediately, so we figured the Fred must not be armed.  Just as we were shrugging it off and about to walk away, the air dumped.  I think we all jumped about four feet in the air when it happened, despite the fact that we had caused it to happen!  We reset the air, recharged the brake system, and sat down to read over some stuff before our teacher got back.  Once everything was reset, our teacher burst in the door, looked around the room for a second, and finally said, "Alright, which of you plugged the train?"  We all just looked at him, with the most innocent looks we could come up with, and said nothing.  He walked back out to finish his lunch, and that was all we ever heard of it.  We laughed a little after he left, because his office is halfway across the building from our classroom, but he had still heard all the noise.  Oops.

Starting on Tuesday, we have been going to a locomotive simulator for about an hour each day.  We are paired up and work together in the simulator to learn the techniques and practice the tasks assigned to us.  If you have ever heard of or used Train Simulator, a game produced by Microsoft about ten years ago, it is actually a lot like that.  Each simulator is in a small room, which has a mock up of a locomotive control stand inside, and a large screen on the wall where the windshield would be.  When we log in to the simulator, the scenario we are supposed to run loads up, and railroad tracks and some basic scenery appears on the screen.  On the control stand there are a few more screens, and the various gauges, lights, and buttons found on a locomotive appear on them.

On Tuesday, we mostly spent the time familiarizing ourselves with the simulator.  We had some basic tasks to perform, such as cutting out the brake valves, and then cutting them back in, and performing a locomotive air brake test.  Once we were done with that, our teacher had told us to use whatever time was left to play around and get a feel for how the thing operated.  Of course, my partner and I wanted to see how fast it would go, since the screen had indicated that the overspeed was set to 500mph.  We got it to 95mph before our time was up!

On Wednesday we got some practice actually moving the simulated train, according to train handling rules.  It was a pretty basic scenario, we just had to accelerate to 30mph and then stop, but we had to  manage our coupler slack and in train forces.  A little graph on one screen helps us to know what the rest of the train is doing and give us an idea of how smooth the ride would actually be.  For both of us, it was a little rough, and I think on our first attempt at a stop, we would have gotten quite a wallop from those cars bunching up behind us!  Of course, in the simulator, you cannot feel any of the movement, or any of the slack run ins, which is a little disorienting.

Today we got practice starting and stopping on hills.  We each took a turn starting and stopping on an uphill grade, and then again on a downhill grade.  I was more concerned about the downhill trip, because I figured uphill would be easy.  I mean, all you have to do is throttle up to speed up and down to slow down.  I was surprised that I had a harder time making a smooth stop going uphill, and my downhill run had much lower in train forces.  Tomorrow we have a more realistic run to do.  It will about 50 miles in length and take an hour to complete, and the terrain varies from very gentle hills to some longer grades.  That will also be our first scored simulator run, which will start to give us an idea of what we do well with and what needs to get better.  I am a little nervous about it, but only as nervous as you can possibly be knowing it is a simulator, and not the real thing.  I have looked over all the paperwork, track charts, and timetable, and I have written down all the speed restrictions and turnout speeds, so as long as I can keep on top of that, I should be able to finish the run, even if some spots are a little uncomfortable for the simulated freight.

Prototype Railroading: FRED

Occasionally I get asked why trains no longer use cabooses.  The caboose used to be the Conductor's office.  Many years ago, a Conductor was assigned a caboose, and they usually personalized it a little, since it was their home away from home.  They had a desk, bathroom, small cooking area, and either stove or electric heat.  Usually they had a seating arrangement that gave the Conductor a good view of the train ahead, either from a cupola or a bay window.  Part of the Conductor's duties was, and still is, to monitor the train for any obvious defects.  One that would be pretty easily spotted from the caboose would be an overheated journal bearing, which often generates smoke.  Additionally, the Conductor had a brake valve and air pressure gauge on the caboose, and could slow the train down or stop it if necessary.  A Brakeman rode the caboose with the Conductor, and when the train had to enter or exit a siding, one of them would line the switch to its normal position, behind the train.  A Brakeman also rode in the locomotive, with the Engineer, and he would line the switch for the train to enter or exit the siding.  In the late 1980'2 and early 1990's, the caboose began to disappear, and they were replaced by a comparatively small, and cheaper device called, rather boringly, an "End of Train Device," or sometimes called a "FRED," which stands for a variety o things, depending who you ask.  The "F" varies from "flashing," to a number of obscenities, depending who you ask, followed by "Red End Device."

An End of Train Device is a small, usually orange or yellow, box, which mounts on the rear coupler of a train, and does almost everything the Conductor used to do on a caboose.  It couples to the air hose at the rear end, and monitors the air brake pipe pressure.  It also sends a readout of that pressure up to a device on the locomotive, called the "Head of Train Device," and often called "Mary," around here.  The engineer can look at Mary and see what the pressure on Fred is.  The FRED also lets Mary know when the end of the train is moving, which helps the engineer with train handling.  On the Mary there is a switch which allows the engineer to dump all the air on the rear end of the train.  When that switch is activated, the FRED opens a valve and allows all the brake pipe pressure to exhaust, putting the train in emergency braking.  This is desirable in an emergency, because allowing the pressure to exhaust out of the FRED, at the rear, and out of the brake valve, in the locomotive, means the train goes into emergency faster and therefore stops in less space.

FRED's in the Glendive depot.
Photo by James Ogden.

There are a few things FRED cannot do.  The FRED cannot line switches behind the train, and it cannot monitor the train for any obvious defects.  In order to satisfy both those requirements, defect detectors have been installed about every 25 miles, which monitor passing trains for any defects.  They check the temperature of all the journal bearings on the train, and if one is hot, they report exactly which one and which side of the train it is on.  They also check for dragging equipment, and again, they report exactly where it is of any is found.  There are also detectors that can determine if a train is too wide of tall for a bridge, tunnel, or other structure, and detectors that can check for shifted loads, which could potentially cause a problem.  In order for switches to be lined properly, in many places automatic interlockings were installed.  When the train needs to enter a siding, they stop and the Conductor gets off an pushes a button.  The switch then lines into the siding, and when it detects that the train no longer occupies the switch, it automatically lines it back to the normal route.  In other locations, Centralized Traffic Control is in effect, and the dispatcher can line switches with the mere click of a mouse, sometimes thousands of miles away.  Some locations still have hand lined switches, and in those places, the Conductor simply has to walk back up to the front of the train, unless the dispatcher relieves the crew of the requirement to line the switch to its normal position.

When the caboose was removed from trains, jobs were eliminated.  The railroad cut a Brakeman position from all trains, and eventually, the removed Brakemen from road service completely.  Only occasionally are Brakemen still used in road service, and they are primarily used on work trains and when a lot of switching must be done.  The railroad also no longer needs to pay to maintain cabooses.  It is cheaper to maintain a 40 pound orange box than it is a caboose.  Early FRED's were all battery powered.  The battery life was indicated on the Mary, and when it got low, the battery was changed at the next terminal.  If the battery died, the train was limited in speed.  Battery powered FRED's are still around, but now air powered FRED's are more common.  They have a turbine inside them, and a little of the air pressure from the brake pipe is used to spin the turbine and keep the battery charged.  They very rarely die.

Some cabooses are still around, but the railroad mainly keeps them for unusual circumstances.  They get used on work trains and locals periodically, and they are used as a place for the Conductor to stand when shoving a long distance.  Most of them have been stripped of all their equipment, and are little more than a steel box with a couple of old, lumpy chairs inside.  For the most part though, FRED takes care of almost everything at the rear end of the train, and there is no need to have people riding back there anymore.

Prototype Railroading: It Is Not Always Routine

When we are assigned to take either an empty or loaded coal train, we always figure it should be a pretty simple trip.  Coal trains never have any cars scheduled to be picked up o set out along the way, so basically, we get on the train and just go.  There is little to no switching to do at either end, and so they are usually pretty simple.  All you have to do is follow the dispatcher's directions.  Usually.  Every once in a while, the coal train proves to be a little out of the ordinary.  Such was the case just the other day.

I arrived for work, in Forsyth, for an on duty time of 9:30am.  I was to be on train C-SCMSUD0-60A, a loaded coal train, which supposedly had 120 cars.  We later found out it had an extra one in there.  I got to work, and got through the pile of paperwork, as usual, and the engineer went to check the fuel level and inspect the distributed power unit, at the rear of the train.

Most of the trains we run around here have one, remote controlled, locomotive at the rear end, called a distributed power unit, or DP.  This helps to balance the horsepower on some of the heavier trains, and it helps to prevent pulling couplers apart.  It also makes the ride a bit more comfortable up front, because having an engine on the rear helps to control slack action within the train.  Most coal trains that we get through here have three locomotives.  Two of them will be up front and one will be acting as distributed power, and will be controlled from the front, but will be pushing at the rear.  When the distributed power works the way it should, life is happy, and it is great to have it.  When it stops working the way it is supposed to, it can be quite frustrating, because that locomotive is usually well over a mile from the crew.

The crew who brought this coal train into Forsyth had warned us that they had been getting an alarm in the lead locomotive, indicating a problem with the distributed power locomotive.  They had been so close to Forsyth when it first became a problem, that they just brought the train in anyway, so they were not really sure what the problem was.  Well, when the engineer went back to inspect the locomotive and check the fuel level, he found part of the problem.  The locomotive was not even running!  It had mysteriously shut itself down.  While he was back there, he started it back up.  When he started it, an alarm went off indicating low fuel pressure, so he checked the fuel level.  It was at 2,500 gallons, which is about half a tank.  A minute after starting the engine back up, it decided to dump all of the air out of the brake system, and apply the emergency brakes on the entire train.  Since he was still back there, he reset that, and the air pressure began to build back up in the train.  Then the engineer got back in the van, and headed back to the depot.

Once the engineer was back at the depot, we all got on the lead locomotive and got ready to depart.  As we did so, we got indications from the DP locomotive that the air pressure in that unit's main air reservoir was low, and was not increasing.  It should have been increasing, because low pressure would trigger the air compressor, which would fill the reservoir.  We did a few things from the lead locomotive to try to get the air pressure to build to the proper pressure, but we could not get it to change.  We talked to one of the Road Foremen, who was in town, and he suggested making an emergency brake application to reset the system, so we tried that.  Once the air pressure recovered in the brake system, the problem was back.  So the engineer got back in the van and headed to the rear end to see if he could fix it from there.

As it turned out, the problem had nothing to do with the brake system or the air compressor.  When the engineer got to the rear end of the train, he again found that the locomotive was not running.  In the time it had taken him to get to the depot and for us to get on the engine, the DP had decided to shut itself down again.  Once again, the engineer started the engine back up.  That time, there were no alarms, and everything seemed to be acting normal.  When he started it up, all the alarms we had been seeing on the lead locomotive disappeared.  The engineer returned to the front, and then we had to decide what to do with the DP locomotive.  If it was going to keep shutting itself down, we could not leave it back there.  We could either set it out and just run with two engines, or we could try to move it to the front, so that if it did shut down, we could restart it.  We consulted with the Trainmaster, and he suggested we simply set the locomotive out and leave it in Forsyth.  It would eventually need to go to Glendive for repairs, but the easiest thing for us to do seemed to be to simply leave it behind.

We could not simply uncouple the DP locomotive and leave it sitting on the track the train was on, because that track would be needed by trains arriving in Forsyth later.  Also, we could not go back and move the DP under its own power, because there was nowhere to set it.  Our train was blocking the switch to the yard tracks, so our train would need to be moved.  Also, it needed to be set out at the east end of the yard so that whoever picked it up to bring it to the shop, in Glendive, could put it on the front of their train.  All of the yard tracks in Forsyth had something on them, which meant our coal train would need to move the length of the yard so we could put the DP locomotive in the east end of one of the yard tracks.  Basically, it boiled down to the fact that we needed to switch with a 17,000 ton train, and we would block crossings for a very long time!

The Conductor and I jumped in the van and ran back the DP locomotive for the ride through the yard.  Somebody had to be back there to release the brakes.  That would put us in the right place for when it was time to back the entire train up to drop the DP locomotive off in one of the yard tracks.  We would be able to watch where we were going from the cab of the DP, and give instructions to the engineer, who, being 6,500 feet away, had no idea what was going on behind him!  There are two crossings in Forsyth, and as the train slowly moved through the yard, they were both blocked.  We had the engineer move the train forward far enough to let the crossing gates go up and let traffic through, which was a good thing, because we had managed to create a traffic jam that literally stretched from one side of town to the other.  And we were not even finished!

Once traffic had cleared up a little, we backed the entire train up, back through the crossing, and into one of the yard tracks.  We coupled the DP locomotive to another car that was sitting there awaiting repairs.  Since we would be running without a locomotive on the rear of the train, I went and grabbed an End of Train Device, while the Conductor got everything on the locomotive secured so we could leave it unattended.  I attached the End of Train Device and got everything ready to uncouple the locomotive from the end of the train.  By the time we were ready to move the train again, we had been sitting in the crossing nearly another 45 minutes, and the traffic was crazy.  This was also the lunch hour, so there were about 20 pedestrians also waiting to cross the tracks to get some lunch.  As soon as we were able, we uncoupled the locomotive, and pulled the train back through the crossing, far enough to make the gates go back up and allow traffic to move again.

Once the train was out of the way a bit, I finished up with the End of Train Device, which we call Fred.  Fred had to be connected to the air brake hose, and then communication had to be established between Fred and the Head of Train Device, on the lead locomotive.  We call the Head of Train Device Lucy.  Lucy and Fred have to talk, because Fred monitors brake pipe air pressure, flashes a red  marker light, and, if needed, makes an emergency brake application at the rear end of the train.  Once Fred was armed as we say, we were ready to go.  We jumped in the van and got a ride to the locomotive, and, much to the dispatcher's relief, we were finally underway.  By then it was 12:30, and we had been at work for three hours!

Some days just are not normal I guess.  I am just glad it happened in training!