Becoming an Engineer

Since my last post, there have been a few changes.  First of all, Montana got its first snow fall.  Since then, it has gotten warm enough to partially melt the snow that fell, so the landscape is a speckled brown and white.  Besides the seasons changing, work has changed.

About a week ago, I returned to Montana (to the snowstorm), from Kansas City.  I passed all of my exams and simulator runs in Kansas City, and was only a check ride away from the Engineers' seat.  The day after everyone in class returned home, my Road Foreman of Engines called me up to let me know he was thinking about the check ride and to expect a call the next day to go in and take care of that.  He was going to look at the lineup and we would just jump on a train departing Glendive.  There were two of us, including myself, that had to get it done, so one of us would run westbound, until we got to a point where it would be convenient to jump on an eastbound train, and then the other one of us would run back to Glendive.

The other person I was going with is more senior than me, so he was allowed to choose who would go first. He volunteered, and so he ran an empty coal train westbound, to Blatchford, a siding about 50 miles west of Glendive.  There we caught an empty crude oil train coming east, which I ran back to Glendive.  We both passed out check rides, and our Road Foreman gave us temporary Locomotive Engineer cards, until the plastic ones arrive in the mail.

When I was in Kansas City, and in training before that, my plan was to mark to a Brakeman job when I got out of training, because I wanted a nice, low responsibility job.  Running a train is a lot more work than being a Conductor, though most of it is thinking and planning ahead, and is not physical work.  Being new, it is pretty tiring anyway though!  Despite wanting to work as a Brakeman, I put some bids in on Engineer jobs, mainly to try to avoid being forced to work in another terminal.  I am the least senior engineer in the division, and so if they need engineers in another terminal, I will be the first to be forced over there, if I am not working as an engineer somewhere else.  Basically, they can take qualified engineers if they need them somewhere, but they cannot take them if they are working as an engineer.  Much to my surprise, I was awarded a bid to the Glendive West Pool as an engineer, and have been working in that capacity since Monday morning.

I was a but nervous for my first trip.  I had made that trip lots of times as a Conductor, and about 15 as a student engineer, but getting on a train, knowing there would be no one sitting behind me to offer advice or tips, made me nervous.  As if that as not enough, I got to work to learn that my Conductor had never made a trip to Forsyth before either, at least not as a Conductor.  He had been there only once before, with a qualified Conductor, to get familiarized.  Originally, he hired out in Missouri, but we are so short on manpower than the railroad offered him a temporary position here, which he took.  Since he was furloughed in Missouri, he took it.  I was a bit more nervous about the fact that I would need to run a train and help the Conductor do his job!  Actually, I was more nervous about the trip back, because that would most likely be on a much heavier coal load!

As it turned out, my Conductor was very good.  Despite it being his first trip, he did well.  He needed to ask where we were several times, but that is to be expected.  He did just fine with the track warrants, meets, and other paperwork.  I really did not have to do much besides tell him where we were a few times and let him know when we were clear of our warrants.  For a first trip, he exceeded my expectations!  We had an empty coal train going west, and those are generally pretty easy to run.  They  have a ton of power and are fairly light, so they start and stop on a dime (for a train), so my first trip really was uneventful, which was exactly what I was hoping for.  As it turned out, we did get a coal load coming east, but that was equally uneventful.  As long as I stayed focused and planned things out several miles in advance, we were just fine.

Now that I have made a couple trips without someone sitting behind me to tell me what to do, it does not make me nervous to run trains by myself anymore.  It is still a tiring task, but I do enjoy it.  I certainly would not feel comfortable trying to teach anyone else to do it, and I still feel very new at it, but I feel better about running without another engineer now than I did a week ago.

Back in Kansas

Believe it or not, the on the job training portion of the locomotive engineer program is already done.  Yesterday, I flew back to Kansas City for the final two weeks of classroom instruction and exams.  Towards the end of my on the job training, I began to focus more on jobs based in Glendive, because it allowed me to be home more and minimize the rent I would have to pay in Forsyth.  I worked on the switch crew during the last two weeks, which always has something going on.  On my first day, we found a note in the depot indicating that our normal switch engines were sitting on the ties a few miles away, at a pipe yard.  Apparently the previous crew had been attempting to deliver some cars there and the rail had rolled over underneath them.  We called up the roundhouse to see if they had anything else we could use, and then we went and retrieved the cars that were still on the rails.  Usually we get stuck with some big road power when the usual switch engines are not available, but this time they had an SD40-2 for us, which is much nicer for switching than a lot of the more modern road locomotives.

The carmen had the switch engines back on the rails by the next day, but the roundhouse still had them, so we were left with a substitute, in this case a GP28.  Our foreman got a little bit ambitious with switching a track, and we ended up dragging about 80 cars out, through the switch at the west end, and out on to the main.  Pulling it all out with one little engine was easy - it was downhill.  Putting it away proved to be a bit more difficult than our foreman had anticipated.  Fortunately, I had thought about that as we were pulling out, so I had sanded the rails a bit already.  When I started pushing all those cars up the hill, it went pretty slowly.  I eventually got the engine up to full throttle, with the aid of more sand, but even with that, we could only go about 0.6 mph.  It takes a while to shove 80 cars lengths at that speed!  Quite a while later, when we had cleared the switches into a couple of other yard tracks, my engineer hopped off and grabbed the engines off a standing coal train, and used those to aid our little switch engine the rest of the way.  Once we had gotten all the cars put away, he put the engines back on the coal train, and for the rest of the day, we switched with smaller, more manageable cuts of cars!

Today was a rather boring day honestly.  We spent the morning going over the same paperwork we did when we first arrived here, back in June.  We did do a simulator run, with some unusual conditions.  I found that the simulator was a lot harder to run this time than it was last time I was here.  I think that is because I have gotten used to being able to feel what the train is doing, and run accordingly.  Obviously, the simulator does not move when we run on it, so there is nothing to feel.  The unusual conditions consisted of losing communication between the head end power and the distributed power, on the rear, an undesired emergency brake application, and a blockage in the train brake pipe.  I have dealt with the first two in reality too, so they were not anything new on the simulator.  The blockage in the brake pipe managed to fix itself with another set and release, so that did not turn into much of an issue either.  We will be doing more unusual conditions for the rest of the week, in the simulator.  We will have our final simulator runs next week, as well as two of our final exams.  On Friday we have our mechanical final exam, which is the only open book test we get.  All of the tests are multiple choice and at least 100 questions, so they will probably take a while even for the well prepared.

Photo of the Week: Boeing on BNSF

Over the last few weeks, my engineer training has taken me to Sheridan, WY, a couple of times. The line to Sheridan is the former Chicago, Burlington, & Quincy, and continues to Gillette, WY, and then down to Denver and Alliance, NE. While coal is the big business on that line, which passes though Wyoming's Powder River Basin, there are some manifest freight trains that use the route too. One of the regular manifests on that line connects Kansas City and Laurel, MT. Boeing has a plant for aircraft in Kansas City, and they use the railroad to ship partially assembled planes out to their plant in Washington. Typically, the body of a 737, in primer, will sit on a flat car, and an enclosed car will follow, carrying the wings, stabilizers, and other parts. They get attached to the plane at the Boeing plant in Washington. The plane also gets its final paint job there.

The other day, while waiting for my train to arrive, I managed to snap a quick picture of a 737 riding a train. Somehow, the plane looked a lot smaller without wings, and sitting on a train!

Weird Things Happen when I go to Glendive

I have been training to be an engineer out of Forsyth, which has been challenging.  The challenge is mostly the result of being unfamiliar with the territories handled by Forsyth crews.  Obviously, I will have to be familiar with all of them by the end of the engine program.  Yesterday, I made my first trip to Sheridan, WY, on a coal empty.  Empties are pretty forgiving, so it is not hard to just kind of wing it on a new territory, but the load home this morning was a bit more challenging!

Besides the trips out of Forsyth, I have to make nearly  half of my required trips on territories handled by Glendive crews, all of which are a lot more familiar to me.  Since one of those territories is the line between Glendive and Forsyth, I figured I can save a little money on gas and get a trip in by taking the train home, instead of driving.  So about once a week, I head up to Glendive, usually for the weekend.  I will be doing that again tonight.  I have been up there twice so far, and both times we have had something unusual happen.  The first weekend, we ran through a switch in the Glendive yard, as I talked about in a previous post.

Last weekend, I was called to go home on a vehicle train.  Vehicle trains are kind of weird trains to begin with, because they have very long cars, and all the cars have cushioned drawbars, to help protect the load from excessive in-train forces.  While those drawbars may help protect the load, they make it pretty hard to tell what the train is doing back there.  They also take a lot longer to stretch out and bunch up, since there is all that drawbar slop on top of the normal coupler slack.  All of that leads to some weird train handling and unusual in-train forces.  Those trains would be a lot easier to handle if the railroad did not discourage stretch braking as much.

Overall, the trip was going well, until we got to Miles City.  Just before crossing the Tongue River, the tracks go up a little bit.  They are pretty level across the bridge, and then they descend a little on the other side.  Since there is a permanent 30mph speed restriction in place at Miles City, I was using the dynamic brakes on the locomotives to slow the train from about 50mph.  The speed restriction starts very close to the bridge, at the top of the small hill.  Since the locomotives were doing all the work to slow the train, the slack and cushioning in all the couplers was all bunched up.  As I got to the bridge, and the start of the speed restriction, I started to come out of dynamic braking, since I was down to the proper speed, and no longer needed any more braking.  I thought I was coming out sufficiently slowly to prevent the locomotives from running away from the train and causing a sudden stretch, but I guess that was not true.  Sudden stretches, or run outs, can cause broken knuckles and drawbars, so they are a good thing to avoid!

After the locomotives and first few cars had gotten over the bridge, the engine started beeping and I noticed that the brake pipe pressure at the FRED was 0psi.  That means something had put the train in emergency at or near the rear end.  A few seconds later, the air dumped on the locomotives.  We were in emergency, and we were stopping whether we wanted to or not, and regardless of how many crossings we had occupied!  I actuated the locomotive brakes and tried to manage the in train forces as best I could.  Despite my efforts, we felt the slack bunch up, or run in, very suddenly and violently on the locomotives.  For those of you that have never experienced a run in on a locomotive, the bigger ones sort of feel like being punched in the back of the head by, well, a freight train.  Once we had stopped, I released the brakes to see if the air pressure would recover.  If it did, we would continue on our way, and if not, the Conductor and his trainee would be going for a nice evening stroll.  My engineer suspected that a hose had come apart, as they sometimes do with those cushioned drawbars, and I thought we had broken a knuckle.  I was hoping it was not a knuckle, but for some reason I had the feeling that the train had come apart.

As the air pressure started to come up in the brake pipe, we noticed that the air flow was not dropping very much.  Normally the air flow, measured through the brake valve, drops as the pressure rises.  Despite the air pressure coming up into the 80's on the head end, there was still a leak somewhere.  The Conductor was going for a walk.  He and his trainee got off the locomotive and disappeared to the west.  While they were gone, several pedestrians walked around the front of the train.  I suppose that is better than trying to crawl through or under cars at a blocked crossing.  The police also came by to see what was going on.  After several minutes, we heard from the Conductor.  The train was indeed in two pieces.  He went on though, there were no broken knuckles, the cars had simply come uncoupled somehow.  He had us pull ahead to open up a crossing before we set about fixing the problem though.

Once traffic had cleared at the crossing we opened up, the Conductor instructed us to start the train back.  While waiting on traffic, he had realigned the drawbars.  We put the train together and gave it a good stretch, to make sure it would hold.  Once satisfied that the joint was solid, the Conductor and his trainee started heading back towards the front of the train.  Once they were on board, we continued our journey east, without further incident.  In talking about what happened, there was only one explanation any of us could come up with that made any sense.  My engineer suggested that when I came into Miles City, with the train bunched up, it might have been possible for the uncoupling lever to catch as the drawbar compressed, causing it to lift and release the knuckle.  Then, when I started pulling on the train again, obviously it would have pulled that knuckle open, allowing the train to separate.  He also suggested that the huge run in we felt may have been the rear portion colliding with the front portion as they both went into emergency.  That would also explain why the Conductor found both knuckles closed and the drawbars pushed way off to the sides when he went back.  We will never know for sure what happened, but that is the only explanation that sounds plausible.

Engineer Training: On the Job Training

Last weekend I returned to Montana, from Kansas City.  The first three weeks of engineer training, which was all classroom and simulator time was done, and now it is time for the on the job training.  Since I got into the engineer program in Forsyth, and not Glendive, most of my required trips have to be made out of there.  Since I have never worked out of Forsyth, this makes things a little interesting, because not only do I have to learn to operate freight trains, but I also have to learn the territory.  Engineers have to be planning a couple of miles in advance, so familiarity with the territory is very important.  Most of the time, the view ahead of the train is not enough space to make adequate plans in, so the engineer must know what is around the next curve and where the next signals, crossings, switches, and hills are located.

Last weekend, after returning home from Kansas, I packed up some stuff and headed up to Forsyth.  I made arrangements with someone there to rent a room for a couple months during engineer training.  It is close to the depot, which is nice, since the only reason I am there at all is for training.  The Road Foreman of Engines gave all of us lists of the minimum number of trips he wants us to make on each subdivision.  Since he knows I will be returning to Glendive as soon as training is over, he gave me a lot of required trips out of Glendive too.  Basically, I have to make 40 trips on the runs handled by Forsyth crews and 30 from Glendive.  One trip was a freebie though, and only involved looking at a PowerPoint presentation for an hour on Positive Train Control, which is used occasionally on the Hettinger line.

I made my first trip on Monday night, to Laurel.  I wanted to start with something somewhat flat, and the Forsyth sub, which does continue west of Forsyth, continues to follow the Yellowstone River, so it only has some gentle hills.  West of Jones Junction, trains leave the BNSF and actually operate on the Montana Rail Link, into the Laurel yard.  Of course, the rules are similar but slightly different when you get on another railroad, so I do have to learn some of those differences now.  For example, on BNSF, if you get an approach (yellow) signal, you have to immediately slow the train to 30mph and prepare to stop at the next signal.  On the MRL, you are allowed to move at 35mph instead.  At a red intermediate signal, on the BNSF, you are required to stop, and then proceed at restricted speed, but on the MRL, you can just go by it at restricted speed, without stopping.  MRL uses track warrants for a couple miles, between CTC East Billings and CTC Shilo, near Laurel, and the format for reading back a track warrant is slightly different than on the BNSF too.  Of course, track warrants are typically handled by the conductor, but it is one of the small differences in procedures.

Laurel yard, by area standards, is a large yard.  Of course, compared to the terminal yards in major cities, it is actually quite small.  It is a busy place, and can be quite confusing when it is dark the first time you arrive there.  It is actually two yards in one location, one for eastbound trains and one for westbound trains.  There are four switch crews, working 24 hours a day, and you had better ask their permission before blocking their leads for anything!  There is always a lot going on there, between the switch crews working at both ends of each yard, other trains coming and going, people putting together their trains, and power moving to and from the roundhouse.  On my first trip, I observed the whole trip, so while there was a lot going on, I did not have to worry about navigating through it right away!

On my second trip to Laurel, my engineer told me he would let me observe again, and then run on the trip home.  We ended up having to take the siding at Custer, and when it was time to go, he got up and told me it was my turn to run.  I guess he changed his mind.  I ran the rest of the way to Laurel.  This time the whole trip was in daylight though, and the yard looked completely different.  Our train was a through train, so the power stayed on and we just pulled it into track west 14, and left it for the next crew.  The next day, on the trip back to Forsyth, we caught an H train, which is a high priority merchandise train, originating in Laurel.  We needed to get the locomotives from the roundhouse and put them on the train.  Then the carmen came along, because we needed a FRED still, and an air brake test, which they would help perform.  After we got the FRED on and armed, and the air test complete, one of the switch crews asked when we were going to pick up the other 19 cars of our train, located on another track.  It would have been nice to know they were there before we had a warrant to leave!  Anyway, we went and grabbed those, once the switch crew working our lead was out of the way, and air tested them too.  After three hours of working in the yard, we were finally ready to depart.  My engineer told me I could choose which half of the trip to run, and I chose the first half, from Laurel, through Billings and back to the BNSF.  I figured that is where the most is going on and it is the more complicated half, so I wanted to run it to help become more familiar with it.  As it turned out, I ended up running the whole way back to Forsyth though.

When I got done with that trip, I figured it might be nice to go back to Glendive for a day or two.  I could catch a Glendive West Pool trip in Forsyth and take that home, and get one of my required trips in at the same time.  It would also save me a little money in gasoline!  Then I caught wind that two of Norfolk Southern's "Heritage" locomotives would be on an eastbound train the next morning.  I decided to try to get on that train, since it would be a unique opportunity to see those locomotives.  As it turned out, the engineer assigned to that train does not take trainees, so I got on the one before, figuring that would get me back to Glendive before that train arrived, giving me time to run home, get my camera, and get a couple of pictures when they arrived in Glendive, behind us.  So, I ran a coal train back to Glendive.  It was a slow train.  We had four engines, but two were dead, so starting and stopping seemed to take forever on it.  But, it was nice to be on familiar rails!  I already knew where all the curves, hills, crossings, signals, and speed restrictions are located, so all I had to do was run the train, instead of try to run and check the track chart periodically.  The trip to Glendive was pretty uneventful, just slow.

When we got to Glendive, we were well ahead of the train with the heritage units, so I figured once we got the power to the roundhouse, I would have plenty of time to get pictures.  Apparently, that was not meant to be.  As we were heading down the runaround, to get the remote locomotives off the rear, my conductor was riding the rear locomotive and giving me hand signals, telling me to proceed.  Suddenly he gave me a stop and called, "Stop! Stop! Stop!" on the radio.  I immediately put the engines in emergency, but we still rolled a couple of car lengths before stopping.  He had not noticed a switch lined against us until the last second, and we rolled through it.  We started calling supervisors, but after 5:00pm on a Friday, most of them have started their weekend!  We did eventually get a track inspector out there to look at the switch.  Once he told us it was safe to move, we got the engines off the switch and put them away.  He took some measurements to see what the damage was, and we went to the depot for a drug and alcohol test.  We found out later, from that track inspector, that we actually did no damage to the switch, which surprised us, but did not relieve us from the consequences.  The Road Foreman arrived and took written statements of what happened, and then the urine sample collector arrived, and we all blew had to blow into a breathalyzer and pee in a cup.  Even though the conductor was the one protecting the movement and will likely get the heat of the incident, we all are required to have a drug and alcohol test, in order to determine if that was a factor in the incident.  They may also download the tapes from the locomotive to make sure that I was not speeding in the yard.  While it was frustrating to have this incident happen, I am not too worried about the consequences, at least not for myself.  I was following all the rules at the time of the incident.  Sometimes stuff just happens. While all this took place, the train behind us, with the heritage locomotives, arrived, and then it got dark, so all I managed to get was one rather lousy photograph in Forsyth.  However, we did notice an extraordinary number of photographers along the tracks, so there are probably pictures of both my train, and the one behind, with the heritage units, on the internet by now.

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.

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.

To Kansas!

Well folks, much to my surprise actually, I did make it into the next engineer training class.  I was surprised because I had been watching the bids, and it seemed that I was one number on the seniority roster short of making the class.  About three days after bid closed however, I got a call from the Road Foreman of Engines, in Glendive, to let me know that I had in fact made the class.  He gave me an overview of what the schedule would be, and what I would need to do before starting class, and told me to look for paperwork in the mail in the next few days.

A few days later, a fat envelope arrived from the railroad with a small pile of paperwork.  I had to get my vision and hearing tested again, just as I had had to for the Conductor program.  It seems that my vision and hearing are the same as they were just over a year ago.  In the packet of information, it also had our schedule.  BNSF has a training facility in Overland Park, KS, just outside of Kansas City.  While I have not yet been to the facility, I understand it has classrooms, locomotive simulators, and even a gift shop.  I am scheduled to begin training in Overland Park in a week and a half, on June 25th.  I will spend three weeks there, doing mostly classroom work, and learning the operating rules and procedures for engineers.  After the three weeks there, I will return to Montana for on the job training, for just over three months.

My training location is to be Forsyth, so I will have a lot of training trips to make out of there.  Forsyth is in the same seniority district as Glendive, and so I plan to mark to Glendive jobs as soon as my training is over. The Road Foreman said he wanted me to be fully qualified in Glendive too, so I will so a portion of my training in Glendive as well.  Since my training is officially in Forsyth, it just means I will have to go there for the next three years, if they are short on engineers, and if I am not working as an engineer somewhere else at the time.

After my on the job training, at the end of October, I head back to the training center, in Overland Park, for a final review, simulator testing, and written testing.  That trip will be a little bot shorter, only about two weeks.  When I get back here, if I have passed all the tests, the Road Foreman goes on a ride as a final check.  If I pass that too, I will have earned my Engineers' card.

When I first interviewed for the Conductor job, we were all told that it would be a minimum of three to five years before we would be able to go through the engineer program.  Of course, that was a loose estimate, based on the then current need for engineers.  Some people ahead of me in seniority have decided to pass up the engineer program, which has been part of the reason I have gotten it so soon.  Additionally, due to some retirements and an increase in traffic, more engineers have been needed than could have been anticipated at the end of 2010, when I interviewed.  Needless to say, tings change at the railroad!

Prototype Railroading: Familiarization Trips

Because trains operated considerably differently than highway vehicles, and therefore require a considerable knowledge of the tracks ahead, an engineer cannot simply get on a train and run it over a stretch of track he has never seen, even if he has the card allowing him to run the train.  Since engineers usually stay primarily at the same terminal, usually this is not an issue.  In Glendive, for several years, engineers have either operated on the Dickinson Sub, west of Dickinson, or on the Forsyth Sub, east of Forsyth.  Since those were the only two lines we ran out of Glendive, all the engineers were pretty well familiar with those stretches of track.  Recently, however, we have had a little change.

Besides the Forsyth and Dickinson subdivisions, there are two other railroad lines out of Glendive.  The Circle Sub runs west, towards Circle, and is the remainder of the former Northern Pacific Redwater Branch, which once went to Brockway.  From Glendive to Circle, the line has a 10mph speed limit, and has not been used in years.  I think the railroad keeps it to store cars, and just in case oil or coal starts to be produced out near Circle.  The other line out of Glendive is the Sidney Branch, which was leased to and operated by the Yellowstone Valley Railroad (YSVR) for several years.  In January, the lease ran out, and BNSF took the line back from the YSVR.  The line runs north to Sidney, and then on to Snowden, where it connects to the Hi-Line.  Many years ago the Northern Pacific owned and operated the line as far as Sidney, while the Great Northern owned it between Sidney and Snowden.  In the last few years, as the oil industry has grown in the area, the amount of traffic on the Sidney Branch has picked up considerably, and BNSF anticipates it will continue to grow.

The Yellowstone Valley Railroad leased the Sidney Branch from the BNSF for several years, seven is what I am told.  Because of that, BNSF crews working in Glendive really had no reason to go north on that branch.  Since it had been so long since anyone in Glendive had operated on the line, and since there were quite a few engineers that had never been up the line, it was decided that everyone would need to be familiarized on it.  This only applied to engineers, so Conductors were allowed to go up there without having ever seen the branch before.  Over the last couple of months, when a train has been called for the Sidney line, typically a qualified engineer will be called, and a second engineer will be called to familiarize.  The idea is that the familiarizing engineer will operate the train, under the direction and supervision of the qualified engineer.  After a round trip to Sidney, and engineer is qualified to operate on the line.  Right now, the speed limit goes back and forth a few times between 10mph and 25mph, and there are no signals on the line.  Last time I went up there with a familiarizing engineer, he said it was a pretty easy line to run, just because it is a slow line, and there is only one siding between Sidney and Glendive.

Engineers are the only people required to familiarize on a line, because they are the only ones authorized to operate the train.  Conductors can go on unfamiliar territory, and basically get to wing it!  At this point, I have made a few trips up the Sidney Branch, and it is not a difficult line to work on.  But the first time I went up there, I felt completely lost.  First of all, I never go to Sidney, even on my time off, so I was not real familiar with the area anyway.  Also, I had never worked in dark territory (territory with no signals), and there are a few small differences when compared to track warrant control with signals.  There is a little extra paperwork, where the Conductor has to record the position of every switch operated, and sign off that they were left in the position instructed by the dispatcher.  Whenever a track warrant is cleared with the dispatcher, the Conductor has to let the dispatcher know that the position of switch form is up to date and that all the switches are lined and locked as he or she instructed.  On my first trip up there, no one told me ahead of time that I had to do that, or have that paperwork.  Fortunately, I had an engineer that had worked in dark territory before, and helped me out a lot.  And by sheer dumb luck, I happened to have a whole pile of the position of switch forms in my grip already!  On that first trip, we were to pick up a train at Crane, which is where the only siding between Glendive and Sidney is located.  Since it is dark territory, all the switches are hand operated.  The train was in the siding, which meant that someone had to line the switch before the train could go anywhere.  Once the switch was lined for the siding, the train could pull out, but then the switch had to be lined back for main track movement.  We had a brakeman on that trip, so he got to line the switch, and the crew van driver stuck around to give him a ride back to the engines after he lined it back behind the train.  It's a little trickier without a brakeman, which was the case on my next trip.  The rest of the trip to Glendive was pretty uneventful.  Going 10mph for miles at a time is really not very exciting!  It was interesting to see the line though, and see some different scenery.

On my next trip up the Sidney Branch, we actually made a round trip.  We first took a whole lot of empty tank cars to Oneok, which is an oil loading facility just south of the yard in Sidney.  We were supposed to be meeting a train there and returning to Glendive with it, but we ended up meeting them at Crane, which is five miles to the south.  We put all the tank cars where they needed to be at Oneok, and then a van met us and took s to Crane, where the previous crew had left the train.  The YSVR had brought it down there from the yard in Sidney, which is about as far as they operate on the line anymore.  This time, we did not have a brakeman.  The train was on the siding at Crane, as expected.  They YSVR had either neglected to air test the train, or had neglected to leave us any indication that they had.  In any event, since we had no indication that an air test had been done, we had to do one.  I had the van drop me off near the last car of the train, and then we began the air test.  The engineer set the brakes, and I walked up to the front of the train, about 4,500 feet away, inspecting each car along the way, and inspecting the brakes on each car, to make sure they had set up properly.  When I got to the front of the train, I lined the switch and the engineer pulled the train out of the siding.  As it rolled slowly by I inspected each car to make sure the brakes had released properly.  With the air test complete, and the train out of the siding, I lined the switch back to the main.  Our warrant actually allowed us on the main track between switches at Crane.  Ideally the dispatcher would have given us permission to pick up a crew member, which means that no one has to watch the shove, and the train could have backed up to pick me up.  However the dispatcher had only given us permission to make a reverse movement, which meant someone had to protect the shove as the train backed up.  There was a crossing near the south switch, so I watched the shove back, and met the van where it had left me to do the brake test.  Once the engines were near that crossing, I hopped in the van and got a ride around to the front of the train.  It sure beat walking!  All of this work, especially during my first trip, made me think that Conductors really ought to get some sort of familiarization as well though.  My engineers on both of those trips really made my life a lot easier, because both of them had been up the line more than I had, and had more experience working in dark territory.  On both trips, I learned a lot of new information, and went to places I had not even seen pictures of before.  Several people had tried to explain exactly how things were laid out at these locations, and their explanations helped a lot, but everything made a lot more sense when I was there, looking at what my engineers were explaining.

Now that I have been up the Sidney line a few times, I actually like the run.  It is a nice change from the constant runs to Forsyth, and at the end of the day, we go home, which is always nice.  The trip is slow, and running at 10mph can get to be a bit boring, but the work is more interesting and it's a nice change of scenery.  Currently there is no Sidney pool job, so all the jobs on the Sidney line are called off the extra board, which means a little bit of dumb luck is what gets you on one of those trains (off away from one, depending on your perspective.), but they keep talking on and off about establishing a pool to shuttle trains up north.  Personally, I think they ought to forget the shuttle idea and just run some local trains, but the railroad will probably try to avoid locals if they can, because the local crews get a higher rate of pay, making them more expensive to the railroad.

In other news, I got a little surprise the other day.  I was standing around in the depot, waiting for the crew office to decide what to do with me.  They had called my engineer and me for a grain train, which was outside of the area we can work in, as Glendive crews.  They thought about sending us home, but eventually decided to have us go get some engines off a work train in Terry.  While I was standing around the depot, waiting for the phone to ring, one of the engineers surprised me.  He made a comment about something I had written on here.  I think I was more surprised that anyone at work would read this than anything else!  I hardly knew what to say, because I just had not expected it.  I have wondered to myself on occasion, if other railroaders have ever found this, and I guess I have my answer now!

Prototype Railroading: Engineer Students

So far, December has been surprisingly warm.  Montana has not lived up to its bitter cold reputation, which is just fine by me!  Recently, the BNSF has started training a lot of new engineers, and they plan to continue doing that.  Next year, the rumor is that Glendive will be having 20 more engineer classes.  As a result of all these new engineer students, some of the regular engineers do not have to actually run trains very often!  Of course, they still have to be in the cab to supervise their student, but usually they sit in the brakemen's chair and enjoy the ride, giving useful advice and pointers along the way.  Of course, as a Conductor, I have had the opportunity to work with some of these engineer students, and so far, I haven't been scared by any of them!

The engineer training program lasts about six months, and has a combination of classroom time and on the job training, similar to the conductor training program.  At the end, there are tests which must be passed in order to get the license.  The training starts out with several weeks of classroom training, which actually happens in Overland Park, Kansas, at a training center there, owned by the railroad.  Basically, they go over everything one needs to know about locomotives, train handling, and the theory behind railroading.  That training session involves people from all over the country.  After a few weeks in Kansas, everyone goes back to their terminals and starts with the on the job training.  Depending on their home terminal, they have to make a certain number of trips, doing different things.  Of course, this would vary, depending location.  In Glendive, engineer students mostly are required to make trips to Forsyth.  They also have to spend some time in the yard, working on the utility crew and the switch crew.  They also have to make a few trips on the helpers.  This gives them experience with another engineer in all the jobs based in Glendive before they have to run a train on their own.  After they have made the required trips, it is back to Overland Park for the test. They spend some time there for review and more classroom time, and then take all the required exams.  Once all the exams have all been passed, they get the engineer card.

Obviously, I have not been through the engineer program yet.  If the rumor about 20 classes in Glendive next year holds true, then I will go through the program next year.  I always bid on the classes, just in case I manage to get in to one.  The bids are awarded in seniority order, so once bids close, the person who has a bid in and has been around longest gets the class first.  From there, it goes down the list, in seniority order.  If no one puts in for the class, start forcing people into the class, again, starting at the top of the seniority roster.  Usually, they have plenty of people who want to be in the class, so forcing people is not necessary.  When bidding on classes, people can bid anywhere in their seniority district.  That means around here people can bid on engineer classes in Glendive, Forsyth, Mandan, Minot, Aberdeen, and Glasgow.  People usually try to get into the class at their home terminal, for obvious reasons.  If they get into a class outside their home terminal they are required to protect that terminal for three years.  Once they get done with class, they can mark to a job at their home terminal, but if they are not working as an engineer and their training location needs engineers, they can be called back there at any time in the next three years.  Some engineers in Glendive trained in Forsyth, and occasionally afterwards, they had to return to Forsyth to work for a short time, when Forsyth was in need of a few extra engineers.

I would like to get into a class in Glendive, for obvious reasons.  I would also take a class in Forsyth or Mandan, but I am not sure I would want to go much farther than that.  They will be having classes in Minot, Aberdeen, and probably Glasgow, but those are farther away.  While they are in the same seniority district, and I could easily mark up in Glendive as soon as I got out, I would not want to be tied to any of those places for the next three years if they need more engineers.  Forsyth and Mandan are closer, and on the same railroad line, which is why I would prefer to train in those places, if I could not get Glendive.  Of course, Glendive would be most preferred, as I am most familiar with the territory and it is home.