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| Hot
Times on the High Iron - This Time It’s
the Heat of the Moment |
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August 22, 2005 But before we begin today’s lesson we have a special announcement. As my cousin stated in his toast to the beautiful bride and I at our wedding a million years ago, “This is big.” However, this announcement is way beyond big; it’s emongous. For those of you unfamiliar with such vernacular, emongous would be the combination of enormous and humongous. Yes this announcement is that spectacular. We have learned that the beautiful bride is in the family way. That’s right folks, she is with child. We are expecting the arrival in March. So you know what that means, whenever we get this book published, I’m going to need everybody to buy one, and also request that you buy one for all your family, friends and loved ones and even your enemies. I’m going to need to send this child to college some day. And I don’t want to have to work until I’m 90 to pay for it. As an addition to this day’s lesson, we will employ the use of a few visual aids. The photos used are the courtesy of long time reader and friend Glen Mounk. Glen has graciously allowed me to use three of his photographs to assist with today’s lesson. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank him for allowing me to use them. While he won’t get rich for his generosity, he’ll get fifteen minutes of fame all along the HTOTHI network anyway. I would also like that thank Otto, Mike and the whole gang at www.railroad.net for hosting these photos as well. Be sure to stop in and take a look at their entire site. They have put considerable effort into it and their hard work shows as it is an excellent site. You might also want to drop them a note of thanks as well. They’d probably appreciate it. I’ve also used a couple of my own photos from my pages at the Screaming Eagles web site hosted by Todd Greuter. You can view Todd’s outstanding website by clicking onto http://www.trainweb.org/screamingeagle/ And of course, my thanks to Todd for hosting my MoPac Chicago Subdivision pages there at http://www.trainweb.org/screamingeagle/tuch_chicagosub_1.html And now for the main event. Well summer has really taken a hold on us this year. We’ve experienced record, or near record high temperatures this summer here in Middle America along with a drought. Couple the temperature extremes with the high humidity and you get what is called the heat index. Like the wind chill factor used in the winter to inform you of how cold it feels, the heat index tells you how hot and uncomfortable you feel in the summer. I call it the misery index. This combined temperature and humidity index can easily exceed 105° Fahrenheit. Recently in northern and central Illinois this index has been 110° or more. It has made for some brutal conditions in which to railroad. Couple this extremely high heat and humidity with being required to sit in non-air conditioned locomotives for hours on end and the misery index quickly becomes the agony factor. A significant portion of our locomotive fleet does not have air conditioning. We have a side bar letter in our collective bargaining agreement that requires that CN retrofit our locomotives with air conditioning. All new locomotives purchased are also required to be factory equipped with air. However, this retrofit clause does not apply to CN proper units; that is, locomotives built for CN in Canada and designated as Canadian units. These units are free runners of sorts and they frequently appear on our US lines. In fact some of these locomotives are required to operate at least half of the year in the US. However, they are exempt from the air conditioning requirement. I guess there is a belief that it doesn’t get hot in Canada in the summer, therefore air conditioning is not necessary. I have been to Canada in the summertime and it sure seemed like it was pretty hot to me. But what do I know? This clause also does not apply to switcher type locomotives; those locomotives with the “SW” model designation such as the SW14’s or SW1500’s. Now if any locomotive needs some A/C, it would be these. You tend to go slow, generally banging back and forth around the yard most of the time with such units, so you don’t get much in the way of air circulation with these units. The super cab locomotives, also known as the Canadian Cabs owing to their origination in Canada are luxurious compared to the standard cab versions. There is more room inside the cab. However, as nice as they are, if not air conditioned, these cabs can quickly become unbearably hot. And they tend to retain that heat. There is a central fan which is part of the central heating system to circulate the air but it is really of little value on these really hot days. I’ll discuss this factor in greater detail in just a bit. Now CN locomotives, even though they have orange cabs, come standard with the cab roof painted black. And there is nothing that generates heat better than the summer sun beating down on a black roof. I have unsuccessfully campaigned for several years to get the powers that be to modify the paint scheme and paint the cab roofs white or silver, but it has been fruitless effort. I also suggested that maybe we should paint the cab roofs orange to match the rest of the cab. It would help a little bit with cab interior temperature and actually look more aesthetically pleasing. The roof would match the cab sides. I believe it would actually be cheaper when it came to repainting locomotives as well. Hmm, cheaper? Let’s go with “cost effective” as that term sounds much more appealing. To paint the cab roof black, you must mask the top edges of the orange cab to avoid overspray. If you are painting the cab orange after painting the roof black you still have to mask. This takes time and effort. If you match the color of the sides to that of the roof, there still is some masking to do but less of it. And of course, this would save time. But what do I know. And this all takes time; time that keeps the locomotive out of service longer. CSX did a study a few years ago and determined that by painting the locomotive cab roof silver or white, the temperature in the cab is reduced between 5 and 7 degrees. If you don’t think this difference sounds like much, try this test in your home; turn up the thermostat on the air conditioning in your house from 78° F (where I usually have mine set) to about 84° on a particularly hot day and wait a few hours. Then tell me you won’t feel the difference. That five to seven degree reduction in temperature is a little something that can improve the working conditions. We have some long term lease units assigned to the GTW and WC that are painted gray. The cab roofs match. You can feel the difference in the cabs as compared to any unit with the roof painted black. It is a noticeable difference. Now take the heat generated from the roof and combine it with the ambient temperature. Everything within the cab gets hot, very hot, in some cases, extremely hot. In the newer locomotives there is ductwork at the top of the cab near the ceiling tied into the central heating and ventilation system to circulate the air. You are now forcing the air through a series of ducts that are actually being heated by the sun. Simply stated, you are applying more heat into the cab. This is sort of the same theory used to make a convection oven work. Convection ovens are equipped with a fan that circulates the super heated air inside the oven. What you are doing is making an optimum use of all the heated air which in turn, cooks or bakes your food faster. You use less energy as cooking times are reduced by about one third. This is a highly efficient system and used by those fast serve pizza places like Domino’s. I have applied the convection oven theory to sitting in the cab of a non-air conditioned super cab locomotive. My theory is that we are cooking faster than in a standard cab unit. We will suffer heat exhaustion or heat stroke in one third less time. With the central fan operating there have been times where the air blowing out of the vents is actually hotter than the ambient temperature within the cab. The older versions of the super cab and most standard cab locomotives have far less insulation between the ceiling and the cab roof than the newer models. Couple that with a black roof and it gets rather unbearable rather quickly. While sitting at Champaign waiting to go north one afternoon we were being cooked alive. We had an older super cab unit; the CN 5330 which is an SD40-2 built in 1980. And of course, it had no air conditioning. The ambient temperature outdoors was 93° F. There was also very high humidity as well. The cab interior was a pleasant 101° F. The cab ceiling was too hot to hold your hand against. I placed my trusty thermometer on the ceiling and it gave me a reading of 112° F. All that heat from the ceiling was radiating into the cab. And as this heat generates into the cab, it makes everything within that is made out of steel hot, really hot. The control stand will actually become so hot that you cannot hold your hand on it either. Should you place a bottle of cold water on it, this water will quickly begin to lose its cool and within several minutes start to get warm. It was so hot in this cab that day I was sweating profusely. It appeared that I had just stepped out of the shower or had taken a swim with my clothes on. My shirt was soaking wet as were my arms, neck and face. The sweat was pouring down my face into my eyes. I was quite the sight. My Conductor fared no better. If I would have had a female conductor this day she could have staged her own wet T-shirt contest. http://www.railroad.net/santucci/5303s.jpg While this is not the 5330, it is one of its exact replica siblings, an SD40-2W. You can notice the difference in the appearance of the cab on this one as opposed to say the standard cab in this photo; http://www.trainweb.org/screamingeagle/other/tuch/40.jpg which is your standard cab version of the SD40-2. One evening it was 91° F when I boarded my locomotive at about 7:45pm. It was a super cab GE Dash 9-44C with no air conditioning. The temperature was brutally hot in the cab. After inspecting my power and cleaning things up a bit, I pulled out my trusty thermometer. The control stand was very hot to the touch. Even with the gauge lights turned off, the temperature of the control stand was 101° F. When I placed the thermometer on the little table in front of me it dropped to 95°. The sun was already dropping in the sky so that while we were getting sun, it was not directly overhead and beating down intensely upon us. This would help us out as the exterior of the cab would begin to cool a bit, albeit a gradual decrease in temperature. But hey, every bit helps. We had to sit for awhile after we were ready to proceed owing to a couple of Amtrak trains that had to work the Homewood station, so we got to wait and simmer. My Conductor had even less a desire to sit in this oven than I, so he bailed. He went and sat outside on a couple of old ties along the right of way. Eventually we got a signal and then began our journey. Once we got rolling the breeze generated from our momentum through the atmosphere gave us some relief. When we rolled through Bridgeport much later the marquis on the old New Process bakery proclaimed a temperature of 82° F. Within the cab it was still 91°. The cabs will stay warm long after the sun has gone down too. I’ve boarded super cab units well into the night when the temperature had dropped significantly, like into the 70’s. It will still be in the mid to high 80’s inside that cab. As I mentioned earlier, there has been an evolution of the super cab since it was first introduced in the 1970’s. One of the improvements has been the increased size of the cab itself. The larger size of the cab interior seems to have impeded the manner in which the air circulates within unless the central fan is operating. Also, there seems to be more insulation. However, all that insulation, while keeping the cab warmer in the winter, holds that same heat within during the summer. Heat is generated from within as well as coming from without. All of the electronics within the cab as well as the heat from the engine room and main generator contribute significantly to the temperature inside. It is generally always warmer within the cab than the ambient temperature even when it is just warm and not brutally hot outside. There are other items like the gauge lights on the control stand. While seeming rather innocuous, these little bulbs can generate a considerable amount of heat. I have had my trusty thermometer read out 101° on the control stand with the lights on when the cab temperature is only 95°. Needless to say, in the summertime during the day, I turn those gauge lights off in the attempt to eliminate that source of heat. The number lights will generate a great deal of heat as well. The upper portion of that front bulkhead in the cab will get very hot in the summer with those number lights illuminated. During daylight hours I will turn them off too in order to eliminate another source of heat. The radio and head end of train telemetry device, even though solid state will also generate some heat. However, we cannot turn those off as they are needed and required. I have had super cabs on extremely hot days where the cab interior was 105°. A good friend recently told me that he recently had a non-air conditioned locomotive in which the cab interior temperature reached 112°. That is some serious heat. Now couple that with the high humidity and you have almost inhumane conditions. One evening a couple of weeks ago I had a super cab unit that was a balmy 91°. At the same time the ambient temperature on the great out of doors was only 79°. And this was around 10 pm. I just have to wonder how hot the cabs get when operating across the desert. While you don’t have the humidity, you still have the heat. And if the ambient temperature is 114° and the sun is beating down on that cab roof and you don’t have air conditioning, it has to be unbearable even if you are moving. And as we all know, you are not always moving all the time. A locomotive, even just when idling is almost like a living breathing being. The prime mover (diesel engine) is burning #2 diesel fuel continuously, sort of like your heart pumping that life giving blood throughout your body. As this is occurring, heat is produced. Even though there is insulation between the prime mover, the main generator and the cab, some of the heat being generated still manages to find its way through. A touch of the doors on the high voltage cabinet will give you a warm feeling as it were. It will usually feel somewhat warm to the bare hand. On hot days it will be hot to the touch. The additional windows and space in the super cab units can be like that proverbial double edged sword. While they give you greater visibility over all, they assist tremendously to bring all the sun in. The glazing used in the cabs, while of higher strength to resist “missiles,” is not insulated. It is not of the low emission variety to reduce the UV rays from entering either. The newer units, those constructed beginning in the 1990’s, do have tinted side windows to cut down on some of the intrusive sun. However, the front windows cannot be tinted and those are the largest of all the windows where most of the sun will pour right through into the cab. All of the full energy and potency of the blazing hot sun comes right through unobstructed. I recently had a super cab unit as the leader of my locomotive consist that had some sort of leak in the ductwork underneath the cab. Every time I opened the throttle at all, I was getting a blast of hot, not warm but hot air coming from the bottom of the control stand. I had a desktop control stand on this unit (another topic that could make for a column in itself). The hot air was blasting out through the slope panel underneath where my legs would go. It was my guess there was some sort of crack in the ductwork underneath the floor where fresh air is channeled to the traction motors to cool them off. The air only came through whenever the throttle was opened which is what led me to believe it was a duct work issue. While I was fortunate enough that it was only about 84 degrees that day, I was still getting blasted with all that hot air from underneath. My legs and feet were burning up after a while. I can just image how miserable it would have been if it were much hotter. I reported the problem and they actually fixed it on the first try. I got this locomotive back again a couple of days later and, after my reporting it to mechanical services, there was no more hot air blasting in. A locomotive design that is a true oven or perhaps a real sweatbox for crews is that of the wide body variety. These would be the SD40-3F, SD50F, SD60F and Dash 8-40CW’s. These locomotives are often referred to as “covered wagons as the original design of them sort of resembled one. When the railroads began to dieselize freight and passenger, EMD introduced the E and F units. These were full or wide body units. The walkways to reach the engine room of the rear of the locomotive were inside of the car body as opposed to outside. Alco had their FA and PA models that were also wide bodies. Baldwin also offered versions of the full body unit. While they have a nice sleek look, this body style of locomotive had its shortcomings. They were not exactly the most efficient locomotives for switching in the yard or for working industry jobs and locals. The wide body offered the Engineer no visibility to the rear. You had to look through a rear view mirror or hang your head way out the window to see where you were going and to watch for hand signs. If they had to be used in a long back up move, “Hostler controls” were mounted at the read of the locomotive for operating from the rear so that you could see where you were going. Of course, the Hostler controls were only supposed to be used for short distance, low speed operation. Eventually, this body style of locomotive fell out of favor and began to fade away. Baldwin and Alco (in the US) eventually faded into oblivion. EMD received no new orders for wide body units for domestic use except for passenger operations. The SDP40F was purchased by Amtrak in the early 70, later replaced by F40PH series. VIA Rail in Canada also opted for the F40PH-2. Commuter agencies like Metra and its predecessor RTA as well as commuter rail operations in other cities also purchased quantities of the F40PH series. The F40C was purchased by the Milwaukee Road for use in Chicago area commuter service. GE offered a wide body for passenger and Santa Fe purchased some. The wide body did make a resurrection in the very late 60’s and early 70 though for freight service. EMD built the F45 during this period that Great Northern and its successor Burlington Northern ordered and then operated for years. Santa Fe also had some, many of which were released from passenger service after Amtrak assumed the nation’s passenger service. Likewise, the Milwaukee Road had a small fleet of FP45’s that were converted for freight service when Amtrak took over the nation’s passenger service in 1971. The wide bodies were again showing their impractical use for freight service. BN dumped their wide body F45’s in the mid 80’s never opting for any other model of locomotive with the wide body. The Milwaukee Road had pretty much given up on theirs by the beginning of the 80’s. Santa Fe did hold onto theirs much longer, even picking up more in a trade with Amtrak. Santa Fe kept theirs well into the 90’s using them in daily service system wide. And for a time, they were the only major railroad using them in freight service. The Wisconsin Central picked up some on the used locomotive market and began to use them regularly. The Susquehanna did as well. Otherwise, only passenger railroads were using them in daily service. Ironically, some of the cabs from the scrapped BN F45’s were recycled and later used on passenger locomotives built for several other commuter agencies like Tri Rail in Florida. In the 80’s a guy named Draper resurrected the idea of the wide body locomotive for use in freight service with a modification known as the “Draper Taper.” This was a portion of the car body right behind the cab tapered inward to allow for a small rear cab window allowing the Engineer to see the train while rolling around curves. It was still impractical though for use long hood forward or “running backwards” as we like to call it. The concept of this new wide body was to maintain better temperatures within the engine room and to have an area free of snow and ice for safe passage for the crews and mechanical forces during the winter months. This was yet another idea that looks great on paper. However, the transition to the real world was less than stellar. http://www.railroad.net/santucci/5561.jpg Here is a view of an SD60F. In this photo you can see the wide body and super cab. If you look carefully behind the road number on the side of the cab you will observe two grab irons that run the entire height of the car body. Just behind those grab irons look carefully at the black car body itself. You’ll notice a bit of a taper going in. This is the so-called Draper Taper that I mentioned. It is beneficial for looking back to observe the train while going around curves as there is a small window inside of the taper at the rear of the cab. However, the body beyond the taper is still full width rendering no visibility directly behind you. You can also clearly see one of the side cab doors. These are some of the doors that we prop open to create some air circulation. A major drawback to these units is that it gets hotter than hell in those engine rooms, particularly in the summer. Whenever inspecting a locomotive, you had to go inside the engine room for the routine inspections. Also, when troubleshooting problems, again, inside the engine room you go. Sometimes really terrible things occur with the prime mover. They blow up and in some cases, shove pistons through sides of the block and onto the catwalks. Or turbochargers explode. Do you recall my story about having one explode in my WC days? Cooling water lines rupture or fuel links break shooting fluids out all over the place. Should you happen to be inside the engine room when such an episode takes place, you are right there with no protection against such occurrences. At least with the standard car body, you have a fighting chance as there is something between you and the prime mover in those engine room doors. There are other shortcomings with these units but we won’t delve into them here as they don’t deal with the heat issue. http://www.railroad.net/santucci/5438.jpg This photo is of an SD50F which looks strikingly similar to the SD60F. Again if you look carefully you’ll be able to observe the taper in the car body behind the cab. http://www.trainweb.org/screamingeagle/other/tuch/30.jpg In this photo you’ll see the view looking back from the rear cab window of a standard cab locomotive. There is not much to see here because I shot this while running through a snowstorm. However you can grasp the difference between the wide body and standard body unit as I have an unobstructed view to the rear. Only Canadian National was a major purchaser of the modern version of the wide body receiving orders of SD50F’s and SD60F’s from EMD and Dash 8-40CW’s from GE. Canadian Pacific did receive one order of SD40-3F’s from EMD as well but never repeated the wide body order. No US railroad purchased such units when EMD offered them again. By the early 1990’s both EMD and GE dropped the wide cab option from their catalogs. Now then, why all this talk about the wide bodies when we’re discussing hot weather? The wide bodies tend to hold even more heat in and then regenerate that same heat back towards the cab. There are two sets of doors between the cab and the engine room; one door from the cab into the “breezeway” where the rear of the high voltage cabinet and main generator are located and another door from there to the engine room itself. Even with two sets of doors, hot air seems to know no boundary. Now the older E and F variety of locomotives, those built in the 40’s and 50’s only had a single door separating the cab from the engine room. There was even less insulation against the heat and the noise. And what is worse, the side cab windows in these wide body units do not open as wide as they do on other locomotives. In fact, they only open about sixteen inches. The reason for the smaller window opening is the side entry cab doors. So now you have less air to enter and circulate within the cab. You can open the side doors but you have to prop them open. And even with them open, it doesn’t seem to lend much assistance to the air flow. As a last resort, perhaps the last act of fending off heat stroke, many a crew has resorted to propping open the front cab door. There are actually two doors in the front of the cab. There is the external door that you can see from outside. There is also an interior door that separates the utility area where the tool locker, spare air hose, flagging kit and sander relays are located. So both the interior and exterior doors have to be propped open. While not exactly in compliance with the rules, this can be the difference between heat stroke and absolute minimum comfort. As you are peddling down the pike you are getting a blast of air coming through those front doors. This additional source of air does make a significant difference. However it does not lower the temperature much nor reduces the influx of heat. But you are getting some air circulation which helps lower your external skin temperature and this helps get some of the heat off and away from you. http://www.railroad.net/santucci/5303s.jpg In this photo you can clearly observe the open front exterior door of the cab. Inside, to the left of the visible green box is the interior door. This interior door will also be propped open so as to let air into the cab to create more air circulation. Desperate times call for desperate measures. The standard cab locomotives can also get extremely hot in the summer and during heat waves. However, owing to their design, they tend to not get quite as hot as the super cabs. While it is routine for the cab interior to get warmer than the ambient temperature, the super cab is much hotter, sometimes downright inhumane. I’ve heard numerous railroaders comment that the wide body units are unfit for human occupancy in the summer. Many standard cab locomotives have forced air heaters that have a fan selector switch that allows you to operate the fan without having the heater elements working. With this feature you can run the fan to create more air circulation. And being that these heater units are mounted on the floor, the air down there is much cooler. It is routine for the floor temperature to be in the low 80’s while the upper portions of the cab are in the 90’s or 100’s. I’m sure you are all familiar with the theory of warm air rising. I suppose that if the designers of the wide body and the super cab were required to have to work within the confines of their creations, there would be significant changes made to them such as improved air circulation, ventilation duct work that is insulated and of course, air conditioning would be standard. They would not tolerate having to work in such conditions. In reality they don’t. Thus, they aren’t terribly concerned. Over the years I have worked with folks that have resorted to all sorts of measures to keep cool in the summer in non-air conditioned locomotives. Some guys will put on bib overalls when they begin their tour of duty. Once on board the engine and all settled in, those bibs come off. They are wearing gym shorts underneath. No, this is not legal but when outside of the friendly confines of the yard, one will do whatever is necessary to keep cool. Others have a pair of slippers in their grip. Once they are settled in, the work boots come off and the slippers go on. I’ve even observed Brakeman and Conductors get off and line a switch while wearing their slippers. Again, they are outside of the yard where there is less likely to be some company official observing their every move. And oh yes, this is a rule violation. Still others will just kick the boots off and sit around in their stocking feet. Of course, being that they only thoroughly clean these cabs once every ten years or so, should you want to move around the cab in those stocking feet, they will quickly become filthy dirty. In my Trainmaster days there was one old head Engineer that was around retirement age that went way over the edge to remain cool. He would strip down to his boxer shorts and “dago” T-shirt. I recall getting on board his engine more than once in the hot summer months to find him this way. It was way more than I wanted of needed to see of him. Even if I had told him to get dressed, all he would have done was stripped back down as soon as I was out of his range of vision. So to quote the old Bachman-Turner-Overdrive song I just “Let it ride.” Now myself, I will plunge my hands into the ice in the cooler for a few minutes or stick my hand against the side wall of the refrigerator for a few moments. This gives some relief that will last for a little bit. There are also those cooling bands that you wear around your head like a headband or around your neck. They will provide relief until they too begin to warm up. I will also wear a bandana around my head. I sort of look like Rambo or something but it keeps the sweat off my face. Now here’s a thought; the signal cabins along the right of way that house the controls for such equipment as automatic crossing signals are air conditioned. That equipment needs the environmental control to allow it to work properly. But at the same time we are required to sit here sweltering in the miserably hot cab during the blistering heat. We are expected and required to be attentive and work safe. Of course; would there be any other way to work? And so it goes. Tuch Hot Times on the High Iron and the HTOTHI initials, ©2005 by JD Santucci. |
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