Tied-Down Trains (was: unattended)

beanbag wrote:

Desertdweller wrote:Three years ago I was getting on a train with my crew on a railroad in New Mexico. The train had sat overnight in the yard, tied down with the power shut down.

I noticed a county sheriff car parked by my ground crew, a young female deputy asking questions. I called down from the cab and asked what the problem was.

"I got a call to go investigate an abandoned train in the railroad yard", she said.

"It's a railroad yard," I replied. "What would you expect to find here?"

I knew some of the people in the sheriff's department who were jokers who would send a rookie on a fool's errand.
"Who sent you here?" I asked. "Was it xxxx, or xxxx?"

She wouldn't say who sent her. Embarrassed, she said,"well, I had to go check it out."

Les

Thats hilarious.

Desert should have put this in the Funny Stories thread! It's like the shop forces sending a new man all over the yards to look for a "Sky Hook" or a "Metal Stretcher"!!!!

Well, if you roll the downhill end onto a wheel chock it usually won't matter how many brakes you knock off... That will usually stop it dead. And with the chock pinched by the wheel, there is no way a vandal is going to remove it.

Combine that with a portable derail, and you have a fairly safe and cheap failsafe in place.

Wheel chocks and portable derails can fail if struck by cars moving faster than walking speed. The things are made of cast iron and simply break off. I've also seen wheels hit flip-type derails, hop over them, and land back on the rail.

The only things I've always seen work are split-point derails (basically a switch with only one point and a frog) or a sturdy bumping post.

Les

NS uses rule C-102 , testing of hand brakes. They require it pretty much everywhere except by special timetable instruction and some switchers. The cars are in emergency when cut off, someone would have to know what they were doing to bleed off the cars and realize they would roll eventually when the car res bled out over time. Not to mention know how to operate handbrakes (or even recognize what they were).

Desertdweller wrote:Wheel chocks and portable derails can fail if struck by cars moving faster than walking speed. The things are made of cast iron and simply break off. I've also seen wheels hit flip-type derails, hop over them, and land back on the rail.

The only things I've always seen work are split-point derails (basically a switch with only one point and a frog) or a sturdy bumping post.

Les

We have an engineer who ran over flip derail, didn't even derail then reported the derail as defective to management. Needless to say he blew himself in and his conductor was pissed, but this guy isn't quite right to begin with....

When the railroad went to one man crews, maybe the wrong kind of guys got furloughed. During the Florida East Coast strike years ago, strikers with rifles took shots at the strike breaking crews, I believe.

bretylium wrote:

Desertdweller wrote:Wheel chocks and portable derails can fail if struck by cars moving faster than walking speed. The things are made of cast iron and simply break off. I've also seen wheels hit flip-type derails, hop over them, and land back on the rail.

The only things I've always seen work are split-point derails (basically a switch with only one point and a frog) or a sturdy bumping post.

Les

We have an engineer who ran over flip derail, didn't even derail then reported the derail as defective to management. Needless to say he blew himself in and his conductor was pissed, but this guy isn't quite right to begin with....

I've seen it too. I posted it elsewhere on RR.net, but I was working WA-6 (near Lane) in Waverly yard, Newark, NJ. A drill crew asked for permission to come down, said he didn't need the switch for the main track. I said OK, watched them pull down, when the engine went bump bump and stopped with the hop toad derail under the center of it. The lead truck had gone over it and stayed on the rail. I reversed the switch, which took the derail off. Lucky me.