That was a stupid thing to do at Metuchen....the amount of time it took to close the doors back up, and reverse back, the conductor (it was in the first car) should have just went over and protected those doors, meaning yes, they are open, but you can't get out, because Im standing here.
I used to run 3869, and my engineer would not frequently, but not rarely, pull a smidge long at Metuchen. Me, being used to this, I would always stand in the center doors of the first car, jsut for this reason. (I almost always stand in the center doors of the first car anyway, for all stops, just for this reason) Low and behold, whoosh....but its okay, becasue im standing there. And if we really pulled long, I would telll him to keep his foot on the pedal to prevent the doors from opening (when that would work) in case the rearbrake wasn't paying attention and realized he was halfway down the platform, that maybe the first cars might be off. Wehn I got back to the location on the platform, I would open the doors back to the rearbrake and everyone just has to walk back. Sure it takes longer and the people aren't real happy, but tough.
Metuchen station is in the middle of Lincoln interlocking, and you are not allowed to simply back up there, you MUST get permission of the dispatcher to make any reverse moves once the train stops.
Amtrak often uses their radios to communicate because seemingly 99 percent of the time, their communication buzzers don't work. So they often say, " you have two to proceed west to Trenton" or whatever.
Last edited by Jtgshu on Fri May 28, 2004 12:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.
On the RR, "believe nothing you hear and only half of what you see"
John, aka "JTGSHU" passed away on August 26, 2013. We honor his memory and his devotion to railroading at railroad.net.