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| A crew dies 12 hours after they start moving. In Iowa they get vanned back to their home while a replacement crew gets vanned to the train needing a new crew. On a good day a crew might get 200 miles, on a congested day they might get 30 miles. On the UP they seem to spend lots of time parked waiting for another train to clear the track.
In the old days some cabooses had bunks, but not locomotives. Some cabooses also had a kitchen stove and refrigerator so the crew could eat there. UP locomotives appear to have water coolers and an icebox because new crews are told to bring water and ice sometimes and trash bags. There are no cabooses, the entire crew rides in the locomotive cab.
I doubt the owner of the rented locomotive has any say in where or when it runs. I'm sure the renter pays by the mile or the month and supplies fuel. Sometimes it takes years for all the locomotives of a line purchased by UP to be repainted in UP colors so they run many trains with mixed locomotive colors. In some lines they only paint when other major engine work is done.
I suspect there is a toggle switch on the circuit breaker panel that sets which end is front, or that the controls figure that out from which end has the multiple unit cable connected when its the last unit and which end has the controlling unit connected when its the middle unit. That could be enocded in the connectors if there are enough pins.
I have ridden in the cab of the Chinese steam locomotive on the Boone and Scenic Valley tourist line. After I built hardware for the locomotive.
I knew a fellow who worked for a company that built fuel economizer electronics for diesel locomotives and he quit the job because his boss wanted him to ride locomotives to monitor the hardware being developed all hours of day and night. Otherwise it probably would take agreement of the whole crew (both of them) to take on a visitor other than the boss and then they probably would have to not tell management or dispatch about it because its probably forbidden by the company rules. Occasionally a crew deadheads in the cab, but probably not the cab of the leading locomotive.
I was in the cab of an F unit at the Oelwein museum a week ago and there were no extra seats or room for a portable chair. Standing room only and the flywheel end of the diesel engine was only ten feet away without substantial doors. Its probably not a quiet work place, though I don't hear diesel engine rumble on the scanner when the conductor talks to dispatch.
Gerald J. | |
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