I’ve done a thread before on this when I first got hired as a conductor on the railroad. I’ve been at it now for two years tomorrow so I’m a little more knowledgeable now than I was then.
I’ve since become a yardmaster as well as a conductor. Yardmasters control train movements within a yard or yards, service local customers with train crews, and in our case oversee extra crews who service customers at outlying points (like power generating plants with coal trains).
I don’t know if anyone has a pressing need to know about railroading but I’m here for you if you do and won’t be offended if you don’t.
It’s a very closed off type of industry and there’s not much contact with people outside the railroad, which creates some pretty interesting personalities. I’ve never met a stranger bunch of people.
On the New Jersey Transit commuter trains, there’s an emergency brake passengers are only supposed to pull “in case of an emergency.” Under what circumstance would a passenger want to stop the train? And how does the brake work?
I work in freight service and as the conductor I often wonder the same thing.
The emergency brake valve dumps the train, which means locks up the brakes. The only thing keeping the brakes from applying is air pressure, so pulling that cord or valve would decrease the air pressure rapidly. That would make the brakes apply…rapidly.
I have no idea why a passenger would want to stop a train like that. I don’t even know if those things actually are connected to the brake system or not. I hope not.
Here in Santa Barbara we get a shockingly large number of people killed by trains. It seems like a couple every year. It’s usually homeless drunk people. Have you ever been on a train that hit a person or a vehicle?
No. I’ve been out here only two years but it’s shocking how many people and vehicles I’ve almost hit. I’ve heard plenty of first hand stories about crews who have had people jump in front of their trains and all that.
Cars are constantly trying to beat trains. The idea of hitting a car doesn’t bother me so much. The reality of it does. I’d be investigated by the NTSB and the FRA plus my own company. If I’m found innocent of any wrongdoing I will not be offered any grief or stress counciling. If I need a day off to collect myself (or longer) I’ll be deemed unfit and put out of service by the medical department. Unpaid, of course. Then I’d fight for months just to get my job back. So the reality is that if an incident occurred, I’d have to buck up and act as if nothing out of the ordinary has happened. This includes a tangled dismembered human being under my train.
If it’s like the trains around here, it’s simply connected to an alarm in the driver’s cab and in the guard’s compartment. It’s then up to them to “pull the tail” (dump the air). As dumping the air is a pretty violent way of stopping the train, the driver would most likely respond to the alarm by aggressive braking, but not emergency braking.
Do trains have navigation aids this days? I mean, do you have anything on the cabin (or whatever is it called) that shows the current traffic on the rail line?
Do you feel as though you are continuing in some great, mythic American tradition of railroaders- as immoralised by the Jimmie Rodgers or Johnny Cash’s of the world?
OP: <snip> “It’s a very closed off type of industry and there’s not much contact with people outside the railroad, which creates some pretty interesting personalities. I’ve never met a stranger bunch of people.”
There was a movie about that, Strangers on a Train.
But seriously, do they still use a “dead man’s throttle”, i.e., if the driver dies while at the throttle, the grip relaxes and the train stops?
Do you employees refer to the driver as the “engineer”?
Do the drivers refer to themselves as “engineers”? I once worked with some r.r. civil engineers, who built/maintained the rail systems and they always referred to the drivers as drivers.
Do you refer to trackside fertilizer bin dump tubes as “dukey chutes”?
Have you seen the flick, “Emperor of the North”, originally entitled “Emperor of the North Pole”, starring Lee Marvin as the hobo emperor?
Here’s what New York City Transit says about the emergency brake cords on the subways:
Using the Emergency Cord
Use the emergency cord only to prevent an accident or injury. For example, if someone gets caught between closing subway car doors and is being dragged, pull the cord. But if your train is between stations and someone aboard becomes ill, do not pull the emergency cord. The train will stop, preventing medical professionals from reaching the sick passenger. A sick person is better off if the train goes to the nearest station where police and medical services will be waiting or can be quickly summoned, without interruption.
How hard is it to get a job working on railroads? Was it your first choice of job or did you just sort of fall into it, and either way, how did it happen?
Also, on behalf of Whatsit Jr.: “I want to know how to drive a train. All the ways! Also, how it feels, and whether it is easy sometimes to have accidents or not.”
Pretty much never. Sometimes we’ll get some punk kids hop our train. People I work with have seen hobos, apparently a couple of famous people too.
Ale
No, but thats due to my general lack of enthusiasm. And we don’t have any navigational type stuff on a train. Most locomotives do have a GPS unit on it but it doesn’t seem to be used in any way to route the train. People are constantly calling looking for engines and trains can be sent to the wrong place pretty easily.
mamboman
Not at all. After you meet the people any romantic thought you’ve had about railroading goes out the window, although I do enjoy it sometimes.
Ignatz- We do have dead men? . More modern locomotives have alerters, which you have to constantly reset with your hand. We all refer to engineers as engineers. They all get offended if you refer to it as driving. they RUN an engine. You drive a car, steer a boat, pedal a bike and RUN an engine and so on. I know nothing about a dukey shute. If you mean our toilets, they’re emptied by septic trucks now.
MsWhatsit- I went to a hiring session that was advertised in the paper. About 50 people showed up. After they explain the job and the hours usually about half the people get up and leave. They only hired one person out of the remaining 25 people, me. I didn’t find it terribly hard to get hired though. There was some tests and a background check. Working for the railroad is a good job for people like me but doesn’t pay enormous amounts of money like it used to.
I dont drive a train yet, but they can be difficult to handle. You’re dealing with several thousand tons distributed sometimes unevenly over more than one type of terrain. Your train can be around two bends, on an incline, and going up and down a hill at the same time. I think about that a lot when we’re crossing a bridge from PA to NJ, our train is occupying two states at once.
Why do they switch cars (or engines) at the same time every day? And why does it take so long?
I have to be at work on Mondays at 5, and every Monday from 4:30 to 5, traffic is stopped while they’re doing something. (After the first couple of times waiting, I changed my route.)
