Prototype information for the modeler

What you do not want most is to leave the weight car behind!

If you look you will see that these cars are still piped... if they don't have their own air brakes they will have plain pipe through the car and a hand brake for tieing them down/parking them.  I wouldn't have thought that either deposited water or brake wear would affect their weight by that much (brake wear might be significant)  water could always be dumped from the trap.

Here we wuld run them two cars forward of the brakevan (caboose) if we had them... same 3 cars with brakes working as above...

I would expect the weight cars to be severely speed restricted because of their short length... another thing to hate them for.

Does any RR still use weight cars or do they have contractors come in with a truck with an hydraulic boom and place known weights on the scales?

Lotus098 wrote:

So, what does a weight car look like?

Older style:

http://crcyc.railfan.net/mow/scale/cr80011.jpg

Newer style:

http://crcyc.railfan.net/mow/scale/cr80093a.jpg

There's also several that are made from standard cars like covered hoppers, a sampling is on:

http://crcyc.railfan.net/mow/scale/mwscale.html

nbrodar wrote:

Cabooses, because they carried the markers, had to be the last car in the train.

Now I've heard everything! For your information, the caboose IS NOT the end of the train! The end of the train is THE MARKER! PERIOD

 The caboose could be placed anywhere within the train, even ahead of the engine, but, the rear of the train will be the Car with the Marker hanging on the rear!

if that's the case - could it be said that a "train" is not a "train" until the loco is attached (giving it some form of identifying number) and the caboose marker lanterns (or some other form of an EOT device) are lit and hung? 

NeO6874 wrote:

if that's the case - could it be said that a "train" is not a "train" until the loco is attached (giving it some form of identifying number) and the caboose marker lanterns (or some other form of an EOT device) are lit and hung?

Direct quote from Peter Josserand's classic Rights of Trains, the ultimate authority on all things rule-wise before and during the transition era:

Train: A locomotive (or locomotives,) with or without cars, carrying markers.

Mr Josserand goes on to explain (in excruciating detail) how trains get the right to occupy the railroad.  Through it all, as long as there is a locomotive headlight on the front and markers at the rear, it makes no difference if the movement is a two mile long string of coal on wheels behind a half-dozen of the latest and greatest or a GE 44-tonner running light.

One train I would have liked to see was the movement of brand-new 4-10-2 locos from Baldwin to Southern Pacific country in the 1920's - 20 locomotives and a caboose - carrying markers.

Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - with working markers)

OK, so you have to have a locomotive, and EOT markers.   Pretty simple... I was figureing "train" as a sting of cars with a loco(or locos) and a caboose, though I could see it being a loco and EOT markers on/a caboose immediatley behind the tender.

A train is anything that the operating department (by whatever name) decides to call a train.

What is the front of a train, the back of a train and where a caboose is required to be is also determined by the operating department of the railroad.  This may change from era to era and, to a much lesser extent, by location. 

While it is true that the rear of a train that is required to have a caboose (as above) is the last vehicle and that will be carrying the marker(s)/flag/eot NORMAL practice when a caboose is involved is for it to be the last car - for all the reasons I've stated above.

When the ops dept is defining trains, or a movement as a train it can include On-Track-Machines as trains or not.  Just to make life easy they are sometimes classed as a train in their own right and sometimes the same machine(s) aren't classed as trains.  If you have the Rule Book you might figure it out.

Even a humble inspection car can be designated as a train.

Exactly the same thing applies when determining whether a very long track run under a bridge is a bridge or a tunnel.  If the engineers say it's a tunnel, it's a tunnel... if they say it's a bridge then it's a bridge.

Something to bear in mind is that if you get right out in the wilds and no-one will be looking the working that goes on isn't necessarily "approved".  usually "variations" will fall within "grey" areas that can be talked away so long as nothing serious goes wrong.  Most of the time nobody will take any notice so long as the job gets done safely.  The problem is always to keep things in the "grey area" within bounds and to not start to assume and get into sloppy practices.  As in almost any industry people start to assume.  "Local Practices" that "everyone knows about" are a constant source of stupid, avoidable and sometimes fatal incidents.  Usually things stretch to a limit until people get pulled back in line.  The bad things happen when what happens has gone way over the line and someone gets maimed or killed.

I don't think that there is a human on the planet that will not take some sort of short cut.  One thing is to be aware that one is taking additional risks whenever one does it...another is to make sure that rookies are taught best practice and... when they've learnt it... make sure that they understand the dangers of the short cuts.  Big problems occur when they get to thinking that the short cuts are normal correct procedure.

A lot of the training/mentoring I do is scaring the **** out of rookies with what can go wrong.  then i tell them the right way to do the job.  I find that most times this is effective for a very long time.

Not sure if this came up earlier, but it depends too on how a line is designated - for example, inside of specifically designated "yard limits" areas, you can move cars without a caboose (like when you're switching them in a yard obviously!!).

Some railroads had yards where the yard limits extended a mile or two beyond what would appear to be the yard itself. In fact one railroad - I think the LS&I?? - officially listed their entire railroad as being "within yard limits" back when cabooses were still required (c.1980). Since the whole railroad was within yard limits, they never had to use a caboose !!

I was filping through a copy of the NS 2005 annual report and was looking at the number of freight cars owned by type and I saw NS still owns 200 something active Cabooses. I contacted Ruby Husband the manager in charge of northeadtern operations and asked him what they are for. He said NS uses them when they have a special (military weapons, nuclear waste, etc.) and when they push a train more then 1 mile, they put it in the front of the train.

NSlover92 wrote:

I was filping through a copy of the NS 2005 annual report and was looking at the number of freight cars owned by type and I saw NS still owns 200 something active Cabooses. I contacted Ruby Husband the manager in charge of northeadtern operations and asked him what they are for. He said NS uses them when they have a special (military weapons, nuclear waste, etc.) and when they push a train more then 1 mile, they put it in the front of the train.

Don't you mean that they put it in back of the train so that when they go back in a push move they have somewhere for crew/ a pair of eyes to ride (safely inside rather than hanging on the stirrup/side) at what has become the front... so that the caboose is in front of the train going backwards... ... I think I'll go and watch cricket...

Dave-the-Train wrote:

NSlover92 wrote: I was filping through a copy of the NS 2005 annual report and was looking at the number of freight cars owned by type and I saw NS still owns 200 something active Cabooses. I contacted Ruby Husband the manager in charge of northeadtern operations and asked him what they are for. He said NS uses them when they have a special (military weapons, nuclear waste, etc.) and when they push a train more then 1 mile, they put it in the front of the train. Don't you mean that they put it in back of the train so that when they go back in a push move they have somewhere for crew/ a pair of eyes to ride (safely inside rather than hanging on the stirrup/side) at what has become the front... so that the caboose is in front of the train going backwards...

Yes that is how you could put it...

Excellent question, James.

-Ed