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When I asked for the exact definition of “knowing the road,” I got some good responses here.  As has been pointed out, the definition is clear and simple.  If an engineer knows where he is at on the railroad, he will be able to state the location in relation to however many other landmarks it takes to define his location.  With the accumulation of some familiarity, an engineer should be able to know the road on a continuous, un-interrupted basis as he travels down the line day or night. <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p></o:p> The unanswered question is how much the engineer knows about his location in a fog that obscures vision.  With this question, it depends on how thick the fog is.  It has been suggested here by others that an engineer can run in zero-visibility fog because he is capable of knowing the road by senses other than sight.  Of this, I am quite skeptical.  Knowing the road without eyesight would be far, far more difficult than knowing the road by the use of eyesight.  If the engineer does not know where he is at, all the other rules and instructions break down, leaving the train running wild as they say. <o:p></o:p> So when I asked for the definition of knowing the road, here is the question I should have asked instead:   <o:p></o:p> Considering that knowing the road without the use of eyesight would require almost superhuman skills, and considering that a failure to know the road even on an intermittent basis in zero-visibility fog would be a serious breach of safety; how does the railroad company know that an engineer knows the road well enough to know where he is at in zero-visibility fog?    It seems to me that the company would have to test the ability of engineers to know where they are at in dense fog.  An official would have to ride with the engineer, have the engineer blindfolded, and ask the engineer to describe the location at certain intervals.  The engineer would have to respond by giving sufficient landmarks to identify the location well enough to comply with the rules and instructions pertinent to that location.
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