I was watching a video of a CN train on youtube. I noticed the EOT had NS reporting mark. This was a CN freight on CN territory. Do rails lease or interchange EOT's with one another? Or just like engines are there run through agreements on EOT's?
SD60MAC9500I was watching a video of a CN train on youtube. I noticed the EOT had NS reporting mark. This was a CN freight on CN territory. Do rails lease or interchange EOT's with one another? Or just like engines are there run through agreements on EOT's?
EOT's are just another piece of railroad equipment that is interchanged between carriers as necessary. There is some sort of 'per diem' charge that applies to EOT's and it is accounted for through the normal car hire accounting.
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All EOT's operate on the same radio frequency - it's the unique unit number that keeps them separate. There was one railroad that was running theirs on VHF (normal is UHF), but I suspect with the current interchange climate, they saw the light and converted over.
For those that don't know, the EOT will tranmit occasionally, when it sees a change in air pressure, at least. If you're chasing on a line with no signals and few crossings, listening in on the EOT frequency (457.9375 MHz) can clue you in to a nearby train. They only transmit at 2 watts, so range is limited. All you'll hear is an occasional data burst.
There is also a frequency for the locos to talk back to two-way EOT's.
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It was NS EOTs that at one time were on their own frequency. I believe that changed with the Conrail split.
The EOTs communicate back and forth every so often. If the communication is lost for 16 mins 30 seconds, the display will show the loss of comm. RF (rear to front) doesn't require any action. FR (front to rear) does. It means that a command to place the EOT in emergency probably won't be transmitted. (They say in an emergency to "dump" the EOT even during FR, just in case it might work.) If the RF message shows up, it usually will go to FR unless communication is restored.
There are head end boxes that have the capability to act as a repeater on DP consists. The long trains are supposed to have them, but they don't always.
Not only EOTs, but radios also can travel around. I remember once when I was on a local freight during my engineer's training, we had a BNSF EOT, an Amtrak radio and a CSX head end box.
Every so often there is a effort to try to get foriegn EOTs back to their proper owner. Usually it's railroad specific, rather then a general return home push.
Jeff
Foreign radios are a pain. You have to remember the AAR channel codes.
Radio handsets get even more miles, as do A/C units for older GEs (the box behind the conductor's side of the cab that's often a different colour than the rest of the unit).
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Dont know about foreign radios being a pain, I remember, during brake test- fueling ect, one of the car knockers would get up on the engine and check the radios and the head end radio device, if it was something "they wanted" they would swap it out for something "they" wanted us to have. In the service truck the mechanical folks kept radios from a lot of different carriers, same with EOTS dont know what they were doing with this stuff, sending it back maybe.
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