Do not hump!

[Anonymous]

I watched them hump a couple of ordinance cars at the new UP Davis yard in Roseville. I didn't know what they had but when they were cut loose, I went the other way

[Rodney Beck]

Hi my name is Rodney after I got turned lose from the 15 week instant conductor training the only place I could work was the switchmans extra list. I was working the hump on 2nd trick when a load of light poles came to the crest we stopped humping. The forman asked the hump yardmaster what they wanted to do about this do not hump. The hump yardmaster said let it go over the crest that they had it under control WELL needless to say they did not have control the joint made and light poles went all over the place we had a good laugh at the mess that was made. The next thing the foreman and I was removed from the hump by the trainmaster for not following procedures boy am I glad that the local chairman was working the trimmer at the same time the recordings were played it was found that we were not at falut. Some strange things happen when working the hump. Rodney

[CSSHEGEWISCH]

IHB is apparently marketing itself as a hub for automotive traffic and Gibson Yard in Hammond, which used to be a hump, is routinely filled with auto racks.

[AltonFan]

I remember once reading that one of the Chicago belt lines, I think it was the Indiana Harbor Belt, has a large flat classification yard in Indiana, and they are marketing it as a destination for loads that shouldn't be humped.

[CSSHEGEWISCH]

I live about a mile or so from the crest of Clearing's bi-directional hump, and it appears that they run a pretty tight ship over there since we usually hear the squeal from the retarders regularly and only rarely do we hear the jolt from a carelessly hard coupling.

[Anonymous]

22 axle 750 gross ton Schnabel cars should never be humped as a matter of common sense, but that hasn't precluded them from being mishandled in the past. At most of the major hump yards "Do Not Hump" doesn't have much of an impact unless railroad officials at the respective yard are personally reminded of the nature of shipment , and even then the car could still be humped. All in all hump yards can be an adventure.

[CShaveRR]

Sis, be sure and tell Nora about the children's museum when she gets there. I will inform her that such an animal exists--should be out in Rochelle with her by this time tomorrow!

[Mookie]

QUOTE: Originally posted by sooblue

QUOTE: Originally posted by Mookie

QUOTE: Originally posted by sooblue

Hi Friends,

Hey Sooblue - long time, no hear! Glad to see you are still out there!

Mookie

Hi Mookie,
I'm still here
Say! I was just out to Lincoln a few weeks ago. I'll be back later this summer. I can hardly wait to be able to walk through the rose garden and the sunken garden and go out to frontier park. I brought my 7 year old daughter out a few weeks ago and we climbed on the indian at the park. It was a little cold still though.

I love lincoln. just far enough to feel like a major trip and lots to see.
Sooblue

e-me! Let me know when! And don't expect to see the Sunken Garden - they are renovating it this year - completely down to it's shoes and socks. Wait until next year!

Have you been to the Children's Museum? Quite the place!

Mook

[wabash1]

Ed

I understand completly the one i love the most is the guy who was so rough with his train yarding one night that the 3 car loads( auto racks) of new cars had the alarms going off in them. lights and horns.. i had to stop and pull myself together so i could finish my train yarding. talk about noise.. better than any christmas display and this was at night.

[sooblue]

QUOTE: Originally posted by Mookie

QUOTE: Originally posted by sooblue

Hi Friends,

Hey Sooblue - long time, no hear! Glad to see you are still out there!

Mookie

Hi Mookie,
I'm still here
Say! I was just out to Lincoln a few weeks ago. I'll be back later this summer. I can hardly wait to be able to walk through the rose garden and the sunken garden and go out to frontier park. I brought my 7 year old daughter out a few weeks ago and we climbed on the indian at the park. It was a little cold still though.

I love lincoln. just far enough to feel like a major trip and lots to see.
Sooblue

[sooblue]

QUOTE: Originally posted by edblysard

Wabash, I've been know to knock the bark off a couple of them myself, but still, a boiler on two flats, uh...Duh!

Ed

Hi Ed,
It was amazing how much that steel tube humped up. It had half inch stainless steel walls and all the interior suports and flue sheets. I didn't know that there was that much flex in the couplers.
Sooblue

[edblysard]

Wabash, I've been know to knock the bark off a couple of them myself, but still, a boiler on two flats, uh...Duh!

Ed

[Anonymous]

Mostly the only cars I see with a "Do Not Hump" sign is usually a special car that holds something special or passenger cars

[wabash1]

Ed

we make egg shell couplings here ( you know the kind heard 1/2 mile away with the earth quake feel) it was just a little kick.

[Mookie]

QUOTE: Originally posted by sooblue

Hi Friends,
Quite a few years ago I worked at a manufacturing plant called Moorehead boiler.
My partner and I spent a month building a grain dryer for Cargill that was 75 feet long and weighed about 150 tons. We shipped it stratling two flat cars and on piviots on both ends. It was cylinder shaped and was more like a boiler with 20 six inch flues. The whole thing was acid resistant and abrasive resistant stainless steel. Very pricey. It took two whole days to get it out of the shop and into the two flats. Half a mile away sat the burlington northern hump yard in Columbia hights MN. (northtown yard) It no longer classifies I believe.
We painted on all sides DO NOT HUMP !

Burlington DID.

Four days later we got the flats back and that dryer was kinked right in the middle and IT had a nice HUMP too.

One of the hardest things I had to do was cut apart that stupid thing to try to save as much of it as we could. This type of Stainless doesn't saw, grind or flame cut. I had to air arc it. [banghead]

At the time I hated burlington northern. The pinheads

I'm sure they got a nice bill but I wanted to go KICK BUTT after all the hours of repair work I had to do.

If it says don't hump there has to be a reason.

Sooblue

Hey Sooblue - long time, no hear! Glad to see you are still out there!

Mookie

[edblysard]

Look directly at the both idiots in both the tower and out pulling pins, anything straddling two flats has to be shoved to the first joint, then a bumper car shoved down to that joint, before you can let anything fall against it, or hump something down on top, much less shoving the hump with the two cars in the first place, it aint like this is rocket science...

Ed

[sooblue]

Hi Friends,
Quite a few years ago I worked at a manufacturing plant called Moorehead boiler.
My partner and I spent a month building a grain dryer for Cargill that was 75 feet long and weighed about 150 tons. We shipped it stratling two flat cars and on piviots on both ends. It was cylinder shaped and was more like a boiler with 20 six inch flues. The whole thing was acid resistant and abrasive resistant stainless steel. Very pricey. It took two whole days to get it out of the shop and into the two flats. Half a mile away sat the burlington northern hump yard in Columbia hights MN. (northtown yard) It no longer classifies I believe.
We painted on all sides DO NOT HUMP !

Burlington DID.

Four days later we got the flats back and that dryer was kinked right in the middle and IT had a nice HUMP too.

One of the hardest things I had to do was cut apart that stupid thing to try to save as much of it as we could. This type of Stainless doesn't saw, grind or flame cut. I had to air arc it. [banghead]

At the time I hated burlington northern. The pinheads

I'm sure they got a nice bill but I wanted to go KICK BUTT after all the hours of repair work I had to do.

If it says don't hump there has to be a reason.

Sooblue

[CShaveRR]

MC, darn near everything goes over the hump, but a lot gets held in the retarders...or stopped and allowed to drift out (our CROs know which tracks will give them the desired result). The Bethgons still have steel in them where it counts (we often get stragglers that have been set out of their unit trains). Stack cars (loaded ones) are rare, but we still get them...they're not allowed to hit. I wish we didn't get the autos in our shoves, because they take extra time to handle properly, and the loads and empties really eat up the classification space. But that's the business here...and I can pretty well guarantee you'll never see cars handled the way we do it anywhere else (I think we do pretty well, considering).

[mudchicken]

QUOTE: Originally posted by toyomantrains

I'm pretty sure my ex-wife had a 'do not hump' sign on her during the last days. OOPS! Wrong forum- I meant to post this in the 'ex's that cut you off at the hump' forum! Darn keyboard!
Seriously though, it would take quite a large yard to hump a CWR cut wouldn't it? How many places produce CWR? I've seen only one (on video) and can imagine with the hour of service law and all the CWR used that humping would be required. Or is CWR 'on demand' and transported as needed?

Let me break it to you gently ToyomanTrains....we also gottum Hot Box Detectors and dragging equipment detectors[:-,]....Now PLEASE go wash your mind out with soap and water , then go appologize to the ex.... Savvy - rockhopper?

[V][V][V]

[Train Guy 3]

edblysard you were right. I saw a load of those hoppers go by today.... red end lettered " Rotary End ".

[Anonymous]

I was working a hump job years ago. The first job of the morning, we went down into the yard and coupled to a track to switch. The conductor got off the engine and started back, but something was wrong. There was water standing over the rails several cars away, and a low hanging fog over it. But there hadn't been any rain, and the air smelled kind of sweet. He went back just enough to see what it was, and we skeedadled. The last move of the night switcher was to drop a car into that other track. They didn't watch it, and when it hit, it climbed up over the coupler of a dangerous tank. The result was a drawhead buried in the end of a tank of acid. MAN! I've never seen the environmental gestapo jump so fast...they came out of nowhere right now! Needless to say, the night crew got a nasty phone call to disturb their sleep....{It could have been much worse, but the limestone ballast actually neutralized a lot of the acid.} BTW, I think this was before shelf couplers, so when, about 1911?

[dharmon]

QUOTE: Originally posted by CShaveRR

We've had no problems humping any of the cars you mentioned, Dan (of course, if the Auto-Max cars are loaded, we don't hump them [;)]). Proper loading and load securement is the key.

I didn't know that auto racks were humped. I guess I figured they would be handled...more gently I guess. And I'm looking at this from purely an inquistive standpoint. It would seem that stacks wouldn't be 1) because they wouldn't seem to be sorted as often, with the IMs going more point to point, and 2) the second storey being only pinned to the container below it...it would seem like a lot of unneccessary force on the load. And the coal porters and such being aluminum and more of a point to point also. The trend in building it seems is moving towards specialty cars, vice general freight boxcars. I guess I would have thought that hump yards would be on the decline. This is good info. Thanks

[CShaveRR]

We've had no problems humping any of the cars you mentioned, Dan (of course, if the Auto-Max cars are loaded, we don't hump them [;)]). Proper loading and load securement is the key.

[dharmon]

It would seem, from a layman's perspective, that with more railcar design trends going towards specialized and unit loads that are less tolerable of hump switching that the hump yard would become a liability vice an asset. Bethgons and other aluminum hoppers, spine and well cars, Automax's..etc all not very forgiving of rough handling. Plus, it would seem that the point to point service would eliminate the need to sort as much as in the past.

[edblysard]

Trainguy,
Most likely, the hopper with the red end was a aluminum coal car, or a BethGon, the red end designates the rotary coupler end.
You dont hump them or kick them very hard(at least one wink here) because if loaded, the impact can do a lot of damage to the car when the coal slams into the end...or spills over and makes a mess.
This, of course, is not from personal experience, uhhh, I saw someone else do it.

Ed

[RudyRockvilleMD]

The ICC in the past, and probably the FRA now regulate what can and cannot be hump switched. In general anything that is explosively loaded such as rocket motors, missiles, or material which could be dangerous if subjected to excessive shock must be flat switched and at the lowest speed that will allow a coupling to be made.

I was involved in evaluating the shock and vibration resistance of military equipment for many years during my professional career, and among other things, our test programs included shock and vibration tests to simulate transportation. Considering all modes of transportation shock, the railroad's transportation shock environment is the most severe, most likely due to the possibility the shipment might switched by humping. In general our test requirements included shock due to humping unless it was definitely known that the equipment's shipping requirements precluded hump switching.

[Train Guy 3]

Any reason open hoppers would say " DO NOT HUMP ". I forgot the name that was on the hoppers but one end of each car was red.

[wabash1]

covered hoppers may have do not hump on them . and depending what is in them would tell me if i would do it or not. corn wheat flour not a problem but if it has trichloralisanuric acid in them ( un 2468 ) i would couple at speed only nessesary to make the coupling.

[Mookie]

Anyone ever say railroading wasn't exciting? Wow!