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Kootenay CentralBack in the Sixties and Seventies the Budd RDCs, which were fast and quiet, that were used in the West had grates in front of their windshields. Not for rocks nor cinder blocks suspended from overpasses, but, for ducks and geese. As the RDCs approached at 70 or more miles per hour, the fowl in the water-filled ditches and sloughs alongside the tracks would panic and often fly across the path of the approaching RDCs, smashing thru the windows and into the vestibules, injuring the Engineer. Tourists, who had seen similar appliances fitted to locomotives in the East, made snide comments about the dangerous slums of the small towns, Population 50, the RDCs passed through. The Ghetto Grates on locomotives in the East were a sad sight.
Back in the Sixties and Seventies the Budd RDCs, which were fast and quiet, that were used in the West had grates in front of their windshields.
Not for rocks nor cinder blocks suspended from overpasses, but, for ducks and geese.
As the RDCs approached at 70 or more miles per hour, the fowl in the water-filled ditches and sloughs alongside the tracks would panic and often fly across the path of the approaching RDCs, smashing thru the windows and into the vestibules, injuring the Engineer.
Tourists, who had seen similar appliances fitted to locomotives in the East, made snide comments about the dangerous slums of the small towns, Population 50, the RDCs passed through.
The Ghetto Grates on locomotives in the East were a sad sight.
It's interesting, the grates were removed when one of those RDC's was assigned to the Esquimalt and Nanaimo Division.
No guards over this a way either...There were days they would have helped though. I've had all manner of "interesting" items fall on my locomotive. The weirdest was the toilet.
Nick
Take a Ride on the Reading with the: Reading Company Technical & Historical Society http://www.readingrailroad.org/
I used to drive over an overpass everyday in college that had chain link fencing on it to keep people from throwing things on UP's track. Once day I saw a couch on the tracks.
Will
Carl
Railroader Emeritus (practiced railroading for 46 years--and in 2010 I finally got it right!)
CAACSCOCOM--I don't want to behave improperly, so I just won't behave at all. (SM)
Kootenay Centralthe dangerous slums of the small towns, Population 50, the RDCs passed through.
Actually pheasants were the real corker.
Bruce
So shovel the coal, let this rattler roll.
"A Train is a Place Going Somewhere" CP Rail Public Timetable
"O. S. Irricana"
. . . __ . ______
Out here in Oregon we put chain link fence on "all" overpasses, both rail and freeway overpasses. I remember about 15 years ago when a 7 lb rock went through a window of a tractor trailer a hit a young girl in the face. That's when all the chain link started to go up. This was out in rural area, not an inner city.
Window guards are still common and necessary on locomotives down here in Mexico. Here's a shot of a Ferrosur locomotive in the yard at Veracruz.
Regards
Ed
A fair amount of NH power was equipped with the grilles. I remember seeing a picture of an EF-4 so equipped. This practice continued well after NH was absorbed by Penn Central. I do not recall any power in the Chicago area so equipped.
Amtrak was not the only ones with Ghetto Guards. Boston's MBTA
Don U. TCA 73-5735
Ghetto Guards is a slang expression applied to thes grates on the windows. Boston, Bronx (NYC), Philadelphia, Baltimore, D.C.and Chicago were areas especially known for youths throwing virtually anything and everything at passing trains, often from overhead bridges and builidings. Increased during the 60's and 70's, thus the grating..
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Youths in some urban areas consider it a sport to dangle objects such as concrete blocks on a rope from road bridges over railroad tracks. Others simply drop an object trying to time it so that an oncoming trains hits it in midair. The wire guards are a defense against that.
Beginning at some date which I can't recall -- maybe around 1990 -- the glass in new engines is required to be impact resistant by Part 223 of the FRA regulations.
What was the idea behind the wire guards that used to be on some Amtrak F40PH.
an example: http://hebners.net/amtrak/amtF200_229/amt200.jpg
What was the intended use, and why were they removed?
-Thanks
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