Aww, piece o' cake!Ed's right--that cut, if in fact the locomotive at left is shoving the cars up a hump lead, will probably either shove the cars over the hump into a classification track or pull them back to the receiving yard after the rest of the cars are humped. In my old sandbox, either scenario would be possibilities.But if there had been just one or a few cars like this in the middle of a shove (and there were no hazmat placards on the cars that would prohibit their humping), over the hill they'd go. Keep in mind that even though those cars are heavy, they're still 89-footers, so there are half again as many wheels to grab. And we'd be a lot more confident in the chains used to hold these puppies than we would the tiedowns for autos (which we wouldn't hump) or pig trailers.A word on hazmat placards. A lot of military vehicles have them--some are tank trucks loaded with gasoline or diesel fuel, others have containers on them containing the hazardous substances. Our rules state that intermodal containers with any placards on them (other than Class 9) could not be humped. But military vehicles with such placards would be treated like any other freight cars with placards...if you could hump a tank car with that commodity, you could hump the military vehicles. If the back of the truck had barrels of gasoline, it would be okay. If they had crates of explosives, no way.
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)
I doubt that set of cars was humped...most of the time, the cut levers on DDOX cars with those loads will have wood wedges hammered into pin lift, eliminating the option/ability to separate the cars.
You can pretty much count on that train or cut of cars being shoved into a track, even the best retarders in the best yard would have a tough time with loads like that!
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Am a little confused on the photo location of a switcher move to line up the 6 axle loaded flat cars for humping that many loads. That is alot of hardware to be humping. I don't believe that is practical procedure. Just my thoughts. Loco 6625
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