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[quote]QUOTE: Originally posted by Mookie I am outta here in less than 2 hours and not back until Thursday- so here is my report for this week! 1: #6664 - SD60 - Norfolk Southern! Had a really odd whistle - first time I have seen one on the lead - do they always sound that "different"? Or just bad whistle? 2: Coal train pretty much made up - but must have been adding a few more cars on the rear. Do the hostler engineers do that? Any situation that the road engineer does anything more than enter and leave the yard? What is the union's call on this one? 3: Do they allow any smoking inside the cab? 4: Saw a couple of coal trains with a FRED on the rear locomotive (helper) and some without. I see more without than with, but why would they need a FRED on a backward running helper and why aren't they on all of the helpers? 5: Situation: You have two engines on head-end, none on rear on one train. And you have one engine on head-end and one helper on rear on another train. Which is more difficult to start from a dead stop - from a slack standpoint? Seems to me the rear engine would help keep the slack in check better than the two or more engines on the front end? And some food for thought: Talked with a gentleman that is there a lot of the time when we are. He said he watches 10 different places around town and out of town. He said he just did a 16 hour day at our location a few weeks ago - he tries to do it once a year. Saw 74 trains go by in that 16 hours. He has a wedding band, but think he may be a widower and just looking to take up a lot of free time. Either that or she is mighty patient. Now Mookie likes to sit, but 16 hours? Would have to drag a small house behind Millie for Porta-Potty, refrigerator, microwave, books, well, you get the idea. He does it all in the cab of a small pickup truck! That's my hero! And referring back to my lousy engineer posting - just want to have it footnoted that I watched an MT coal train and a loaded coal train - both came in, came to a dead stop and started up - with only the slightest ripple in the entire train. It was so nice and quiet! Mookie smiled! Until Thursday- Mookie [/quote] 1. Probably poor maintenance. 2. On NS it is probably the train crew or a local or yard crew making up the train. No hostlers and NS likes to get the full 8 from everyone. 3. No. 4. Don't need a marker on a light locomotive normally.Headlight on dim is approved as a marker. Probably left on there from last use or to be carried to the rear of the train for hanging. 5. Depends upon whether lead unit can control rear unit or not. If it is a DPU you could control it just as if it was MUed I believe (we don't have DPU units so I haven't tried this) so I don't think you could bunch the slack effectively the way you could with a manned helper. Any input from you other right seaters? LC
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