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I walk the line

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  • Member since
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  • From: Allentown, PA
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Posted by Paul_D_North_Jr on Tuesday, October 27, 2009 4:11 PM

Any 'detectors' nearby - like 'hotbox' or 'dragging equipment', etc. - that the train might have set off, and so they would have been looking for that ? 

Otherwise - since it was stopped in an unusual/ undesirable place, I too would suspect an undesired brake application = loss of train line air pressure.  So maybe they were looking for loose [?]or improperly mated [?] or disconnected 'glad hand' couplings, defects in the train line piping, some brakes that were applied but not others, etc.

- Paul North.

"This Fascinating Railroad Business" (title of 1943 book by Robert Selph Henry of the AAR)
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Posted by bubbajustin on Tuesday, October 27, 2009 3:33 PM

Maybe the EOTD wasn’t picking up an air reading, and they were looking for an air line leak?

The road to to success is always under construction. _____________________________________________________________________________ When the going gets tough, the tough use duct tape.

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Posted by tree68 on Tuesday, October 27, 2009 2:11 PM

The process sounds very much like a normal "Class 1" or "Initial Terminal Test," although as Carl says, it would be highly unusual to block a street/highway to do so (unless it was actually railroad property, in which case it wouldn't matter).

The back-and-forth over the couplers also suggests to me that they were looking for something specific, either due to a roll-by or perhaps an unexpected emergency application.

One other possibility that occurs to me is that they had picked some cars up and were inspecting them, the rest of the train having been inspected previously.  It's also possible that they may have been avoiding fouling another, busier crossing at the other end of the train, with the train being too long to fit in between.

LarryWhistling
Resident Microferroequinologist (at least at my house) 
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Posted by CShaveRR on Tuesday, October 27, 2009 1:53 PM
Blocking a crossing for an inspection? Car knockers wouldn't routinely do that, I don't think. Norris, do you have any idea about whether the train was entering or leaving the yard? I suspect that whoever was inspecting the train was doing so on the strength of a defect report obtained during a rollby, possibly while a newly-minted ethanol train was departing.

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)

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Posted by Anonymous on Tuesday, October 27, 2009 1:35 PM

Sounds like a pair of "car knockers" to me...

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I walk the line
Posted by Murphy Siding on Tuesday, October 27, 2009 1:22 PM

    Today, at t the edge of a secondary yard, a train was stopped accross the intersection.  I sat watching the train crew.  There was a row of ethanol cars.  Two switchmen were walking, one on each side of the cars, at the same pace, kind of looking under the cars.  At the end of each car, they seemed to hollar accross the couplers, as if comparing notes.  Then off they kept walking, to the next coupler, to do the same thing.  What were they looking for?

Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.

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