Idleing Locomotives

[Anonymous]

i know one thing about he apu's in the engines we have on csx. and maybe someone can back me up here. THEY STINK. whoever thought of that idea has never done railroading in some really cold weather. last winter, we had the whole intro class to the apu system on the engines. they work fine as long as it does not get below 20 degrees. we had 36 days and the warmest it got was 2 above freezing. we got our buts chewed the first week for not using the apu's. so we started using them. needless to say we started sending engines back to dewitt at a rate of two a day that were frozen solid because the apu froze up. well after a month with only half of motive power fleet that was running and numerous delayed and cancelled trains we wemt back to the old way of leaving the engines in the 3rd notch while idleing. it just goes to show oyou that jacksonville can not run a railroad in new york. and if i remember right, conrail never had as bad a problem like this in the winter.

[wabash1]

Teamdon

Just what do you think the thing is doing when the auto start shuts the unit down. it shuts down all electrical not needed such as heat and air conditioning. and if the batteries are weak it wont restart. it dont haft to be isolated for the auto start feature to become active. As far as the east doesnt know how to railroad .. all i can say is keep doing what you are doing we enjoy the naps we get waiting on you professionals to bring us the trains we been waiting weeks for. Come to think of it you left your jumper cables on the train we recieved yesterday and is already back in route to you. and the way you guys run you should recieve them by the 25th of this month.


wildbill

How old of a unit does this happen on.? pre-lube keep lubing after you shut it down. Ive never done this to any emd engine. and csx engineer is correct this has all become automatic if resistance is high they automaticly purge the cylinders .

Broncoman

What you are refering to is called spotter control. it uses the batteries to move the engine in shop tracks for working on engines if the engine has a mechanical problem and canot be started they use the spotter controll to move the engine to where they want to work on it. it saves on having to hook up a engine to move them. this is on emd units only. and battery voltage on engines is 75 volts.

[broncoman]

Thanks for the information.

[Anonymous]

This is a practice that goes way back. In the old days no head gaskets [pressure fit] of any kind were used and the water would leak into the crankcase [among other places] and get into and dilute the oil. There for the railroads did not use antifreeze. When an engine was started, a person always opened the flashcocks and turned the engine over a few times. This was done to remove any water that might have leaked into the cylinders.[water doesn't compress]. After the water was removed, the flashcocks were shut and the engine started. Incidentally several methods were used for starters. The most common were the generators, but there also was the air starter.Alco used it in the late 60s on their C series of locomotives

[Randy Stahl]

[.




What you are refering to is called spotter control. it uses the batteries to move the engine in shop tracks for working on engines if the engine has a mechanical problem and canot be started they use the spotter controll to move the engine to where they want to work on it. it saves on having to hook up a engine to move them. this is on emd units only. and battery voltage on engines is 75 volts.

[wabash1]

Then what you are saying is batteries are 64 volts but the system charges at 72 -75 volts so it over charges the system at 10 volts. this is interesting as our engines will restart when battery voltage drops below 70 volts. so the engines whould shut down and then immediatly go into restart as it will read 64 volts in the batteries. Not to mention all the over charging it is doing will burn up the batteries real quick..

[Randy Stahl]

Why don't you try putting a voltmeter across the battery switch on a dead engine like I have many thousands of times in my career. Even your car battery charges at 14.5 volts,again 2volts per cell 6 cells = 12 volts
75 volts is only present on the locomotive when the engine is running and the aux gen is making power.
Recheck your information on restart voltage .
I have to laugh at the wisdom of this technology because the only time you need to worry about the safety of the engines is in the winter time. I'm sure that the system you are using will also restart if main res pressure drops below a certain point, so If you have a train with a consist say 3 engines,the main res is equalized through the MU hoses, all of the engines in the consist will start and run to pump air. In the old days we would shut down 2 of the three and let one pump air , no big deal in the summertime.
The biggest problem I've run across is the managers put these engines out there and forget about them and run them out of fuel, go figure!

[wabash1]

Randy

I dont have access to a volt meter at work nor do i care to. the volt meter i refer to is in the 2nd level of the dash 9 screen in locomotive moniter. this is where i watch what my traction motors are doing temp of traction motor, engine rpm , battery voltage, amps , and then it gets into field amps , altinator output from altanator for traction motors , etc. when the engine is shut down the only source of power is the batteries. and the volt meter shows how much is there. ( just like your car) and not nit picking your statement but if you only have 1 of these self shut down /restart engines in your consist that is all that starts and shuts down. it wont affect any other units. Yes we still shut down all but the lead unit for air . yes the main resv airpressure will cause a restart also. there was /is several things that makes these units restart. but if the railroad wants me to sit in 30 degree weather without heat till the water temp drops to a restart temp or with out air-conditioning in the heat of the day. they are crazy. lets see david goode sit on that engine 3 hrs waiting in the heat on a train meet. or in a blizzard. either works. and if there is food on the radiator heating up it aint shuting down either I leave the reverser forward and the engine wont shut down.

[Randy Stahl]

Wabash....
Just curious if ALL your locomotive consists have an air conditioned engine in the lead?
On the CN, our engines are not equipped with A/C and we are instructed to put A/C engines in the lead.. this sometimes means using foreign engines for leaders. Apparently there is an agreement with the BLE to this effect. Do you have this as part of your agreements? I think the CN is the only big railroad that doesn't get A/C with new locomotives. I have seen a BNSF crew take the time to remove new CN engine from the lead and replace it with a crusty old CSX dash 8.

[wabash1]

The original agreement was that at initial make up terminal that if practical air -conditioned engine will be in the lead. this was not for crew comfort as most would think.. It was so that the electronics (the computors) engines .would stay cool. there has been on occasion where they would let you swap out a trailing unit to the lead so you could have the air conditioned unit in the lead but if the yard master had more than 1 train in the yard this wasnt going to happen. and if i remeber correctly we was told if sitting in a siding to go back to trailing units with air-conditioning and reset them so that the trailing unit air was on and working. most generally the air isnt working properly anyways and to get any kind of air circulation on a wide body you need to open the front door plenty of air will circulate with the front door open at track speed.