Just started engineer training and i seem to have trouble telling on a short hill if its up or down , and some of these hills are steep, lose speed fast. any ideas would be a huge help!!!! Thanks John
The eye can be easily fooled by the lay of the land leading one to missinterpret slope.
Hang a weighted pendulum in the cab someplace (out of the wind) and watch which way it is hanging. It will move due to acceleration/deceleration, but will settle when the speed evens out. Then maybe you can tell whether you are tipped up or down. Maybe get one of those magnet-base protractors with the pendulum inside and stick it on the wall of the cab.
Semper Vaporo
Pkgs.
Look over at your conductor...
If he's slumped forward, you're going downhill. Backward, you're going uphill.
Nick
Take a Ride on the Reading with the: Reading Company Technical & Historical Society http://www.readingrailroad.org/
listen to the engineer your training under.. they know the territory and how to run a train on it.. as far as going up hill or down.. if you have to add power..your going up hill... and if you have to reduce power to keep the speed..your going down hill... and you can feel in your butt through the seat what the train is doing behind you... you will be able to feel the slack action as your butt gets more fine tuned to being in the seat...
You have just discovered why it is important for a train engineer to become familiar with his territory. Steep grades will often be fairly obvious, but for lesser grades the only reliable clue is how the train is behaving. Remember that, and now you will be prepared on the next trip. Without wanting to reopen the "foggy" thread, grades and their effect on train performance are also one of the factors that experienced engineers use to keep track of where they are.
John
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'm not an engineer (yet), but I do take notice of our profile, which includes some 1% on our local runs, and a couple of areas of 2% elsewhere. If you're in the middle of a curvy 2% grade several miles long, your eye can be fooled into thinking you're running on the level. Your train will tell you otherwise of course.
We've got one section that's level, but that I would swear is on a grade.
Learn your profile through whatever tools you have available. I've got ours, which also has curvatures - which are a little easier to judge on the ground.
Another reason not to rely on your eye is because you often need to be set up for an upcoming situation before you can see it.
Larry Resident Microferroequinologist (at least at my house) Everyone goes home; Safety begins with you My Opinion. Standard Disclaimers Apply. No Expiration Date Come ride the rails with me! There's one thing about humility - the moment you think you've got it, you've lost it...
Sound like the best advice so far is: A.) Listen to your Training engineer
B.) Study whatever you can, in advance, timetable, or profile view, to
have and idea of the track profile sequence (if available).
C.) The pendulum idea sounds pretty good. The local 'big Box' may
stock a magnetic, right angle square, it has an inclineometer in it,
it could work when attached to a metal surface.
D.) Of course, if it was a steam engine, the handle on the whistle cord
might be useful!
E.) Pay attention to your trainer, he's getting paid to see if you succeed.
All the rest may be suspect.
Remember there are many out there who have as a seconf profession , make that avocation,
that of Joker.
And Best of Luck!
P.S. There are plenty of us out here who are envious, and lacking the opportunity!
Semper Vaporo The eye can be easily fooled by the lay of the land leading one to missinterpret slope. Hang a weighted pendulum in the cab someplace (out of the wind) and watch which way it is hanging. It will move due to acceleration/deceleration, but will settle when the speed evens out. Then maybe you can tell whether you are tipped up or down. Maybe get one of those magnet-base protractors with the pendulum inside and stick it on the wall of the cab.
If you wait that long to see if the weighted pendulum will swing one direction or another its already to late and you will already know if you have started up hill... and if you wait to see if your going down hill you will know that to and then get another gift from the train and Mr.Newton.... ROFLOL,
wabash1If you wait that long to see if the weighted pendulum will swing one direction or another its already to late and you will already know if you have started up hill... and if you wait to see if your going down hill you will know that to and then get another gift from the train and Mr.Newton
CShaveRRThat little gift Wabash speaks of may have you ROF, but you probably won't LOL!
The conductor might LOL.
But then again, he might be really upset because you woke him up by knocking him out of his seat, and possibly making him carry some iron.....
JohnWPowell Just started engineer training and i seem to have trouble telling on a short hill if its up or down , and some of these hills are steep, lose speed fast. any ideas would be a huge help!!!! Thanks John
When I started, I had the same problem as you. Once I was acquired track charts, my operating problems went away. Like wabash1 said, once you feel the train slowing or accelerating, it is already too late.
CShaveRROn our little railroad, the employee timetable now includes track profiles.
Carl, if your railroad is little, what railroad is big?
Johnny
csxengineer98 listen to the engineer your training under.. they know the territory and how to run a train on it.. as far as going up hill or down.. if you have to add power..your going up hill... and if you have to reduce power to keep the speed..your going down hill... and you can feel in your butt through the seat what the train is doing behind you... you will be able to feel the slack action as your butt gets more fine tuned to being in the seat...
Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.
Murphy SidingWould a guy be able to tell, by watching his speedometer?
tree68 Murphy SidingWould a guy be able to tell, by watching his speedometer? It depends entirely on the profile. The locomotive could be slowing down going downhill, if the train is draped over the top of a hill.
Murphy Siding Knowing the territory, and knowing where your train is at on that territory at the moment seems like it would be much more important than your uphill / downhill orientation?
petitnjThe track profile is the best source but there are two others: 1. Google Earth. Click on your track and the ground elevation shows up on the bottom of the image. You can find minimum and maximum that way and determine which parts of the track are up and down. 2. A GPS. Just set it to record the track and use the elevation measurements in Excel or some other program to build your own track profile. We have a fairly accurate track profile for about 50% of our line and the other 50% is not accurate enough to drive. I just recorded the track on GPS and built a far more accurate profile. BTW every locomotive should be equipped with a GPS speedometer. Far more accurate and easier to maintain than a wheel mounted speedometer. The wheel-mounted speedometer just collects shrubs and the wire breaks.
Mechanical breakage is very straight forward to view and fix as compared to electrical (electronic) breakage. With most mechanical breakage, you get visual evidence of why it broke. With electrical, without doing a lot of circuit tracing and voltage/current draw testing you have no idea why it broke or if plugging a new part in will fix the problem or cause the new part to immediately fail itself.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
Be careful what GPS system you are using...
I have had a few of different (commercial/home) GPS receivers and found that elevation is NOT to be trusted. Just sit the receiver on the ground and note that over a few minutes time the displayed elevation will vary by as much as 50- to 100-ft. (or more with some cheap systems). Some Surveyor's GPS systems will do better, but require setting up a known point nearby (the closer the better) that transmits "error info" to the moveable receiver.
Semper VaporoI have had a few of different (commercial/home) GPS receivers and found that elevation is NOT to be trusted.
I would not trust a builder's level or plumb line kind of gadget - even if you could get the locomotive to be stable enough to obtain a decent reading without the bubble or indicator vibrating or swinging all over the place. A 1.00 % grade is just over 1/2 degree off of horizontal - actually, about 0.57 degree - and most of those things are barely calibrated to even the closest 1 degree.
Instead - as others have said - ''Know the territory !''. For example - does the line follow a stream at all, to obtain the most favorable grade to its next point ? Can you tell which way the stream is flowing ? Almost always, the railroad is going upgrade when it is going upstream, and vice-versa. Usually the rail line stays about the same distance above the stream, so if you can judge whether the stream is getting steeper or not, that will provide a further degree of refinement.
If the rail line is not following a stream, then it is going 'cross-country', usually crossing several drainage basins or stream areas to get someplace with a shorter distance. Such lines usually rise and fall to ridges and valleys, respectively, and they usually have names or some other identifying feature. If you're going from Buckskin Ridge to Frog Hollow, it's a good bet that you're going to be heading downgrade . . .
Get or borrow or even just look at a USGS topo map of your territory. The ''7-1/2'' minute series - on those, 1'' = 2,000 ft., so about 2-1/2'' = 1 mile - usually covers almost 10 miles in the E-W direction, and albout 15 miles in the N-S direction, which can include from 20 to 30 miles of rail line depending on how convoluted it is. Even styudying one in a local public library will provide a lot of information on your route and its grades.
Finally, if you think like a locating engineer, and realize where you are in the territory, and where you're going, that will also give you a clue. If there's a tunnel a short distance ahead, likely the line will be rising to minimize the length of the tunnel, all other things being equal; if there's a bridge ahead, likely the line be be descending to minimize its height and length. The line will also curve to follow the terrain, and sometimes that's done to lengthen the grade so as to reduce the maximum slope to an acceptable figure, instead of just dodging the next mountain or other obstacle. If you think about it a few times as you roll through the countryside and try to imagine what problem the engineers were trying to overcome, that may provide some additional information.
- Paul North.
The level of fine detail/ precision needed to determine a railroad grade is too small for most non-survey-grade hand-held GPS units, unless 10's of miles are involved. Those units have neither the precision, accuracy, close tolerances, nor 'repeatability' to be used for that function. They'll do fine for telling you that you're on top of a 14,000 ft. peak - but not so good at consistently measuring the difference between 2 points that are 1,500 ft. above sea level and 1,600 ft. above sea level - that would be a 2-mile long grade at just 1.0 %, and is enough to slow a train moving at 55 MPH to a stop without any power or brakes being applied; a train at 30 MPH would likewise be slowed to a halt by a mere 30 ft. rise in grade - about 0.6 mile at 1.0 %.
From a simple observation perspective on a locomotive....watch the load meter.
With the engine operating at a steady throttle setting....as you start to climb, the load meter will start registering higher amperage values....as you start to descend the load values will start to decrease, on level ground the load meter values will remain steady.
As a operating engineer, however, you have to have the knowledge of your territory to anticipate what needs to occur well in advance of it's need. The size of today's trains do not permit operating on 'sight' except when required to operate at Restricted Speed (ie. 1/2 the range of vision, not to exceed 15 MPH).
yea i know.. for a long time this place realy has been dry and not much in the way of topics i feel are worth posting on..
watching the speed recorder is the way to do it.. when it starts to lose speed..you add power.. when it starts to pick up.. you reduce power..it applies for up hill..down hill..level track....that is the basics to throttle modulation method of speed control.. but like i said already..the biggest thing is to listen to the hogger your training under.. get as much knowlage as you can from them while your in training.. and take alittle from each one of them and get your own style... every engineer runs his train differnt.. so you will take what you like form each and make it your own...
The EOT head end readout (whether stand alone device or integrated into the computer) should have an accelerometer. It has it's limitations too, but can give you an idea of what's going on.
About the best thing is plain ol' experience. If you pay attention, eventually you'll learn where you are and what's going to happen. You'll learn to know where you're at, what's coming up ahead and what's going on behind you and how it's going to affect the train.
Like someone else said, if all else fails just check the conductor.
Jeff
csxengineer98watching the speed recorder is the way to do it.. when it starts to lose speed..you add power.. when it starts to pick up.. you reduce power..it applies for up hill..down hill..level track....
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