Western Railroad Discussion > Q for locomotive engineers re: DPU's and manned helpers

Recently visited Crawford Hill in NW Nebraska. The loaded coal trains (from the PRB) arrive just north of Crawford with usually one or two DPU's on the rear and they stop a short distance north of town. At that stop a set of manned helpers, usually at least three or four units, are added on right behind the DPU's. The manned helper sets stay on until the top of the Crawford Hill grade is reached at Belmont and then they are cut off to return to Crawford while the coal train continues on its way with the original DPU's. My questions are:

1. When manned helpers are coupled on behind DPU's, do the DPU's remain under the control of the engineer at the front of the train or are they "reconfigured" someway so that they are temporarily under control of the helper set engineer?

2. Where does the helper set engineer have to be located? If the DPU's are temporarily "reconfigured" does he have to be in one of the DPU's? Or is he always in one of the helper set units? (I can't seem to see these guys anymore because of the darkened cab windows)!

Thanks for the info!

They don't reconfigure DP's. The Leader always controls them. But they can MU the helpers TO the DP and they respond with them, or the helper can stay manned.When they cut-off on the fly, they are manned all the way.

They were cutting off the helpers on the fly in the recent past so I'd presume that the consist and DPU setup
would be untouched. While the DUPE units help train handling there's no sense in adding as much power as
would be needed to get over Crawford hence the manned units. In times through there I've seen 4 unit sets of
SD-60's, three unit sets and several other combinations.