Western Railroad Discussion > Got enough geometry cars on one train?

Seen this afternoon at Avondale, CO interchange track to the TTC. (aka Pueblo Test track interchange). BNSF 7881, NXTrack Geometry Car NXGX 390, BNSF 81 Track Geometry car, BNSF 80 Track Geometry car ("Rio Grande River" bilevel), BNSF hopper car, and BNSF 90 Passenger car (sleeper??). There were some extra cables between BNSF 80 and the hopper car. Looks like some geometry car comparison test train coming out of TTC? Anyway, once this train passes over your territory hopefully everything should be properly checked.

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Geometry cars Skagit River & Atchison have been working around Montana a few weeks back. Today the set was parked at the Vancouver, Wa depot.That set gets around.

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Would love to see the insides of these things.

BNSF 90 is an unmanned Geo car.

- Jeff Carlson

going to do some comparisons?

djm448 Wrote:
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> Would love to see the insides of these things.


The manned car, Rio Grande, should have the "command center" on one end of the car (side with windows level). The other side (with the windows decending) has a few rows of theater seating; big rear window; air gauge, radio and emergency vavle near the big window--also a few tables behind the theater seats; three tv screens above the rear window to show track related material and deficiencies. The middle of car has a small galley/kitchen. They usually have all flavors of Klondike Ice Cream Bars know to man.

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/24/17 04:29 by Hookdragkick.

Must've been combined in Pueblo as just unit, hopper and rear car passed through Palmer Lake a few days ago.
JB

Geometry cars can get out of calibration. At Metrolink the FRA had to throw out a day's worth of testing when the cross-level reading drifted off.
We suspected an error but they insisted our track was bad, even when miles of tangent track showed about 1" out of level.
I said it was level yesterday, why did it change overnight?
In addition to our own inspections by Roadmasters and Foremen, the train crews were not reporting any exceptions.
With 20 miles to go to returning to Los Angeles we went into the Sylmar siding to stop and check; sure enough the tangent showed 1" out of level on the car, a hand held track level was right on zero, as it should be.
They just picked up their buggies and clammed up the rest of the day, promising to return.
In a few months other geometry cars from the UP and other FRA groups repeated the runs with never a massive fail like that.

IO don't think these were all sent to TTC for routine calibration. Perhaps a check to see what differences between "calibrated" cars might be? (Kind of like the old Chinese proverb...man with two watches never knows what time it is) Railroad with 3 geometry cars does not know what the track really looks like, but can take the best answer!

It looks like two geo trains together. Normally the first three cars travel together (manned) and the last two cars travel together (robot).