Western Railroad Discussion > UP Nampa Sub - Eastbound Stacker

Today was the first day in a long time with some free to take my German Shepherd, Steffie, railfanning in the Nampa, Idaho area.
She gets excited every time I get the camera bag out and she's always eager to go look for trains.
She's even starting to know the difference between the various engines and train types.
I didn't expect to see much running with the holiday, but this EB stacker headed my way shortly after I arrived at my favorite shooting location.
Power was four on the front, led by UP #4555 with a crew who gave me a friendly horn salute as they passed by.
PTC issues reared their ugly head about 11 miles east of Nampa with the crew telling DSP3 that they had "red (diagonal?) bars on their PTC"  at MP 466 (whatever that meant).
The scanner chatter was garbled, but I think they had to stop their train until the dispatcher somehow cleared the PTC warning or talked them through the area.
Those 11 miles would have put them in, or near Kuna, Idaho and may have caused two blocked crossings.
Phil



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/04/19 16:59 by philhoov.

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philhoov Wrote:
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> PTC issues reared their ugly head about 11 miles
> east of Nampa with the crew telling DSP3 that they
> had "red (diagonal?) bars on their PTC"  at MP
> 466 (whatever that meant).
> The scanner chatter was garbled, but I think they
> had to stop their train until the dispatcher
> somehow cleared the PTC warning or talked them
> through the area.

Basically PTC was not recognizing a signal in the field and would not let the train past that point. The red hash box as they call it on PTC is where PTC says you do not have authority. If you do in fact have authority there (via either signal indication or verbal authority), then there are work arounds, but the dispatcher is involved. Sounds like this is what happened.