Western Railroad Discussion > BNSF: Six unit mid train DPU

Surprised to see this the other night on the Chehalis WA virtual railfan camera.  I'm guessing that only a few of these units were powered, but that seems like a lot of weight in the middle of a train.  Two locomotives upfront, six in the middle, one in the back

Does that affect train handling?

What kind of train? But yea 6 in the middle they would not all be online. I think 4 max.

When I was still driving crews in the Dakota's I actually assisted with trains like that. They were two trains combined and the power wasn't shuffled (approximately 14,000 ft. in length). I once asked the conductor about train handling and she said no difference. However she did say it was a pain in the ______ to split into two trains, especially in bad weather or when there were no access roads near the split point or rear. The procedure I assisted in: went like this:

• Head end would stop where van was parked and conductor would board van and head to far switch
• Engineer would pull entire train past the siding switch
• Conductor would throw switch and board rear DP and protect  back-up move into the siding
• Conductor would hit the meter to "guess" approximately where the train needed to stop with the middle DP's past the siding switch
• Engineer moves entire, double train in reverse until conductor instructs to stop
• Conductor would take van to middle DP's to uncouple train that would remain
• Engineer would pull remaining train forward until the rear DP of the front is back on main line
• Conductor would board rear DP on mainline train to protect back-up move until rear DP's of both trains were beside each other.
• Conductor would then take van back to head end of main line train to depart

The ones I've seen on VRF cam in Chehalis, WA were loaded coal trains headed for Roberts Banks, BC.

PCBill

If it was a doubled loaded Roberts Bank, everything is online. The train would stall otherwise.

2x2 just barely gets over Napavine around 12-14mph in N8 and you don't have C4s in the consist. Adding rain to the mix is 8-13mph, depending if there is sand in all the motors.

Posted from Android

Just had to deal with a 15K "splitter" stack train in So Cal (Los Angeles). 4 units up front online, 8 more in the middle, 6 of which were isolated or DIC. Best part, they weren't supposed to go past Barstow, guess somebody didn't get the memo...


~ Mr. MRL

MrMRL Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Just had to deal with a 15K "splitter" stack train
> in So Cal (Los Angeles). 4 units up front online,
> 8 more in the middle, 6 of which were isolated or
> DIC. Best part, they weren't supposed to go past
> Barstow, guess somebody didn't get the memo...
>
>
> ~ Mr. MRL

HA! I've had that happen departing out of Pasco a few times... Wasn't on our paperwork and didn't call us about it until after we were by Wishram.