Railroaders' Nostalgia > More noisy engines and a lesson re-learned

Jack Fuller's (JGFuller) recent comments re SP's Alco C-415's evoked this memory of my early days on the Los Angeles Division.

See:https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?18,4528723

One of the earliest pieces of advice I received about how to successfully run a freight train concerned the control of slack action in over the road operation.
Excessive slack not only is potentially damaging to the contents in the cars in a train, it can also be severe enough
to cause a derailment if not controlled properly. In the days of cabooses, waycars, hacks, crummies; whatever you want to call those cars attached to
the rear of freight trains that carried the conductor and brakemen, one the marks of being a 'good' engineer was how smoothly you controlled
those in-train forces that, if left unchecked, could actually do physical harm to those beings aboard that rear car. The simple maxim that was burned
into my consciousness about train handling was: 'When you got em' stretched, keep em' stretched; when you got em' bunched keep em' bunched'.
Keep the slack stretched or bunched but avoid any in-between silliness. That's when men get hurt. I tried to remember this mostly, but on one occasion I forgot.

One morning I was called for a "One day stand" on either the Anaheim or the Buena Park hauler, can't now remember which, working out of City of Industry in
southern California. These haulers handled some mighty heavy trains of a lot of lumber products out of the Pacific Northwest destined for the constant
building boom going on in Orange County. 70 to 100 cars was not unusual with tonnages approaching 9-10 thousand or more tons. The power for today's train
was two of SP's Alco Century series 415's; 1500 horsepower turbo-supercharged 4 axle road-switcher's, the so-called steeple-cab switchers.
The 1500 traction horsepower was provided by a V-8 version of Alco's 251F series design using a model 131 turbo.
(Source: Southern Pacific Dieselization by John Bonds Garmany).

After leaving C of I, the SP used trackage rights over the Union Pacific's main track from Puente Jct. to Bartolo where we left UP track and entered SP's Puente branch.
The grade approaching Bartolo is slightly ascending and I had my train on a pretty good 'roll' as I passed beneath the lanes of the 605 freeway and prepared to
take the diverging route toward SP's home rails. The speed was slowing nicely in response to the grade rise and I deemed I could use what is today called 'throttle modulation'
to slow for the turnout. I had been using run 8 since leaving CofI but decided to drop a couple of notches now. Big mistake. The Alco's were making their usual noisy gurgle and the turbo's had quieted down considerably. I was running this train by the 'seat of my pants' now; no need to scan the gauges, all was right with the world.

Suddenly, it hit. Kawhaaammm! The full force of my 8000+ tonnage train hit me squarely in the same 'the seat of my pants'. The head brakie looked on dis-approvingly.
How could the slack have run in with such force?, I wondered. I'm in run 6. Now, looking at my load meter I see it is sadly pointing at an ALMOST NO amperage.
That's when I realized that even though those V-8's were making heroic noises, yet thier exhaust starved turbo's had largely gone to sleep with the resultant decay of
traction amperage. I wasn't keeping the train stretched as I had been taught.

Lesson learned: Don't rely on the noise of the engine, especially those Alcos. Check the gauges!



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/16/18 10:09 by cewherry.

Didn't you find the GEs the same way? Touch the throttle and they drop their load and THEN slowly start to load back up. Never was fast enough for the slack. Bang, E-ticket ride. You had to keep those SOBs stretched or you lost running time AND the rear crew were not happy campers.


Nudge

spnudge Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Didn't you find the GEs the same way? Touch the
> throttle and they drop their load and THEN slowly
> start to load back up. Never was fast enough for
> the slack. Bang, E-ticket ride. You had to keep
> those SOBs stretched or you lost running time AND
> the rear crew were not happy campers.

That's my observation. Someone once said a GE engine was just another Alco running around in disguise.
To be fair, GE later put out a much better product.

Charlie

I left Amarillo one night on a loaded rail train with two units. Second unit SD60M. Had a engineer riding in it. We plodded north uphill all night and finally coming into Texline I hollered on the radio if that unit was loading. It had been making noise all night. He replied it was in run 8. I walked back to find it indeed was in run 8. 0 Amps......
A call to mister Goodwrench got it loading in a jiffy and we had a better half of the night.

On the other hand, one can be too much of a meter reader--of this I was accused while a student engineer on NWP's  P&SR one summer, so never fully qualified😩.

Steve Donaldson
Pacific Grove, CA



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/24/19 17:18 by SteveD.