Eastern Railroad Discussion > What is on front of NS 4628

NS G-02 (Griffin District local) came into Macon yesterday with NS 4628 and NS 7010 in the lead. First picture shows train approaching Lake Street crossing. At first glance nothing remarkable except possibly the engineer had the sunscreen rolled down. When I was editing the image, I noticed something strange in the front of 4628, just above the coupler. It looks like a red-colored, oblong-shaped piece of metal, which is hanging down from the edge of the front platform. An expanded view is shown in second picture. What is the red-colored device?

DocJohn

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John
Thats an End of train Device ( EOD ) or FRED.
It belongs on the rear of the train.
It replaced the caboose many years ago.
Are you sure that train was not going away from you
and that was a helper set ??????

Jim

looks like a standard EOT attached on the sid eof the coupler

that is fred {flashing rear end device}

Locals can and do haul these things around on the front coupler. If they had an extra, second best place to put it is in the front coupler.

Could have been anything from a local that turned around, had an EOT go dead, etc.

NS EOTD

I don't know about NS but, CSX requires train crews handling extra EOT's to attach it to the coupler on the lead locomotive.

Knucklehead