Eastern Railroad Discussion > Meet the trainmaster at Tucker Rd (Macon, GA, KCS 4825)

One of the advantages of having a home-based business is that you can have the scanner on all the time. Most of that time, the radio chatter is anything but the NS Griffin District (Macon to Atlanta via CofG). This afternoon picked up chatter between crew of NS Train 180 and the DS about problems with the train. When I heard the crew being told to meet the trainmaster at Tucker Rd, it was time to get out for some pictures. Train stopped at the perfect spot, and the overcast sky took out the sun that would be heading towards my cell phone. Trainmaster was already there before the train arrived (white Ford SUV in first picture) and he boarded KCS 4825 with what appeared to be laptop PC (laptop PC put on walkway before trainmaster climbed the steps). Not sure what the problem was as train left shortly after pictures were taken. Other locomotives in consist were KCS 4868 and NS 9785.

John

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Great catch on that line there Doc. To bad the weather is what it is as that would make for some neat photos over Barnesville way. Does that 180 go up to Indy?
NSSpike

Phil Maton
Villa Rica, GA

Thank you, Phil. Believe that 180 goes to Bellevue, OH. Not sure how KCS power got to Macon. May have been on 361 this morning. Train reportedly met G02 at Smarr.

John

JOHN:
Good to see your interesting photos. We never saw any KCS units in Louisville back in the day.
MARK

If TM got on with a laptop it's a pretty safe bet he was downloading info from the event recorder.

Apparently train had problem coming up the ruling 1% grade from downtown Macon and was stopped around MP S-194. SB that met 180 at Smaarr had a slow order around MP S-194.

john

They met the road forman. While coming up the grade just as the engines got to I75 the middle unit a Dash9 decided to go from 300amps to 1000amps instantly while it had been in notch 8 for the climb up. This resulted in a surge that ripped the knuckle out of the second car behind the engines.

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Thank you for the additional information and the correction. Radio chatter gave the instruction to meet the "trainmaster".

John

Don't surprise me lol. I just got off the phone with the engineer this morning after I got off work giving him heck over getting a knuckle.

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A technical question. With modern locomotives such as the KCS ES44AC that was in the lead, what information does the engineer get about performance of trailing units or is it still based on the experience of the engineer to know that one of the trailing units is not performing correctly?

John

None. The Dash 9s were supposed to be able to do consist info but it's never worked on one I've seen. If you have say 2 SD70ACEs they will talk to each other and give you a consist effort. Showing the power each is producing

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