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Saw something cool tonite

Started by DanG, March 26, 2010, 11:24:36 PM

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DanG

I had to scoot up to the store at the last minute and got stopped at a rail crossing.  It was a really long CSX train pulling mostly empty flatcars and it was hauling butt.  I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw that the last car was a caboose!!  I haven't seen one of those on the tracks in years!
"I don't feel like an old man.  I feel like a young man who has something wrong with him."  Dick Cavett
"Beat not thy sword into a plowshare, rather beat the sword of thine enemy into a plowshare."

fishpharmer

That is cool.  I can't recall the last time I saw a working caboose.  Any Train Engineer types out there?
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pigman

I thought you were looking at an ice cube. ;)

I don't live far from a mainline and it has been over 20 years since I have seen a caboose.
The union must have required the caboose to be put back on with a crew of ten. ;D
Things turn out best for people who make the best of how things turn out.

LeeB

DOn't strings of over a certain number of cars still require a caboose? You mentioned that it was an extremely long train.
'98 LT40HDD/Lombardini, Case 580L, Cat D4C, JD 3032 tractor, JD 5410 tractor, Husky 346, 372 and 562XP's. Stihl MS180 and MS361, 1998 and 2006 3/4 Ton 5.9 Cummins 4x4's, 1989 Dodge D100 w/ 318, and a 1966 Chevy C60 w/ dump bed.

CLL

I seen a 137 car coal train today and all it had was two engines in front and one in back.
Too much work-not enough pay.

CHARLIE

Fishpharmer, I started off as a trainman on the mainline of Florida East Coast Railway and ended up as a freight conductor.  The engineer is only in charge of running the engine and its safety. The conductor is in charge of the train and its crew. The conductor determines the movement of the train and the engineer can only refuse if he feels it endangers the engine.

Back when I worked on the railroad, the conductor had to handwrite the switch lists and the Wheel Reports showing movement of the different cas within the train. I spent many an hour at the desk in a caboose filling out reports. At night it would be by the light of a kerosene lamp and in the winter with the warmth of a coal burning pot bellied stove.  I would also sit up in the cupola to check the wheels of the cars when we went around curves and also to wave at people.
Charlie
"Everybody was gone when I arrived but I decided to stick around until I could figure out why I was there !"

Don_Papenburg

I was talking to a guy that works on the U.P.   He told me that with the longer trains that the slack was beating the crap out of the guys in the caboose.  He said that they had several with broken arms and a few with rib damage . One of the guys from the Burlington told my brother that they started putting the pushers on their long trains because the couplers would break  from the load.
Frick saw mill  '58   820 John Deere power. Diamond T trucks

ellmoe

  Dan, looking at the title I thought you were sawing blocks of ice or something. ;D No wonder "furneners" say English is a confusing language.

Mark
Thirty plus years in the sawmill/millwork business. A sore back and arthritic fingers to prove it!

Chuck White

Most times now-a-days when we see a caboose, it's sitting on a
short section of track in some rich guys back yard.

Now that you remind me, it's been a while since I've seen one,
except for the one in the rich guys back yard.
~Chuck~  Cooks Cat Claw sharpener and single tooth setter.  2018 Chevy Silverado and 2021 Subaru Ascent.
With basic mechanical skills and the ability to read you can maintain a Woodmizer  LT40!

LeeB

Hey Charlie, how long did you have to stoke the coal box before you got moved up to that spot? :D :D
'98 LT40HDD/Lombardini, Case 580L, Cat D4C, JD 3032 tractor, JD 5410 tractor, Husky 346, 372 and 562XP's. Stihl MS180 and MS361, 1998 and 2006 3/4 Ton 5.9 Cummins 4x4's, 1989 Dodge D100 w/ 318, and a 1966 Chevy C60 w/ dump bed.

SwampDonkey

It was the beginning of the end when they took our river valley trains out. Only one line through the province I think now and that is under review. Irving has a southern line into the US that I just paid out $18M to service. I mean the Billionaire family wouldn't have $18M? Anyway, I think cabooses are gone here to and all you'll see is a rear engine aside from one or two on front of freight trains. Trucking has taken over, but they struggle to make them profitable. I always said freight should move by train and delivery trucks should be short haul. They did it all ash backwards and is costing a lot of dough to keep highways in shape.

Europe uses trains a lot more than here, even for travel. Here we've gotten too independent with autos and it's costing us a lot more in my opinion to get things done. We have too much wide open space between destinations.
"No amount of belief makes something a fact." James Randi

1 Thessalonians 5:21

2020 Polaris Ranger 570 to forward firewood, Husqvarna 555 XT Pro, Stihl FS560 clearing saw and continuously thinning my ground, on the side. Grow them trees. (((o)))

stonebroke

Cabooses were originally put on trains so the brakeman would have a place to go to. How long has it been since George Westinghouse invented the air brake? The air brake put all those brakeman out of work but the caboose hung on for almost 100 years.

Stonebroke

Coon

Many of our trains around here still have cabooses.  We have a main line going right through the north end of town.  Also here in Wynyard, Sask. we also have a rail yard where they switch cars around.  I can here the trains doing their thing around the clock during the busy season.  This rail line ships mainly to the west with the majority of it being grain.  We do not even have an elevator here in town since they went away from the wooden ones and have gone to the concrete grain terminals.  The closest elevator to here is actually on another mainline about 25 miles from here.  Man 'o' man have I seen some of the strangest things go past on rail cars along with some very weird pieces of art painted on em too.  ;)  I think I might have to go for a lil gander later and see if I can get some pics. 

Coon.
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sprucebunny

The train hasn't come thru my town for 20 years until last summer when they brought a huge transformer totalling 550,000 pounds. Part of it was on  schnabbell car and the crew that works the car lived in the caboose.





MS193, MS192 and an 026  Weeding and Thinning. Gilbert Champion sawmill

SwampDonkey

Coon, when I lived in Rupert, there was steady hauling of coal as well to Port Edward. Big grain terminal there also.



Salmon River Trestle. Drummond, NB.

Bib :D you musta been posting my train. Nice WM CBN sharpener. :D
"No amount of belief makes something a fact." James Randi

1 Thessalonians 5:21

2020 Polaris Ranger 570 to forward firewood, Husqvarna 555 XT Pro, Stihl FS560 clearing saw and continuously thinning my ground, on the side. Grow them trees. (((o)))

Slabs

That caboose musta been headed for it's last rest.  Kinda like the one we have in downtown DeFuniak Springs.  They make nice museum pieces.

Ya ain't supposed'ta git low enough on Natty Lite to have to wait for a freight train to cross the tracks to git to the store DanG.
Slabs  : Offloader, slab and sawdust Mexican, mill mechanic and electrician, general flunky.  Woodshop, metal woorking shop and electronics shop.

tyb525

Trains often have a caboose when they have a lot of backing up to do. Or, it may have just been in transport to one of those rich person's lawn ;). Old logging railroads were fascinating. I recall seeing a photo of a train cross a stream.. the tracks were IN the stream.
LT10G10, Stihl 038 Magnum, many woodworking tools. Currently a farm service applicator, trying to find time to saw!

Coon

Went out for a gander but the railroad crews must be off for the weekend.  I never bothered to get any pics as there was not many cars there and they were too far away. 

Swamp those terminals are alot different than the ones we have around here... they load ships and we load rail cars.  ;)  The ones we have are designed for storing grain for longer periods of times.   

Coon.
Norwood Lumbermate 2000 w/Kohler,
Husqvarna, Stihl and, Jonsereds Saws

CHARLIE

On one end of the Caboose is usually a bed or two. The mattresses are hard as a rock and covered in heavy vinyl. Not comfortable at all.  On the other end, there is usually a stove, a desk with one or two kerosene lanterns mounted on the wall and a commode.  The commode just dumps onto the track.  In the middle is the cupola, where you climb the ladder and sit up high so you can view the train. Today, all the cars have wheel bearings but back when I was working most of the car's trucks had journal boxes. You flipped up the journal box door and there were two mops against the bushing and we would keep oil in the journal box. We would walk the trains and siphon out oil with water in it, blow it on the tracks and refill with fresh oil. Anyway, if a journal box ran out of oil you'd get a "hot box" and smoke would come pouring out. If you didn't catch it, the bearing would break and you'd have a helluva messy derailment. So, the reason you sit in the cupola is to inspect the train as it goes around the curves. You look for smoke.

For a regular boxcar, 100 cars equal one car length of slack.  So if you were in a caboose of a 250 car train and you had a lousy engineer, your caboos is going to travel 2½ boxcar lengths before slamming into a stopped box car. This would cause anyone in the caboose to go flying from one end to the other, plus it will tear up the caboose.  I had a lousy engineer like that once. He DanG near killed me everytime he was stopping the train. He would literally trash the caboose. The toilet would rip from the floor and the windows would start falling out. All the other engineers were good and knew how to stop a train.  The engine has a brake lever that has a "release" valve under it. When the engineer wants to stop the train, he first increases the throttle a notch, then he starts setting the brakes on the train. He does that by drawing the air off the train brakes while pushing down on the "release" valve with the brake handle. The release valve keeps the engine's brakes released.  As the train's brakes start dragging the train down, the engineer increases the throttle another notch or two. The object is for the engine to be pulling while the train was dragging, which causes it to stretch out. When the train is almost stopped, the engineer will back down on he throttle and start using the engine brake too.  With the train stretched out, there is no slack and the caboose will just come to a stop.  The problem is when an idiot engineer applies the engine brake at the same time as the train brake and doesn't increase the throttle.  Without the train brakes set and dragging and the engine brake set, the train starts running into the engine and the people in the caboose are in for a bad time of it.
Charlie
"Everybody was gone when I arrived but I decided to stick around until I could figure out why I was there !"

DanG

I didn't think this topic would even get a reply, but it did and I'm glad.  I love trains and it's a DanG good thing because a track runs less than 200 feet behind my house.  Now I live exactly on top of the only hill in Florida, at least on top of the ridgeline that runs across the whole Panhandle, and I never knew until I moved here that those engines shift gears.  I guess they must use my barn to indicate their shift point, but they shift right here everytime they come by.  When there's about six engines duct taped together, it is an awesome sound.  In fact, it's pretty cool if there isn't but one!  There is just something about the sound of those big diesels combined with the whiney buzz(or is it a buzzy whine?) of the motors that I will never grow tired of hearing. :)
"I don't feel like an old man.  I feel like a young man who has something wrong with him."  Dick Cavett
"Beat not thy sword into a plowshare, rather beat the sword of thine enemy into a plowshare."

LeeB

I guess I don't get tired of it either. We use the same engines and motors on the rigs as they do on the trains. Well, maybe that ain't alltogether true. I would like to hear them no more in another 10 years when God willing, I can retire.
'98 LT40HDD/Lombardini, Case 580L, Cat D4C, JD 3032 tractor, JD 5410 tractor, Husky 346, 372 and 562XP's. Stihl MS180 and MS361, 1998 and 2006 3/4 Ton 5.9 Cummins 4x4's, 1989 Dodge D100 w/ 318, and a 1966 Chevy C60 w/ dump bed.

SwampDonkey

My grandmother was real fond of trains. They used to stop like taxis at all the sidings and watering stations when the steamers where still around. I can remember only diesels and my grandmother would say to me "there goes the old Tobique" when it went by the house going up or down the Tobique River valley. It blew the whistle each time it passed by the Tobique river dam above the house. It used to haul wood up the river to the mill and chips back down to go up the Saint John river to the pulp mill in Edmundston when I was a kid. All the mills moved wood products by rail when I was young and even the potato processors and farmers hauled by rail. I have loaded rail cars with burlap sacs of taters when I was in my teens. It used to come into town here to the feed mill as well when I was going to school and that was a dead end line. It had a fertilizer blending plant to go bye on the way. I believe when they stopped investing in those sidings, letting them deteriorate was when she started the backward slide.
"No amount of belief makes something a fact." James Randi

1 Thessalonians 5:21

2020 Polaris Ranger 570 to forward firewood, Husqvarna 555 XT Pro, Stihl FS560 clearing saw and continuously thinning my ground, on the side. Grow them trees. (((o)))

Papa1stuff

My dad worked for the Boston& Maine railroad for about 50 years ,mostly as a track Foreman ,I looked forward to working there also ,until he took me with him on a cold winters nite to check track,now on an open motor car ,it wasn't much fun and that cured me from wanting to work on the Railroad ;D.
I als had an Uncle that was an enginneer for the New York Central and one for the Candian Pacific,also my Grandfather was a switchman for the Boston & Maine in the Concord NH yard

I had the pleasure of riding the train (started out on steam engines ) to high school in the next town from us (8 miles away) everyday,the train wa filled with school kids and the poor conductor I'll bet was glad to see the week end ;D ;D
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SwampDonkey

My mom's uncle worked on the railroad for 40+ years as well. The only trip he ever took was in retirement and the rail road paid for the trip. He went across Canada to Prince Rupert and a ferry took him up to Alaska where they saw the glaciers. He was very tight with his money and that was the only way he would ever have been on a  trip. He never went far from home very often, 50 miles was a long ways. He took old video of the Tobique steamer back in the day and also building of the Tobique hydro dam in the 50's in full color no sound. He was 90 when he died. He was rather tall and he never slouched. He mowed his own lawn and gardened until the end. Always had a pipe, but mostly smoked matches because he would be talking and the pipe would always go out. :D He trapped fur and skinned fur for himself and others and sold to the Bay auctions. He could take a road kill that was torn up bad and use floss to sew it up and the fur buyers could never detect it. ;D
"No amount of belief makes something a fact." James Randi

1 Thessalonians 5:21

2020 Polaris Ranger 570 to forward firewood, Husqvarna 555 XT Pro, Stihl FS560 clearing saw and continuously thinning my ground, on the side. Grow them trees. (((o)))

JohnG28

My great grandfather was an engineer on the New York Central also, and must have passed some of it down to me.  I love watching trains go by, its something Ill never tire of either.  In the Adirondacks they resurrected an old stretch of a former NYC line and it is now a tourist railroad, they run old diesels, some cool old Alcos and have some GM F units.  I love seeing those vintage locomotives running again.
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