Subject:
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Re: Relative height of cars and cabooses
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.trains
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Date:
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Wed, 23 Aug 2000 13:24:25 GMT
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Reply-To:
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regult@aolSPAMLESS.com
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Viewed:
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1294 times
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On Wed, 23 Aug 2000 08:20:25 GMT, "Larry Pieniazek"
<lpieniazek@mercator.com> wrote:
> The answer is, of course: "it depends", as it always does when speaking of
> american practice.
>
> 100 years ago, the most common car (by far) was the box car. At that time the
> common size for a box car was 35 feet long and about 9 or so high, I believe.
> So caboose main roofs were set to be about the same height. And the cupola
> windows then had a good view over the rooftops with enough of an angle that
> the rear brakeman or conductor (whoever had cupola duty) had a good view of he
> train and could spot trouble such as incipient hot boxes or dragging equipment
> whenever the train went round a curve.
Another one of the reasons for the uniform height of most cars was so
you could switch cars with people on top of them, controlling the
moves via relayed hand signals. Handbrakes also used to be located on
top of the cars, and later, on the ends of the cars near the top,
although this arrangement is rare today, except for reefers or perhaps
coal hoppers.
Switching cars while on top of them was before the days of portable
radios of course. Now if you are caught on top of a car, you'd better
have a good excuse like you were trying to get away from a pack of
wild dogs. If you are modeling a modern scene out of LEGO, I would not
suggest putting railroad workers on top of your freight cars. Give
your minifig a radio or flashlight and put them on the ground, next to
the cars.
> As time went by, the standard boxcar size changed to 40 feet and 10'8" high, I
> believe. Cabooses didn't really keep up. While newer ones may have had
> slightly higher cupolas the main roof wasn't always raised. For this reason
> other innovations such as the extended vision cupola (hanging out over the
> edges a bit, like my model does) and the bay window caboose were introduced.
> These helped, although I suspect the bay window wasn't as popular as it
> required the duty guy to move from side to side every time a curve in the
> other direction came up.
>
> The only saving grace was that boxcars as a proportion of the mix were getting
> less. (I'm not sure what the most common car is these days, but it's almost
> certainly either the unit train hopper or the articulated doublestack unit if
> you are allowed to count one unit as one car, although we've heard here about
> how NS does it) This meant that it was a bit easier to see.
Counting articulated cars in this manner is really only done for
payroll purposes. Every two trucks equals one car, that way a 5 pack
articulated with 6 trucks counts as 3 cars for payroll purposes. Same
goes with articulated autoracks. Its pretty common for crews to count
the axles of passing pig (as in piggyback) trains to tell the crew
just how many cars they have.
> Cabooses are now pretty much obsolete, having been replaced with FRED, and
> things like trackside dragging equipment detectors and hotbox detectors
> (which, once they spot something, broadcast a repeating message of the
> form "drag detected at axle 384 of train 186" over and over on the train's
> operating frequency).
>
> ++Lar
Caboose use on the NS is rare except for some local and work trains.
Even then, only locals or work trains that have to make long shove
moves over road crossings or those that need to drink fresh hot coffee
are assigned a caboose.
The NS also uses two way EOT (End of Train) devices. It tells you if
the rear of the train is moving and the brake pipe presure, in PSI, at
the rear of the train. The engineer can actually put the train's
emergency brakes on from the EOT by activating a button on the control
stand in the lead engine. It is possible for vandals or terrorists to
cut the air in the train so that the air brakes are rendered
inoperative from the engine. The two way EOT offers you a last resort
if you can't control the train with the dynamic brakes or what little
air brakes you do have.
In addition, around Cleveland we have some overheight detectors that
detect any car over 19'3" and sound an alarm along with axle location.
If there are high cars in the train, they must be routed along a
certain main track. Most autoracks and some doublestack container cars
will not set off the alarm, but large tri-level autoracks and
doublestacked high containers will. Most regular hotbox/dragging
equipment detectors are located about 20 miles apart.
Since I don't do much rail related LEGO modeling any more, perhaps
I'll try to do a hotbox/dragging equipment detector, that might make
for an interesting little project.
Jeff Christner
Visit Sixby Fire Tech at - http://members.aol.com/regult/
Help support my LEGO habit. Ship by rail.
Visit http://www.nscorp.com/ to find out how.
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: Relative height of cars and cabooses
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| (...) This answer is for american practice, rather than european (where cabooses per se were not at all common, although brakevans *were* used)... note that early canadian writings may refer to a caboose as a brakevan. The answer is, of course: "it (...) (24 years ago, 23-Aug-00, to lugnet.trains)
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