Nice photo, anyone know why they put ditch lights on this engine?
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FRA regulations require all locomotives to have ditch lights to travel through crossings without stopping. Otherwise, the train would have to "stop and protect" all crossings that it encounters.
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Yea, but this is the first steam locomotive that I have seen with ditch lights, UP 3985 and UP 844 do not have them. Wonder if it is a new rule
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By the way, it might interest some of you to know that the red cylinder at bottom left, behind the spectators, was a tank car, probably of pre-WWII vintage. The New Orleans Public Belt Railroad converted it to a fire-fighting car to protect the Huey P. Long Bridge over the Mississippi River. The car sits here on a very short spur, in perpetual readiness. Here the train is almost to the start of the bridge's east bank approach.
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