The man wearing the orange hat is a conductor trainee. The Piedmont Division had a rule that all CTs wear them so they could be seen easily and watched over.
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interesting lash-up in the background
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Wasn't Just the Piedmont, the whole NS system used them for cubs (CT's), and still do I believe, unless the PSR bug killed off orange hats too.
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| Posted by Kibu on December 20, 2020 | |
If memory serves, the line was one of several former Southern lines which needed to have a special system in place to protect the bridges. Specifically, the old wooden bridges were built at a time when locomotives were, comparitively, much lighter. This meant that they couldn't really run two locomotives onto a bridge, and expect the bridge not to give way. To counter this, they had special built 'spacer' cars which were old 40 foot boxcars. These spacer cars were unique, in that they had MU connections on the cars. This allowed the lead locomotive to communicate with the second locomotive in the lashup. Where boxcars weren't used, Southern also used old passenger stock, usually a heavyweight passenger car, with the same MU cable systems. I think they also had a couple flatcars in the same service as well.
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I know the NS rule book had a Piedmont rule that we had to wear them, not sure about the rest of NS. For the comment above about the "lashup" the boxcar had MU cables and separated the two motors due to a weight restriction on one of the bridges.
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