Why operate from the trailing unit? Was due to the lead unit being a cowl, or a standard practice at the time?
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| Posted by SES on March 10, 2023 | |
My guess is I'm quite certain the engineer couldn't see anything leaning out the window of that F45. Thankfully, there isn't a great amount of distance between Quincy and Wenatchee but that must have been real inconvenient.
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Possible reasons for riding the trailing unit:
- The window in the cab door provides a partial view ahead, especially on a left-hand curve
- The F45 might have not been compliant as an occupied unit (horn, speedometer, brake valve, etc.)
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If they had room to set out the bad unit why not swap the positions of the 2 remaining. Then he wouldn't need to try to look around a cowl unit.
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Visibility Issue with that Cowl
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The reason for this unusual situation was the failure of a ruck on the lead SD45. The train approached Quincy at 60 mph, and was abruptly stopped in town. Train 3, known as the Pacific Zip back then, was BN's hottest train to the Pacific Northwest. It operated on a tight schedule and carried UPS and US mail along with freight forwarder traffic. The crew was able to get the lead unit off and spotted in Quincy's small industrial yard, then chose to operate from the SD40-2 for better visibility. They lost minimum time and were able to finish their trip into Wenatchee with only about a 20-30 minutes delay. At the Wenatchee crew change another unit was placed on the point before leaving town for south Seattle. Sort of like operating a Big Boy or Yellowstone from forward vision I would guess.
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| Posted by xBNSFer on March 11, 2023 | |
Some serious "crew protection" right there. Norfolk & Western/Southern would be proud.
I Assume in 1980 they were still using cabooses and the conductor might be on the back of the train, but I'm sure they had a head end brakeman and maybe even a "fireman" on freights in 1980, so why aren't they helping out becomes the question. Assuming they had portable radios back then (maybe not), somebody could have gotten out on that rear platform and called signals to the engineer. Even without radios, if there were two employees up there with the engineer, one could be out on the rear platform relaying signal and whistle post info to the second who could relay to the engineer from the front end of the F45 with a bit of delay, better than nothing. Better to sit on their rear ends, I guess.
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Only in America!
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