Grassroots Railroad Sports?

#0722 with The Cranberry at Winsted, CT.

#0724 at the Providence engine facilities. A pair of new PAs lurk in the background. While NH seemed to love their DL-109s, the PAs offered the same horsepower with only one engine, meaning lighter weight, which made them faster-accelerating. Like the DL-109s, their PAs wore a variety of liveries, although not quite as many.

#0728 leading a fan trip out of the tunnel under College Hill in Providence. Again, this was likely a farewell trip for the DL-109s, which were now 12-15 years of age. The passenger cars are quite a mix of paint schemes as well, a result of NH's seemingly constant identity crisis.

#0736 and #0703 at Providence in '57. They were pretty long in the tooth by then and likely nearing retirement

#735 roaring out of Central Falls, RI and approaching Blackstone River Bridge on the old Boston & Providence connecting line.

Prowling into New Haven station

PP-716 at Dover Street Yard in '76, with FL9s in the background. The #716 was counting down her days until she met the torch at this point.

The last operational DL-109s were Milwaukee Road #14A and #14B, the MILW's lone 2 A-units. Delivered in '41, they racked up the miles running the Chicago-Minneapolis Afternoon Hiawatha, which during WWII was often 20 cars in length with standing room only, and returning the Chicago at night with the Fast Mail. They wore a unique livery designed by Otto Kuhler (fitting, since he designed the DL-109 as well) with a mostly grey body with orange stripes on the side, a yellow stripe up the nose and stainless steel adornment. After WWII, they were repainted to the two-tone orange with black that the FM Erie Builts were being delivered in, and then sometime in the '50s they were again repainted to the plain orange and black that MILW used until the end in 1980.

By 1953, the pair, nicknamed Old Maude, had racked up over 3 million miles. MILW decided to completely overhaul the locomotives. One of the more unusual parts of the overhaul was that they grafted EMD E7/8/9 noses with weird squared-off number boards onto them. This would seem to hint at them receiving an EMD repower, but they still had Alco hearts beating under the hood. Not even updated 244 or 251 power, but the original M&S 539Ts, although freshly rebuilt by Alco. GE also thoroughly went through the traction motors and generators.

So revised, the pair ran another ten years on branch lines and secondary trains before finally meeting their demise in '64, when Milwaukee Road retired and scrapped them. In the last photo, that appears to be the cylinder head or maybe the cylinder deck for one of the 539Ts laying on the ground next to it.

The most bastardized of the DL-109s was Rock Island #621. One of the earlier DL-109s (built in '41) it was sent to EMD's plant at La Grange in '51 and had it's 539T engines removed and replaced with a pair of 1000hp V12 567A engines, essentially making it an E7 with GE electrical systems. The radiators were relocated to the roof, so it lost the radiators in its flanks (presumably for clearance reasons) and gained and angular roof addition. None of The Rock's 3 other DL-109s were converted, perhaps it was too expensive or the results weren't satisfactory enough to warrant the process. It received the tongue-in-cheek nickname of Christine, in reference to Christine Jorgensen (ATSF called their sole EMD-powered PA the same thing), and was operated on commuter service until 1966. It's rumored that the #621 was offered to Illinois Railway Museum but at the time they had limited room, limited money and were primarily focused on electric locomotives and trolleys, so it was sent to the boneyard. (They also turned down the only Ingalls Shipbuilding 4-S locomotive around the same time when GM&O retired that)

The Rock Island was good at that. They screwed up and couple of RS3's and a FM Trainmaster.

LS_BC8 said:

The Rock Island was good at that. They screwed up and couple of RS3's and a FM Trainmaster.

They were broke. They got creative.

Chicago & North Western also loved making all sorts of mongrels, like EMD-powered Baldwin AS16s with GP7 long hoods, or EMD E8Bs that they grafted homemade cabs onto to make an A-Unit. They didn't get the nickname Cheap & Nothing Wasted for no reason

Rock Island also put ALCO engines in to EMD switchers.

The Crandall Cab. The C&NW needed more power for commuter runs. The C&NW had E8Bs collecting rust. So they chopped a crude nose out of one end, installed controls, and put them into use. Crude? Yes. Ugly? Yes. Brilliant? Yes.

I just got done watching doc on France's TGV. Had no idea TGV #1 was gas turbine powered. Then the oil crisis in tbe 70s hit. They decided to electrify it instead. Remarkable train. I remember being fascinated by it as a kid. 

One of the most mongrelized locomotives were the Morrison-Knudsen TE70-4S. In the mid-'70s, Southern Pacific's fleet of 70 GE U25Bs were getting long in the tooth. SP tried rebuilding 2 of them using all new GE parts but GE wanted a mint for their parts. So SP turned to rebuilder Morrison-Knudsen and asked them to come up with a rebuild for their U-Boats that was economically feasible. Four U25Bs were shipped to Boise, and M-K rolled up their sleeves. 

Replacing the GE Cooper-Bessemer derived FDL 2500HP V16 was a Swiss-built Sulzer marine V12, normally rated at 3200hp. For use in the locomotive, power was derated to 2800hp. The electrical components stayed all GE but were freshened up.

To fit the new engine, the long hood had to be made some 10" taller. Rather than give it a hunchbacked look, the roof continued into a skyline casing over the cab. The result was a locomotive that looked like a lovechild between an EMD GP30 and a GE U25B. SP then painted it in a two-tone orange that was intended to be evocative of the Daylight livery, but earned the units the nickname of "Popsicles". 

Called a TE70-4S (70,000lb tractive effort, 4 axles, Sulzer engine) the 4 were delivered to SP for testing before they committed to rebuild the entire fleet. The 4 started a rather heavily-publicized maiden trip on March of '78, hauling a TOFC train from Portland to LA. One suffered mechanical troubles on the trip and had to be cut out. Not a strong start.

The Sulzer engines proved that converted marine engines were rarely successful in railroad use and European engines were almost never a success. The 4 had poor reliability, almost all due to the Sulzer prime mover. They also tended not to play well with other locomotives in M.U. and so typically operated together in pairs. SP would not convert anymore of their U25Bs, instead choosing to repmace them. The 4 Popsicles were operated just shy of a decade, being retired in 1987. They kicked around the BART yard in Oakland through the '90s and then were scrapped in 2007.

In reply to Appleseed :

I had an HO scale TGV as a kid. No idea where we got it, but I think it was built by a European model company. 

I was in Utica doing Christmas shopping. Spotted the old New York, Ontario & Western freight house, now an artist loft. With the burning of the shops in Middletown, I think this is the second largest surviving O&W structure, after the Middletown station/headquarters.

Adirondack Scenic Railroad ex-NYC RS-3 #8223 and ex-Alaska Railroad F7A #1508. The RS-3 is out of service with main generator issues and is heading to Cooperstown & Charlotte Valley. The F7A is presumably OOS as well. You can just barely see one of Mohawk, Adirondack & Northern's MLW M420Ws, still in BC Rail red, white and blue in the distance

Up close and personal with MLW RS-18u #1835. The RS18 was the Canadian equivalent of an Alcoa RS-11. Later in life, CP and CN gave them homemade chopnoses and an overhaul, resulting in an RS-18u. These and the ex-Illinois Central "FP10" just ahead of them are Adirondacks primary power

In reply to Appleseed :

Those asymmetrical wipers though. I wonder what that's about. 

In reply to Mike (Forum Supporter) :

It would make sense if the engineer rides in the left seat. Wipers do funny things at high speeds. 

I also found a broken couple in the roadbed. I'm sure that was exciting when the brakes went into emergency. A CSX container train went through while I was there, but I couldn't snap a pic. The hogger must have had an ancestor who was a Nickel Plate engineer because he was screaming through there. The rails were singing 

In reply to NickD :

Something I probably should know, but don't.  I've seen a couple videos of couplers breaking, and it looks like when that happens, the brakes on the back half of the train get immediately applied.  So does that mean that the air pressure in the system actually holds the brakes off, and when the system separates, the pressure bleeds off and, in doing so, applies the brakes?  I've seen it happen on a few videos and that's what it LOOKS like is happening, but I can't tell for sure.  Don't really know a lot about air brake systems.  

In reply to kazoospec :

Yep. It also causes a pressure drop on the locomotive end and applies the brakes on that side as well. A separation brings the whole train to a stop. 

In reply to kazoospec :

What is really confusing is that you use air pressure to pump the brakes, which are applied when the system has no pressure, off. Then once they are off, you use higher air pressure to apply them as well. So if you aren't careful and you make a bunch of rapid repeated applications, called fanning the brakes, you can have enough pressure to keep the brakes released but not enough to apply them. That's when you get in trouble. 

Back when Ross Rowland was running the Chessie Steam Specials with Reading T-1 #2101, they had some old Central Railroad of New Jersey coaches that their was some inherent design flaw in the couplers or something and they were prone to coupler misalignment, causing them to decouple over crossings and diamonds and rough track. They'd be pounding along over a diamond and all of a sudden the train would go into emergency and the rear half of the train would be a ways back and they'd have to go fetch it.

In reply to NickD :

Thanks. I'd kinda deduced it must be something like that after recently watching a documentary on Saluda Grade, where they mentioned stopping at the top to ensure the air tanks were full before they descended, but they didn't go into details as to why. 

The on your diesel-electric locomotives, you have dynamic brakes. Those take the traction motors and turn them into a generator. The mechanical resistance caused by turning the "generators" slows the train down. The energy created is then dissipated as heat through electrical grids mounted in the roof. Dynamic brakes are nice because they don't chew up brake shoes and wheels and you can't run the air level low and lose brakes. One of the many reasons Baldwin got its ass kicked in diesel sales was that most of their early offerings didn't have dynamic brakes. It wasn't until near the end that they began offering them on locomotives, and even then, they were an option instead of standard.

On the subject of brakes, CSX had a really wild incident back in 2001. They were switching cars at Walbridge, Ohio with an SD40-2 #8888, nicknamed Crazy Eights.

Since they were just switching cuts of cars at low speeds within the yard, they A) did not have the train brakes hooked up and were just using the independent (locomotive) air brakes and B) were operating with just an engineer instead of the two man crew. 

While moving towards a switch, the engineer noticed that the switch was misaligned. Despite the low speeds, he did not think he could stop the locomotive before the switch, since he only had independent brakes and 47 cars in tow, 22 of which were loaded and 2 of those containing liquid phenol. So, the engineer made the (incorrect) decision to fully apply the independent and dynamic brakes, hop down an run to align the switch and then either climb aboard as the train passed, or catch it when it stopped.The problem is, he didn't fully engage the dynamic brakes. They are controlled by the locomotive throttle lever. You flip a switch to engage the dynamic braking and then set the throttle to whichever notch or level of dynamic braking you want. He had not fully engaged the switch before leaving the cab, which meant while he thought he had full dynamic braking, he had actually set the locomotive to wide open throttle. And just the independent brakes were not enough to hold back the engine in Notch 8.

He got to the switch and aligned it, but by the time the train approached, it was accelerating and while trying to jump aboard he slipped and got dragged for a few feet before getting clear, just suffering some abrasions and bruises. With the switches just happening to be aligned the way they were, #8888 and it's train headed out onto the main line.

Modern locomotives are equipped with a dead man's switch. If a button is not pressed or a throttle or brake input made every so many minutes, the locomotive will shut down. This is for if a crew member falls asleep or is incapacitated or the locomotive runs away. The problem is, this system is disabled if the independent brakes are applied, since it assumes the locomotive is just idling in the yard. So the dead man's switch didn't trigger on #8888.

By now, CSX was aware of the situation and began clearing mainline traffic out of the way. MoW crews ran ahead with portable derail frogs, hoping to derail the locomotive, but were not succesful. The police tried having snipers shoot the emergency fuel cutoff button, but this had no effect because the switch has to be physically held for several seconds to shut the engine down. By this point it was traveling at 51mph and had covered some 60 miles across Ohio. Finally, a crew onboard another SD40-2, #8392, that was on a siding, uncoupled from their train and then switched back onto the mainline and chased down #8888. They made a moving coupling to the rear of the train and then set the dynamic brakes to full to slow down #8888. Bringing the speed down to 11mph, a CSX conductor was then able to run alongside #8888 and hop aboard and shut down the wayward locomotive. By the time they stopped #8888, her brake system was completely destroyed from traveling 66 miles with the brakes dragging the whole way.

Afterwards, the engineer was found to be at fault by CSX. From the after-incident report "The cause of the incident was multiple gross errors in judgement by the locomotive engineer. For the incident to have occurred, each error needed to be committed in sequence. First, the engineer was not properly controlling the speed of his train on the lead, if he is unable to stop for a switch improperly lined. This is covered by the railroad's operating rules. Second, if the engineer cannot stop for a switch improperly lined, the correct action to take is simply run through the switch and then stop without backing up, to avoid derailing the train. Third, an engineer should never dismount his locomotive while it is moving, except in extremely rare emergency circumstances, such as an imminent collision. This is also covered by the railroad's operating rules. Fourth, the engineer should not have relied on dynamic braking at low speed, since dynamic brakes are ineffective at speeds of less than ten mph, except on an AC locomotive. This is well known among railroad engineers. Fifth, the engineer seemed to believe, in error, that an automatic brake application would improve braking power on single locomotive with the independent brake fully applied. Sixth, the engineer misapplied the selector handle for "power" or "dynamic brake," an error that can only be understood if we assume the engineer acted with extreme haste and negligence. That all of these actions were taken by an apparently well-qualified, fully rested employee with a good service record is simply incredible."

#8888 was repaired and put into service. Later in life she would suffer a mechanical failure and was parked by CSX, at which point many museums tried to buy the infamous locomotive. CSX, obviously loathe to preserve that historical point, instead ran #8888 through their SD40-3 rebuild program and renumbered #4389, erasing her past.

The events of the CSX #8888 Incident were loosely turned into the 2010 Denzel Washington film Unstoppable.

In reply to NickD :

Unstoppable was the first thing I thought of when I started reading your post.  My wife loves that movie, wait until I tell her a version of those events actually happened.  I guess you really can't make this stuff up..

That was an entertaining movie, but so over-the-top-Hollywood vs what really happened. 

In reply to Gearheadotaku (Forum Supporter) :

That's Hollywood for you.