Question for train employees

I'm at my Grandma's house again in Central City, Pennsylvania, U.S.A. There's a lot of NS/CONRAIL trains that stop down in town and most of the time sit there for a while. Today there's one stopped there with it's locos turned off because there's work crews on the rails out ahead of it so I suppose they had to stop and sit because of that. Well anyway, I've been inching to go take some photos of me in the cab and in the cab seats. Of course, I'd try to do this when they're stopped. These trains are freights pulled by diesel locomotives. Well if I can't see anyone outside around the train or inside the cab when I'm beside it am I allowed to climb up into the locomotive to see if there's anyone in there to get permission to take some cab shots of me?If you say yes how should I approach? Should I go through the door in the nose of the locomotive or go to the back of the locomotive and walk down the walkway and go through the cab door?Adam

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RE: Question for train employees, PatchCrew, Aug-01-02, 03:38 PM, (1) RE: Question for train employees, I_totally_love_trains, Aug-01-02, 04:54 PM, (2) RE: Question for train employees, NSFAN, Aug-01-02, 09:06 PM, (3) RE: Question for train employees, I_totally_love_trains, Aug-01-02, 09:17 PM, (4) RE: Question for train employees, LordTauk, Aug-01-02, 09:20 PM, (5) RE: Question for train employees, McDeth, Aug-01-02, 11:44 PM, (6) RE: Question for train employees, I_totally_love_trains, Aug-02-02, 07:59 AM, (7) RE: Question for train employees, jmv, Aug-02-02, 09:30 AM, (8) RE: Question for train employees, John_Netzlof, Aug-02-02, 09:40 AM, (9) RE: Question for train employees, Claude350, Aug-02-02, 10:18 AM, (10) RE: Question for train employees, henry3, Aug-02-02, 11:31 AM, (13) RE: Question for train employees, I_totally_love_trains, Aug-02-02, 10:44 AM, (11) RE: Question for train employees, jmv, Aug-02-02, 10:53 AM, (12) RE: Question for train employees, henry3, Aug-02-02, 11:37 AM, (14) RE: Question for train employees, I_totally_love_trains, Aug-02-02, 12:27 PM, (15) RE: Question for train employees, Claude350, Aug-02-02, 02:08 PM, (16) RE: Question for train employees, I_totally_love_trains, Aug-02-02, 03:04 PM, (17) RE: Question for train employees, Claude350, Aug-02-02, 03:24 PM, (18)

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Absolutely not! Don't try it. If you do you are asking to get yourself into a lot of trouble.PatchCrew
UP Engineer

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I asked a guy that was standing out on the walkway once and he said it'd be ok but we're leaving right now. Wouldn't be taking pics in the cab be the same as asking for a cab ride?
Also I was down looking at some parked locos in town by my grandma's house and I saw a guy walking from one cab to the other via the walkways on the side of the locos. They were almost ready to go. Was he possibly releasing the brakes in the cab of each locomotive?
Also when a train is sitting here for a while in Central City, Pennsylvania I'm just wondering if the crew is allowed to take a little sleep break?Adam

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I guess they are allowed to. My dad is a conductor for the NS and just the other day he was working on a train numbered 920. Its a ballast train. Well anyway my dad was reading the newspaper and he looked over and the engineer was half way asleep. This was when they were sitting still. And also when he was on the ground working on the same train he said alright give me about 5 more to a couple and the engineer didnt responde. Then he said uhhhh......uhhhhhhh alright 5 comin to you. He was sleepin......lol.

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Good thing he didn't fall asleep when they were moving. That's how some derailments have happened.Adam

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Unfortunently but true, but thats how open position for conductors to be promoted to engineers happen too (jokingly)

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>If you say yes how should I approach? Should I go through
>the door in the nose of the locomotive or go to the back of
>the locomotive and walk down the walkway and go through the
>cab door? >Adam
HEHEHEHE, if you try to do that you will get into a WORLD of trouble. I mean comon, that is just a no brained answer. First off, do not even THINK of entering a locomotive cab while they are on duty. Do you know what would happen if a yard boss or somebody came along and saw YOU in the cab of a locomotive? K, wave bye bye to the engineer and firemans job, plus you would most likely get arrested. Think about the cab being like your home. If somebody just walked right into the front door wtf would you do? Just because they are sitting still does not mean that nothing is happening. I SAY NO

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LAST EDITED ON Aug-02-02 AT 08:06 AM (EDT)

Thanks a lot dudes! I'm glad I didn't do this without asking you. When a loco is sitting unattended is it ok to climb up on to get pictures?Also I've asked a train conductor that was outside if I could get cab pics and he said wait a minute and he jumped up in the cab and checked with the engineer, he said they were leaving. If he let me get in the cab could I still get in trouble?Adam

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If the conductor allows you to climb up there then I don't necessarily think that you would get in trouble. Back in February, I saw two BNSF coal trains stopped at a transition point in Amarillo, Texas. I had been at a sales call so I pulled my car over by the railroad building there and walked up toward the trains (so I'm walking around these trains wearing slacks, a tie, wingtips, you get the picture). This heavy-set, bearded older gentleman walked up and asked if he could help me. I explained that I was driving by and saw that since there were two trains parked side-by-side, I thought it might be a good opportunity to take some pictures with my digital camera. He said "Yeah, that'd be fine. When I saw you walk up I thought you might be a boss or something" and he invited me to climb in or on any locomotive that I wanted. He had some time to kill so he walked around with me and gave me a "tour". I asked him if we were going to be in any trouble for him letting me do this and he told me "Well, they can't fire YOU." I ended up spending 45 minutes there taking pictures and asking questions. It was a great experience but I really lucked out...I wouldn't expect that kind of treatment from every railroad employee.Good luck, though. I ended up with some great pictures that day. Here's a few for you...

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the lesson being where a suit when railfanning, lol

Why is there air?
-Bill Cosby

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Even if the engineer and the conductor allowed you to get up on the engine you could still get into trouble.I've allowed people to come aboard but if you get hurt then the train crew has alot of explaining to do.They could possibly lose their job.Railroading rule strictly prohibit noncrewmembers or nonemployees from occuppying the locos.I would be very careful if I were you and please don't get hurt if you're allowed to come aboard.

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LAST EDITED ON Aug-02-02 AT 11:32 AM (EDT)

And if you get hurt under the aforementioned circumstances, God forbid, just take your lumps and don't be ungracious enough to try to raise a stink and/or sue somebody. This should be common sense, but in today's society you never know.Henry(BTW, I don't work for the railroads. I just understand how rare a gift a cab visit truly is.)

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LAST EDITED ON Aug-02-02 AT 10:52 AM (EDT)

Well me and my Dad were thinking about me and him finding a parked train here and getting someone to give us a tour but we don't know yet.jmv, on the third BNSF Loco picture on the BNSF orange, yellow, and black loco what's the rod with the blue cards on it for? And what's that guy doing beside the other loco with the pole?Also on the 2nd picture what's that cap on the hood of the loco for?Lastly, do you need to be a certain height to be a railroad employee?Adam

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The far loco in the BN scheme was being serviced when I was there. I believe the first loco had just been refueled/serviced and it was the first train scheduled to depart.Someone please correct me if I'm wrong but I think that they leave those poles with the blue Safety Fist flags up during service and don't remove them until the train is nearly ready to depart.-Jay

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I believe that you are correct regarding the blue flags. In fact, on some roads (all?) the rules stipulate that the only person who can remove a blue flag is the person who originally placed the flag. I think this is to insure that all personnel involved in the service are safely away before the train is allowed to move.And the cap in the second picture is a sand filler cap (one of three on an SD70MAC) leading to a sand box containing the sand used to boost traction.Henry

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Them things don't look very much like flags.Adam

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LAST EDITED ON Aug-02-02 AT 02:09 PM (EDT)

Adam you have to be tall enough to do the work.There are lots of equipment out there that requires you to be able to reach the bottom rung the on ladders or the bottom step to get up on the loco.I'm 5'11" and there are times when I have to take a small jump just to get up on the equipment.Also every flag you see doesn't flap in the wind.In railroad terms it's called "blue flag protection".It's used mainly by the car inspectors when they are inspecting your train prior to departure or performing routine and scheduled maintainence.Once the flag is put in place by the car inspector it can't be romved by anyone except the person that placed the flag.At least on the NS it's that way.

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LAST EDITED ON Aug-02-02 AT 03:07 PM (EDT)

I'm 6 foot and still growing. At some places here the roadbed goes down immediately as soon as you'd step off of a locomotive here so it's a really big step here.
I got five more questions.I haven't been beside a railroad crossing with lights and gates for a long long while. When the train came through Central City this morning and then parked you could hear the bells on the crossing gates from my Grandma's house. Her house is about 1.5 to 2 miles from the crossing. Did NS made the bells louder on their crossings?The tracks have been very very busy lately by my Grandma's house and that's unusual for the single track line. The trains that go through there haul coal from my Dad's job which is PBS Coals Inc. which made Blackwolf Coal Company who had the mining accident. My Dad said since that happened they have been giving him 16 hour shifts at his work to make up for all that lost coal in that mine where the accident was. Could that be why so many trains are going through on this track or is that just how fast the dispatcher is releasing them?Where the train is parked that I saw today that I mentioned about going through in the first paragraph in this post is still sitting down in town. There's a really old railroad track that used to be the track that they used but now just branches off the new track. There's work crews down there and there's a work train parked on that old track close to the parked train. The work train is very close to where the track is cut off. Does the engineer know that?One more question. There's a really small siding beside that parked train where the workers have all their rail equipment on for now but the engineer parked the train in front of both switches for the siding. Why wouldn't the engineer be nice and pull forward more or stop more faster so the engineer wasn't blocking the worker's machines?When I asked a conductor if I could get some cab pics of me one time but they had to go that I mentioned about above the guy walked up in the cab and took that hook tool with him that you use to put the handbrakes on the cars. Do you keep that hook tool inside the cab?Adam

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Yes that's where you keep it.You also sign for that hook so it's yours.Don't lose it or you pay for it.When you leave the railroad you have to turn it in.Also you may want to look at the cab tour opportunity from this perspective.The crew may be telling you that they have to leave to keep from getting into something that could cause them to lose their job.Just a nice way of say,"No".I could be wrong.The crewmembers that allow this are putting themselves in a position that could affect their careers for life.The times that I allowed people to come aboard I was constantly looking around to make sure some trainmaster or other ranking official wasn't approaching my train unexpectantly.Not only would I be in trouble but the person that's on board could be arrested by the railroad police or local police for trespassing.Most railroads have agreements with the cities that they serve or pass through to arrest trespassers.On the question of the work train blocking the switches alot of times this is done to keep from spiking the switch after the MOW equipment is stored in the siding.Spiking the switch is when a crosstie spike is driven into the crosstie next to the moving points of the switch.This is to keep unauthorized persons from using the switch will the MOW equipment is stored.Also the MOW crews will place their own lock on the switch so train crews can't operate the switch inadvertantly.

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