I had a chance to talk with someone in north Texas that is a railroad engineer. I have always wondered what that might be like. He took the time to tell me what it is like driving the big engines and riding the rails.
When someone is the engineer of a train he can see things that most people will never see. In the hilly areas of north Texas it can be quite a ride with the climbing of hills and the twists and turns required to climb to a higher terrain. There are places that it is just beautiful. Much of what they see is the pristine land with houses, stores and gas stations off in the distance. Like any job it can have its pleasant moments, but there is much more to the job.
With over 170 years of railroading in this country we have learned that even though trains can be fun to watch, they carry danger with them. They are big. They are powerful. And once you get them going, they are not going to stop on a dime.
This long history has taken us to the point that everything done on a railroad is regulated or has a procedure to keep the railroads running and safe.
A hopper car itself weighs 42 tons. But if it is loaded, it weighs 142 tons.
If you have a train with 50 cars, that is a lot of weight. One of the first things that has to be done is to determine how much the train will weigh and how much power is needed to pull it.
With a train loaded with rock, it won’t work to hook up one or two engines. It will probably take as many as 5 engines to take the train on the main track and pull the hills along the way. These engines are pulling at 3000 horse power.
Entering a cab of a locomotive, it can be intimidating the first time. It drives nothing like a car or a tractor. The cab has radios, levers and switches that all serve a purpose.
The newer cabs have computers screens that perform many of the functions of operating a locomotive. There is a long procedure that is followed to start an engine in the morning, to make sure that the engine is not damaged in the start up process.
And there is a lot of paperwork. Each car has paperwork.
There are track bulletins that tell if there are issues with the track or if it is being worked on.
It is important that the train engineer knows when and where the track is being worked on. Down the track, the repair equipment is loud enough that those working on the rails wouldn’t be able to hear a train coming. There can be no surprises. There is no time to move equipment off the tracks.
A track warrant gives permission to occupy the main track. Sometimes when there is a lot of freight traffic, multiple trains will be on a section of track all going the same way. For this reason, just because one train has passed a crossing doesn’t mean that another isn’t behind them.
Train engineers don’t want to be blocking a highway anymore than the automobile drivers do. What the car drivers don’t know is that there is probably a man in the red zone, that area between the train cars making a connection.
The air lines for the brakes have to be hooked up, the mechanical brakes released and the couplers tested to make sure that they will hold. The train can’t move during this process because a man can be injured or crushed if the train moves. When the connection is completed, something called lacing it up, only then can the train move allowing automobiles on the highway to continue on their way.
Once a train is on its way on the main track, the attention to the track is constant. There are always things to worry about. People try to beat the train at crossings. Most of them make it. A few of them don’t. From time to time here are cows and other animals. Hopefully most of them move.
He told about coming around a corner and seeing a girl in her prom dress standing in the middle of the tracks. The photographer had his back to the train and had no idea it was coming. With the horn blasting they both left the track in a hurry. Thank goodness neither of them tripped. Trains take a long time to stop.
People can be so absorbed with their cell phones, that they don’t look to see if a train is coming at a crossing. Some people when they realize that a train is coming will stop on the tracks and then try to back up. If you are at a crossing and see a train, just go, don’t stop on the tracks.
As you can see there is a lot to worry about when riding the rails. The romance and the love of trains is still alive in America. I think I’ll let the railroad engineers do all the worrying, and I’ll just wave.