Why They Run Locomotives Back to Back

hello again rail fans i've gotten a lot of rail fanning questions recently but two more than any of the others first why do railroads run locomotives back to back and second how can i find the schedules of trains in my town let's start with that second one railroads do not publish freight train schedules the train profiles which are the train orders the orders for the train they may have departure and arrival times but those times can vary by hours especially out on the line of road midway along their trip originating yard delays crew issues locomotive and mechanical problems waiting in sightings for other trains to arrive those can all delay trains so the answer is there are no freight train schedules there are only time slots like q452 near me it comes through lakeland around six a.m every morning but it can be as late as noon depending on events the best advice i can give new rail fans is to join a social media group for your area there probably is one facebook twitter instagram ask folks about train patterns in your area what runs when and so on that's going to be your best source of intelligence to make the most of your time by the track now to this first question why do railroads run their locomotives back to back sometimes instead of nose to tail or elephant style well to answer that one let's get out to the railroad by the tracks and as many of you know i like to get out there early in florida in july starting early in the morning really helps it's 80 degrees at 0 5 30 this florida morning i have a hunch it ain't going to get any cooler i'm on the road before daylight headed east on i-4 toward lakeland lakeland is the world headquarters of the famous public supermarkets their offices and warehouses surround the railroading area of lakeland passing lakeland connection on main street i spy out the left side window the signal at lakeland junction red over yellow over red medium approach this probably meant that a train was going in the siding at lakeland and stopping number 47 1500 feet down the road was the lakeland connection signal medium approach medium medium speed through this turnout and proceed approaching the next signal not exceeding medium speed this time of the morning it had to be q 452 coming out of miami and stopping in lakeland to change crews i chose lakeland junction off kathleen road from a shooting spot it's easy to reach open and almost always traffic free on the lakeland junction signal cantilever there's almost always an osprey on the nest lakeland as the name implies has a lot of lakes with lots of fish and ospreys are among the best fisher birds on the planet at 0-6 45 and came q452 a refurbished ac44 leading an es44dc the engines are running back to back railroads do this for convenience assuming both units are set up to lead the set does not have to be turned at dead-end terminals like tampa or miami where all road trains have to go back out the way they came in engine service teams merely put the locomotive set on the new train at schedule four changed the leader setting in the cabs and that's it diesel electric locomotives can do the same work running forward or backward 452 is tiny this morning compared to what it's been in recent months normally a 12 to 13 000 foot contest today's only about seven thousand feet i drove around and up to the north end of the lakeland double track at 10th street the signal for the siding that's the three-head signal on the left was all red and a crew bus was down there taking off the inbound crew 452 would be here a while later that morning i heard activity at south winston yard about a 10 minute drive from lakeland junction depending on traffic when i got there 0724 was already rolling in 52 jumbo covered hoppers loaded with finished phosphate for fertilizer i believe this would go north out of florida on either q604 tonight or tomorrow's q452 if you listen closely you can hear the sound of an airplane motor it's not an airplane it's the car wheels rolling over newly ground rail head the big steel wheels rolling across those lateral scratches on the rail make that moaning sound won't last long though a few weeks of heavy trains like this one rolling over it will smash those scratches right down when 724 cleared 0730 came out shuttle traffic from winston to new wales mosaic's huge phosphate plant southwest of mulberry in the bone valley here's another example of the back-to-back setup a leader engine 30-22 pointed south with two trailing units pointed north on the return trip all the crew would need to do is go to the other end change that to the lead engine and pull northward except in this case they won't need to do that 7 30 is headed south out of winston yard on the bone valley sub this will take him past mulberry to bradley junction where he'll turn west and come into new wales from the bottom the southbound 30 22 will then be pointed northward no swap needed i caught him again at the mulberry diamond here the atlantic coastline's bone valley sub crosses the seaboard airlines valrico sub an sal y pattern signal still protects the diamond on the acl track i believe this and the one on the other side of the crossing are the last two y pattern signals still serving on the csx in florida now live oak doesn't count anymore it's on the new florida gulf and atlantic railroad the former csx tallahassee sub it's not often you see a mainline diamond in the middle of a four-lane highway csx recently installed this flange bearing diamond to reduce pounding on the intersecting valrico subside it's the busier line or at least it used to be um two miles west of here is mulberry yard i set up at the south end in the middle of the y mainly because there was a shade tree over the road here a k train was just picking up a bad order engine out of the yard and bringing it to edison once again we're running back to back here but i think in this case it's just by chance not long afterward out came k341 another bone valley shuttle job presumably headed to new wales to pick up and then on to agroc two locomotives running back to back 10 32 a.m and another light engine moves out of the yard 0731 headed down to work north nichols lakeland rail fan max stevens was here too he'd just come from catching two emds pulling a train into ridgewood the mosaic plant at bartow we waited here another hour but nothing else was happening here so we headed up to winston y in hopes of catching something on the a-line when i pulled up there my old rail fan friend joseph and his dad were there joseph had already scouted the signals for us it's a high green bath there i know it's top what is it it's a high queen in about a month joseph will turn three years old the high green on track one was for amtrak 91 coming eastward out of its tampa station stop joseph was distracted by another train this one coming out of winston yard what train is this joseph q 453 i think a lot of you young railroad folks are going to be working for this man in about 25 years the afternoon heat was getting the best of me so i headed for the hacienda cfa012 south okamoto [Music] on an afternoon in june word came down the line that csx was running its newly refurbished office car train on a quick tour of its florida main lines i got some intel that the train would overnight in tampa so after it was spotted in wildwood and then took the a-line side at vitus junction i set up at a y the a-line entrance to tampa's euseta yard i met up with local rail fan micah woods and his grandmother we knew we'd hit the jackpot when we saw three csx special agents and more arriving every minute the cop spotted micah and presented him with some csx swag very cool csx tp00123 lead locomotive csx t1 got a restricting signal 8y main line into the yard southbound out in a few minutes the train arrived p double 01. that's a symbol not heard on csx since before labor day 2005 when hurricane katrina effectively ended the sunset limited on the csx gulf coast line the sunset limited was p-01 the shiny business train glided into yusita yard carrying its load of railroad brass hats company executives in the lead were csx number one and csx2 x amtrak engines emd f40phs painted now for this train in b o heritage colors note how they're running back to back in this case though i think it's just because they look cool running that way csx1 was formerly numbered 9998 and csx2 was 99.93 the business fleet has all been renamed the power car for champ davis popular president of the coastline from 1942 to 1957 john w smith last president of the seaboard airline john w snow csx corporation chairman in the 1990s alvin r call me pete carpenter csx president from 1992 to 99 e hunter harrison the csx ceo from march 2017 to december of that year michael j ward csx ceo from 2003 to 2017. alfred e pearlman president of the new york central and then penn central which i guess is technically one of csx's ancestors hayes t watkins jr c o b o president in the 70s and then cno of the newly formed csx transportation conglomerate in the 1980s john t collinson president of the cno b o in the late 70s and w thomas rice last president of the atlantic coastline and first one of the seaboard coastline the tom rice is the train's theater car stacked rows of seats facing rearward to let riders see where they've been you see the yard has a car repair shop and an intermodal ramp these days that ramp handles only two daily trains one in and one out at one time the a-line through here was busy enough to need a freight lead to move trains off the main line not so in 2021 this xt q046 21 csx locomotive 3246 got a medium clear a y yard lead to the main order by now at about 1800 every evening or whenever amtrak 92 gets out of tampa you can see q046 pulling out for its nightly run to jacksonville in peak season this train is long enough to require a double or triple out of the yard that will leave it blocking orient road for 20 minutes or more not so tonight he's only about 3 700 feet here's another train with back-to-back engines when q046 reaches its destination at jacksonville's duvall ramp they'll likely cut those engines off the train if they do that they'll have the option of putting them on a northbound train or a southbound train without having to run them all the way down to the y at duval connection or the wyatt densmore connection a move that could take half an hour or more there's nearly always ups business on this train almost always some trailers tonight not only 53 footers but the shorter ones which i believe are 28 feet the engineer keeps creeping out at 10 miles an hour until he gets word from the car inspector that his whole train is out of the yard and on the main line mainline qo46 thank you sir then he begins notching up his throttle until he reaches max authorized speed 246 21 dsx 3246 clear signals this is the mango northbound not long after that a local 0704 comes out of the navy spur in tampa on the nightly run to winston yard and back he'll also be traveling the a-line right on qo 46's markers he told the dispatcher he had a pickup to make at mango since there are no customers on that part of the a-line the pickup had to be from mango siding as i came into mango there were the cars gondolas and three hoppers waiting right next to the road after a few minutes of figuring out how this would work i went to the north end of the siding and i had to move fast because i could hear him coming 704 21 is an age 24 clear south end of mango international lakeland south north a few minutes after 1900 and in creeps 0704 when he got to me he'd already left the bottom of his train back on the main keeping five rock hoppers on the head in three all right 80 24 release three steps up riding the point clear got to restrict him shove him back give me 15 cars clear release on the point restricting north mango main deciding backing back 15 maybe 24. pulling past the north end he would wait for the switch to reverse then start shoving into the siding the conductor riding the bottom calling out the clear track as they went third one after coupling onto the pickup cut they pull back out onto the main line again the conductor counting the cars past the switch one three two one [Applause] upon clearing the circuit the switch normals back from mainline movement the dispatcher in jacksonville having pre-programmed this entire in and out maneuver with an automated signal function called a union route stack up riding the point clear restricting back 15 80 24. all right clear on the point restricting one second to main seconds now the final backing move on to the bottom of his train back there on the main stretch when the conductor calls for the stretch to ensure the coupling is secure he laces up the air hose and then we have to sit here for a few more minutes while the locomotive starts pumping air into the brake line to bring the pressure up along the entire consist the engine throttles up now while the air compressor does its work while this is happening the conductor makes the long walk from the tail end back to the engine then he calls the dispatcher for permission to leave [Applause] so he climbs up on the front porch to give his radio some more height and it's just enough to work and off they go [Music] in a few minutes the dispatcher will call 0704 back to confirm that he did indeed pull those cars out of mango siding mango is not a signaled sighting it's a controlled sighting the difference is the track circuit for the siding ends at the switch making the siding essentially dark territory so the dispatcher on his screen cannot see if anything's in the siding or not if this were a signaled sighting he would get a red occupied light if anything were in there as my friend dispatcher gordon decent puts it you could remove all the rails ties and ballast from a controlled siding and you could still get a signal to go in it now railroads don't always run their power back to back it depends on the situation and what's going to happen to them at those what's going to happen to those engines when they reach their end terminals i would like to give a shout out to one of our subscribers david shea of zephyr hills and his daughter and his grandchildren david passed away back in june a uh it was unexpected and uh david was a big fan of the channel so my condolences to david shea's family please hit the like button if you like the video subscribe to the channel if you haven't done that and you have and if you have anything to ask me tell me write uh write it in the comment section down below or email me at railfandanny gmail.com now let you and i plan to meet up again very soon somewhere out there on the high iron and until that happens this is danny harmon out

Channel: Distant Signal

Views: 818,618

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Id: LA6MWVHPEc0

Length: 22min 51sec (1371 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 04 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/obsessivesnuggler]

I found it boring, but I guess people who like other people talking about trains will love this.