While I am not claiming that enviornmentalists are smart, but causing the derailing of a train carying sulfiric acid and other hazardous waste is far worse than letting it pass through.
“While I am not claiming that enviornmentalists are smart, but causing the derailing of a train carying sulfiric acid and other hazardous waste is far worse than letting it pass through.”
Heh, funny you should mention a train carrying sulfuric acid.
I once ran a hazardous materials train, 40 tank car loads of sulfuric acid, from Port Jervis (NY) to Oak Island (NJ, near Newark) with no usable service brakes.
Yes, you read that right.
The train _had_ brakes, but they weren’t working properly. One of the cars was a “kicker” - that means when the engineman attempted to make a “service brake reduction” (ordinary application of the brakes), the control valve on that car would “kick” into emergency instead (a sudden and uncontrollable maximum application of the brakes). When one cars goes into emergency, the entire trains follows. That raises heck with the “slack” in the train and risks a possible derailment.
Got the train at Port Jervis. Two EMD SD-40’s, a “spacer” car, and 40 loads. Incoming guy warned me about the kicker.
Off we go up the mountain. SD-40’s are 3,000hp each, but this is a pretty heavy train for only 40 cars. Get through Otisville tunnel at the top, and I’m wondering about the downgrades on the other side. They’re not as steep as going up, but you still have to deal with them.
Get rolling through Middletown and it starts going down all the way to Campbell Hall. Got the dynamic brake on (kind of like the jake brake on a truck), pretty much all the way, and it’s really pushing. We’ll be coming to the Campbell Hall passing siding soon, and if there’s a train coming the other way, may have to stop to let it by. No way I can do this with dynamic alone — will have to try the air.
But the signal’s clear. The grade levels off a bit, so I can relax.
Coming to Central Valley, though, we’re going to have to meet a passenger train. I get the dynamic on early (the siding is two miles long) and it’s level, so get the train down to about 10mph, and use the independent brake (locomotive air brakes only, not the brakes on the train) to ease it down to a stop.
While we’re waiting, I figure I’ll try the air to see what happens. Take a slight brake pipe reduction, and.... BAM! Into the hole, as it’s called. The other engineman wasn’t kiddin’.
Get it recovered, the passenger train gets by, and off we go.
The railroad gets more congested after Suffern, but we get through Ridgewood Junction OK (another place on a downgrade that would make a stop problematical).
Get to Hackensack (HX) and off the main into Croxton, then through the old Erie freight tunnel under the Palisades, and nurse our way over the “stilts” through Jersey City and finally across Newark Bay at Upper Bay lift bridge.
From there, just a little ways to a siding where we tie it down. Stopped with the independent brake again.
Told the next guy who picked it up from me that there was a sure-fire kicker in the train — I’ll guess he was careful, too.
Probably the most challenging job I ever had. That one would have been on the news if it had derailed...
Forty cars of sulfuric acid and essentially no train brakes, but I made it!
Just recollectin’....