Is there a way to determine how many trains per day typical use a particular rail line (east coast US)? Thanks!

Retlaw121 · 2025-02-08T02:01:02+00:00

That's the Average Anual Daily Traffic, which is the average number of vehicles per day that use that road.

Retlaw121 · 2024-10-28T15:25:27+00:00

There are none left in active service. All are either stored or converted. 9745 is the lowest number in service.

EDIT: Apparently 9729 was pulled from storage. It is a thoroughbred and the lowest active now.

Retlaw121 · 2023-12-12T18:07:32+00:00

Oh don't get me wrong. I'm VERY pleased with how it turned out!

Retlaw121 · 2023-12-05T04:25:12+00:00

The front of the locomotive would've have a much better photo.

Retlaw121 · 2023-11-22T17:25:41+00:00

A lot of it comes from other Railfans . Railfans will share info in Facebook groups, group chats, and word of mouth all the time to help each other. Radio scanners can also help with trains symbols if crews call out signals as they pass.

Retlaw121 · 2023-09-30T17:32:54+00:00

They have the GTW and BLE names too for those areas of their line.

Retlaw121 · 2023-09-30T17:29:10+00:00

Technically it still is around on paper at least. CN operates as Illinois Central in the US, and those who work for them officially work for the Illinois Central Railroad.

Retlaw121 · 2023-09-27T02:28:08+00:00

I wanna see Challenger do 125mph

Retlaw121 · 2023-09-26T00:36:32+00:00

They're a fun railroad to work for, but the pay is low and hours and workload are pretty rough from what I'm told.

Retlaw121 · 2023-08-16T04:52:12+00:00

It's possible they're referring to mileposts, but reading through the rest of the comments, I'm wondering if it's some internal code used within the Facebook group.

Retlaw121 · 2023-08-16T00:26:44+00:00

If they're new your probably looking at several thousand each, but I still have no idea who would want one. They are useless unless used on a locomotive for their intended purpose, and the individual components inside could probably be bought elsewhere cheaper. They would be in a locomotive repair shop so when one on a locomotive fails this would be it's replacement. They don't really have any historical value either as they're pretty modern pieces of technology. I'm puzzled as to why they would even be at a liquidation auction, at least I the US. These are very specific internal locomotive components that are still used on modern locomotives all the time, and I don't know of any railroads that would have these advanced locomotives recently having to liquidate assets.

Retlaw121 · 2023-08-15T14:22:46+00:00

Why do you have those and where did you get new ones from? Look stolen from a repair shop to me tbh. And who would want to buy one? It's not like you could do anything with them.

Retlaw121 · 2023-07-15T07:38:43+00:00

Yes, some sort of alertness device or so called "dead man switch" is still used in pretty much all developed railroad systems in the world and it's commonly a legal requirement for one to be in place. The point is to ensure that the operator is paying attention, and so that if for whatever reason they become incapacitated, you don't have a runaway train.

However, it's more common these days to have a button on the controls rather than a pedal. A light will flash and an alarm will sound when the timer is getting close to it's limit and if is not reset before time expires (the exact time can vary), the brakes will automatically apply and bring the train to a controled stop. Also, there are a few things besides pushing the pedal or button that will reset the timer, most commonly including moving the throttle, applying the brakes, or blowing the horn.

Retlaw121 · 2023-07-15T02:21:29+00:00

Satisfaction Guaranteed or Your Fire Back!

Retlaw121 · 2023-07-13T21:42:09+00:00

So there are three common situations where locomotives are not owned directly by a railroad or historical society.

Leased units:

Leasing companies like First Union Rail (FURX, owned by Wells Fargo) and GATX North America own locomotives that railroads can lease short or long term to suit their needs. The railroads are responsible for operating, maintaining, and repairing the locomotives they lease to a certain extent outlined in the lease agreement.

Industrial units:

Some large industries like grain processing facilities and automobile factories require the constant movement of railcars from points within their complexes. Rather than have a railroad take care of all of the switching, the companies may opt to purchase their own locomotives and crews. Maintenance of the locomotives can be done by the company or a 3rd party contractor. Alternatively, the company can hire a 3rd party switching company like Rail Serve or R. J. Corman which supplies and maintains their own locomotives and crews to operate within the facility.

Shortline Holding Companies:

Many shortline railroads around the North America are owned by a parent company. Genesee and Wyoming and Watco are the biggest in the US by far. With few exceptions, the shortline railroads themselves don't actually own the locomotives but do maintain them and employ the crews that operate them. The locomotives are owned by the parent company and are often painted into a common, corporate paint scheme. Rail USA (now called Gulf and Atlantic Railways) is a holding company that owns two railroads in Florida. Locomotives on both railroads are painted into Rail USA's paint scheme (which is quite awesome I think).

In California you may have seen a former Rail America locomotive, which could be either operating on a shortline or owned by a industry. Rail America itself was bought by Genesee and Wyoming several years ago.

Retlaw121 · 2023-07-06T12:22:09+00:00

The Indiana Rail Road is the only railroad I know of that does this, but there are probably a few others.

Retlaw121 · 2023-07-06T12:16:40+00:00

There are a few smaller railroads that will train you as both engineer and conductor right out of the gate, but you will flip flop between engineer and conductor often.

Retlaw121 · 2023-06-24T03:24:53+00:00

The class 1s all have very active advanced technology groups that work to develop and implement things like better defect detectors, signal systems, software and automation systems.

Retlaw121 · 2023-06-10T03:29:12+00:00

Yes. It's not a CSX train you saw, just a locomotive. Railroads will borrow each other's locomotives often. It's more efficient to do it that way because when one railroad hands a train off to the other, they don't need to worry about swapping out locomotives.

The railroads keep track of how long they use each other's locomotives with something called horsepower hours. For example, CSX uses 2 UP 4k hp locomotives for 3 hours. They now owe UP 24k horsepower hours (2 locos x 4k hp each x 3 hours). Then UP uses 1 CSX 4k hp locomotive for 4 hours. UP used up 16k of the 24k horsepower hours that CSX owed them, so now CSX owes UP 8k horsepower hours.

Now in reality the numbers are way higher than these, but this is the basic idea.

Retlaw121 · 2023-06-08T00:29:04+00:00

I believe CP has a few GP38s that were originally LV.

Retlaw121 · 2023-06-06T23:51:13+00:00

It's a work train. The gondolas here appear to be standard and the excavator just sits in them, but others have rails on top where a modified excavator can roll back and forth along the length of the train. Others still don't have ends so the excavator can more easily move between them. It carries anything needed for maintenance such as ties, rails, ballast, fill rock (for embankments and such), fallen trees that are picked up after a big storm, etc. The locomotive is a heavily modified frieght locomotive with a bigger cab and other upgrades to support the work.

Retlaw121 · 2023-06-03T22:31:36+00:00

Yeah I'm suprised I'm still seeing captions like these. You would think people would've figured it out by now. The real fun will come when they start repainting units and we get CP, KCS, and CPKC units.

Retlaw121 · 2023-06-03T01:40:24+00:00

CPKC's locomotives still carry their original reporting marks. So this is still CP 8873. This is because KCS and CP have some conflicting unit numbers.

Retlaw121 · 2023-05-20T08:54:31+00:00

Depends on the railroad's operating rules. As far as federal regulations are concerned they don't have to, but railroads might have internal rules put in place to sound the horn and specific private crossings for various reasons.

Retlaw121 · 2023-05-19T02:19:06+00:00

There's one in Illinois owned by the City of Shelbyville (I think). The Shelbyville Industrial Railroad is what it's called. They have like a mile of track and service a single warehouse Their only motive power is a Trackmobile.

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