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First group question: change ends of MU
Archive:
Originally posted by jacob.damron on the RailPro Users Yahoo! Group on Jun 4, 2015
Tim:
While I can't speak for every railroad out there I can speak to how we did things at Union Pacific. What you described would never happen hostling power. First, there are several different jobs in a yard when building a train. One of those is the hostlers. Their entire job is to put power on a 'train' (Per the GCOR, it isn't an actual train until it occupies the mainline). Hostlers work in pairs; there's an engineer and a foreman/conductor/switchman. Some sort of helper. It takes a bit of work to get locomotives MU'd. All connections have to be made. This includes the MU plug, train line connection, and brake line. Then all of the cross walks and chains have to be secured. Then you have the process of starting each engine. The first step is closing the knife connection on the back wall of the cab and then priming and starting. The older engines stared by opening the long hood on the engineers side but the newer ones start in the cab. Then you select whether that engine is the lead or running in trail or dead in trail. At this point you would also ensure that all trailing locos had their lights off. Once everything is up and running you would then set the brakes. The helper would then confirm that all brakes were set and then you would release the brakes and then ensure that all brakes released. Only at this point is the MU'd set ready to go. As such, we didn't change or swap ends unless absolutely necessary. So, your scenario would never have happened. They would have built the MU'd set the direction that it would run on the road and simply done a reverse move (run backwards) with the helper on the rear protecting the shove until it was coupled onto the train. Then the carmen would take over, inspect the trains, brakes, etc before it was handed off to a road crew.
Simply, with RailPro, build your MU set and back it onto your train and then highball!
Jacob
Archive:
Originally posted by kpack05 on the RailPro Users Yahoo! Group on Jun 4, 2015
Bill is correct. You can do the same for any locomotive in the consist....select it on the locomotive screen and you can control the entire MU from it, as well as any lighting effects, sounds, etc. This includes locomotives in the middle of a 3+ unit MU.
The only thing I might add is that if I am pulling a long train and/or going a long distance I will want the "lead" loco in the MU in the front. I've noticed that the load sharing is extremely smooth and consistent that way. Switching and short moves I just select whatever loco I want without breaking the MU like Bill says.
-Kevin
Archive:
Originally posted by William Brillinger on the RailPro Users Yahoo! Group on Jun 4, 2015
So what happens in this alternate scenario?
Train arrives from north at an interchange yard. (locos are arranged back to back)
Crew drops its incoming train.
Crew couples to its departing interchange train.
Crew leaves northbound with train, now controlled from the previously trailing loco.
I think this is basically the same scenario Tim is envisioning.
The train has now switched directions.
- Bill
Archive:
Originally posted by kpack05 on the RailPro Users Yahoo! Group on Jun 4, 2015
Bill, in answer to your question, the train will run just fine in reverse without swapping the lead. However, if I were to be in this situation I would break the MU, and change the lead loco. It takes all of 3 seconds to do. I would do it for 2 reasons: 1) more reliable load sharing for the longer run back to whereever the train is going, and 2) simulates the crew moving the previous lead loco to the new loco. I'm into simulating that sort of thing....makes it feel a bit more realistic to me.
-Kevin
Archive:
Originally posted by jacob.damron on the RailPro Users Yahoo! Group on Jun 4, 2015
This is significantly simpler than Tim's scenario. In his scenario you have five units that required MU'ing going from a diesel facility to an outbound yard. In this example you're describing a local that is now going back with some, none, or all of the original train. A run around move is required regardless. In this case you would either wye the power (we did this on a steel job) or simply swap ends (we did this on a refer job). With two locomotives the engineer would simply kill the light, put that loco in trail, and then walk to the other cab and set it up for the lead. While this is being done the conductor would be hooking up the air hose and releasing the hand brakes.
Jacob
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