Conductor, can you tell me what time it is?

Not having been a rail fan for the extended period of time that some of you others out there have, my knowledge of this subject is somewhat limited. I know from what little that I absorbed from history class in school and by references made in movies and other popular culture that there was a time in our nation when the railroads were THE time standard. I can understand how time would be important to the railroads for scheduling pick up and delivery of passengers and freight not the mention the aspect of safety as the network of track and number of trains grew over the years.

Those days however are long gone and we no longer rely on the Union Pacific for the correct time. Technology has stripped the railroads of that right and turned it over to agencies of the Federal Government such as the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Anyone with a few dollars in their pocket can walk into a local Radio Shack store and come out with a self correcting time piece that would been a marvel to any railroad man only fifty years ago.

For those that are interested you can view a history of time including the part that the railroad industry played in the United States. All of this comes to mind since it is once again that time of year when we are required to adjust our clocks in order to change the amount of daylight hours we have each time the earth makes one complete rotation. So turn your clocks back one hour tonight before returning the engine to the round house and putting the train to bed. It is also a good idea to change the batteries in your smoke detectors. For more of my thoughts on this twice yearly ritualism see my other blog entry at Around The Town In Oakmont PA.

WQED'S "CHOO-CHOO" AFTERNOON this Sunday October 23rd

While writing the previous blog entry this evening I went to the WQED web site to look up information on the show TRACKS AHEAD. While looking at the stations upcoming schedule I found the following entry for this coming Sunday. Fire up those VCR and TiVO boxes.

WQED'S "CHOO-CHOO" AFTERNOON
SUNDAY OCTOBER 23
See the most beautiful trains from around the country with WQED's "Choo-Choo" afternoon:

3pm - Trains of the American West
4pm - Daylight: The Most Beautiful Train in the World
5pm - Super Chief: Speed, Style, Service

As an aside, there was a nice picture of a train associated with this listing BUT, it had a hyper link and when you clicked on the picture of the train it took you to a page about an upcoming Nature program. I really hope this is an HTML error and not a scheduling error! Enjoy, I hope?

Trains on television

During the Pittsburgh Rail Fan net this evening Art, WA3BKD, provided us with a schedule from RFD TV also know as The Rural Farm Network. I know for sure that this channel is available via satellite from Direct TV but I'm not sure if any cable companies in the Pittsburgh area carry it. RFD TV carries several shows related to trains and I have my TiVO set to record them each week automatically. Also the local public television station WQED, broadcast channel 13, airs a weekly program called Tracks Ahead that is a real treat if you are a rail fan. Here is the schedule as Art gave it to me during the net.

Monday

06:00 PM Trains And Locomotives

07:30 AM The Train Show

Tuesday

02:00 AM Trains And Locomotives

10:00 Trains And Locomotives

Wednesday

02:30 PM The Train Show

10:30 The Train Show

Thursday

06:30 AM The Train Show

Saturday

09:00 AM Trains And Locomotives

04:30 PM Tracks Ahead

Trains And Locomotives follows real full scale railroads in different parts of the county and if you are the type of person that enjoys going out on a nice day just watching trains this show will get the steam going in your boiler. The Train Show is hosted by Richard Eihorn and deals with the world of model railroading. Both are great shows if you are a train enthusiast. I plan to write another entry for the blog latter just about The Train Show.

Tracks Ahead which is available to anyone in the area with a television is combination of both. The half hour show usually contains three segments and deals with just about anything that is steel wheels running on steel rails. I don't miss an episode. Enjoy!

Riding the Allegheny Valley Railroad

I started a discussion group on Yahoo for the Pittsburgh Rail Fan net and while it has not attracted a large following we do get some interesting members on the list. A recent member joined who works for the Allegheny Valley Railroad and evidently loves his work. He has a web site where there is some really great photography of the AVR. So wander on over to George's web site and check it out. I don't think you will be disappointed. The photo in this blog entry is from his web site.

Some “braking” news!

My fascination with trains started with wanting to know how diesel locomotives worked. Once I found out what a marvelous piece of engineering their were my curiosity started to extend to other parts of a working train. I recently started looking for something on the Internet with a search engine and ran across an article about air brakes. This ruined any chance I had of finding what I was originally looking for as I started exploring other pages on the topic of air brakes. Here are some of the more interesting ones that I found.

The Traffic Accident Reconstruction Origin

Train Air Brake Description and History

Railway Technical Web Pages

Feel free to drop me a note in email if you have other interesting pages to share.

America On The Move

My friend and fellow ham radio operator Henry, WA3CVC, is currently baby sitting his grand son Enzo down in Maryland while his mother is out of town on business. After getting to spend time with Enzo Henry loves going there because it is close to Washington DC which in turn is one of the great places to be if you like museums and art galleries which he does.

So I was not surprised when he sent me an email detailing an exhibit at the Smithsonian with the history of railroads in the United States. I wish I had the time to go down and take it all in because the web site makes it look very interesting and inviting. Here is an excerpt from the web site.

“The time line of America on the Move begins in 1876, the nation’s Centennial. By that time, railroads had already spanned the continent and united the country in an unprecedented transportation network.
The results were soon profound: economically, culturally, and politically. Personal mobility radically expanded; one could travel across the country in a week in the 1870s instead of taking several months just a decade before. “

To see the complete web presentation follow this link and if you are lucky enough to be in the Washington DC area by all means take the time to visit the exhibit.

Interesting radio traffic

I keep a scanner in the ham shack that is dedicated to railroad channels. On the night stand next to my bed I have an older scanner which I keep tuned to amateur radio repeaters and railroad frequencies. Living in Oakmont I am directly across the Allegheny River from Norfolk Southern's Conemaugh line and that line is in use pretty much twenty four hours a day. A lot of freight moves along that line with a good bit of it being long trains loaded with coal.

Due to my recent indoctrination into the group know as “rail fans” I pay closer attention to the rail traffic that moves along that corridor and notice things like number and type of locomotives on the train and length and type of freight being moved. One thing that became apparent almost immediately was the the coal trains were those longest in length moving up and down those tracks.

As a side note to this line. It took me a while to realize that to the rail roads this line runs east west even though it follows the Allegheny River to the point at Pittsburgh running parallel to Route 28 which I consider a north south pathway. I would hear that trains leaving Sharpsburg or Etna were headed east and wonder if they had flotation devices attached. Apparently I was not looking at the big picture.

Back at the length of the trains which is what this post is really about. We had a discussion on the Pittsburgh Rail Fan net which is held each Thursday evening on the North Hills Amateur Radio Club's 146.880 repeater at 09:30 PM about how many cars a single diesel engine can pull. This lead to an interesting conversation on what the maximum length of a train can be. After a little research I found out from a railroad employee that at least in this area the maximum length of a train is determined on the basis of not blocking rail crossings rather than how many cars the locomotives are capable of pulling. So it caught my interest on Sunday when I heard a conversation on 160.800 mHz which is the Norfolk Southern road frequency between the dispatcher and a train headed east passing the 65 mile marker. The dispatcher asked him to hold his position for a while though I never did hear the reason why. I just know there was some reason that he could not pass Harmarville at that time. What perked my ears up was when the engineer said that he was going to stop at that point in time because his train was over eight thousand feet (8000) in length! My guess is this train was well over a mile and a half in length.

My first instinct was to grab the digital camera and head for the other side of the river thinking this would be a really good photo opportunity. Unfortunately that was not to be. Normally at that time on a Sunday morning I would be in church but I had twisted a knee and that is the reason I was home to hear the radio traffic to begin with. I was not about to hobble out for a picture of a train badly as I wanted it. Perhaps next time. After all, they do run them twenty four house a day over there.

Historical fire fighting train

Thanks to KB3MOJ for the pointer to this web site with the story of a train used in fire fighting. I visited this site and it has some nice photography work.

From the web site:

“On May 7, 1929, SP 2252 was selected and equipped to become one of the famous fire fighting locomotives used for fighting snow-shed, brush fires, and forest fires along the Donner Pass Route through and over the rugged Sierra Nevada mountain range. This famous railroad line was built during the 1860s by the Central Pacific Railroad as part of the Transcontinental Railroad. Other fire fighting engines of the T-1 class, all built by Cooke, were 2242, 2247, and 2248. SP 2248 still operates today and pulls the Tarantula train on the Fort Worth & Western Railroad. “

Here is the a link so you can visit the site yourself for the entire story. Enjoy!

Link to web site.

You will be happy to know that the repeater has learned the words.

I am looking forward to the Thursday night rail fan net even more this week. The 146.880 repeater has learned the words and no longer needs to hum. Seriously though, many thanks to those that maintain the North Hills Amateur Radio Club's repeaters. I know there has been some grousing about the sever hum that has plagued the 88 machine for some time now but it has been repaired and all is well. Again, hats off to the repeater folks for the find job done keeping these machines on the air. Hope to hear all of you on the net Thursday night.