I must have had good fortune with machinery; even the worst offenders were much easier to deal with than some of the people I encountered here and there. Besides, you can take a torch and sledge to a machine to try to change its behavior.......still, there were occasions that I was the recipient of repair or overhaul work done by others that simply didn't contribute to the ongoing reliability or robustness of the machines in question. Remediation cost a lot of grief and aggravation and missed revenue trips.

Nothing as bad as Kelly's saga above, I'm thankful to say. I also despise trying to work on deckless locomotives, especially when you further shrink them down to narrow gage size.

dave

Then there are the handful of locomotives that have been restored (or attempts were made to do so) that would have been better left in the park. These tend to have been, either individually or as a class, troublesome, unreliable, shop queens, and/or difficult to work on or around when they were in regular service, and decades spent sitting made them neither more reliable to operate nor easier to work on.

I wonder if E and F units are as miserable to get in and out of as the new MP40PH-3C engines. The doors are only about 4'8" tall, and you have to climb a ladder and open the latches while carrying your grip in the other. Half the time the door swings shut in your face, and if you are really lucky you can get in the narrow doorway without a concussion. The side mirrors are mounted in such a way that you can't see out of them without putting your head down on the desktop control stand also. To top it off, when the window heaters are activated it sends wierd shimmer through the glass that distorts the vision forward. Don't get me started on the placement of the toilets!

I too have heard many complaints about the new GO Transit engines. One thing that I find curious is the round corners on the doors of all engines from the second batch onward. It looks like a tripping hazard, and I wonder why MPI would even bother to waste time and money redesigning such a minute detail...

Further more, I believe the doors on engines such as 6167 and 6213 are 5'4". curious that door size seems to be regressing....

Why? European buffer/link couplers are actually quite safe, that is why they lasted so long. Their weakness is that they are not as strong as the knuckle coupler, and they make slack control more difficult.

With buffer/link, you position to two cars close to each other, stop, and couple up. No risk of being crushed, or losing your fingers. With knuckles, you open the knuckles, stand back, signal, cross your fingers, shove the cars together, pull back to test the link...

and then do it over again.

Not to derail the thread but:



I was at a station in Germany in the 1980's, waiting for a train, and watched a freight yard being worked. A diesel siderod engine was "kicking" cars. The brakeman would stand in the gauge with his back against a car end and radio for a car to be kicked. He then held up the link to "catch" the car, as the buffers would cause it to bounce back away if not immediately coupled. If kicked a bit fast, the resulting "coupling" would cause the movement of both (or more) cars and the brakeman backpeddled as he was between the moving cars. Once the movement stopped, he tightened the link coupling and made up the air. Then, he stooped and went under the buffers to get out from between the cars, and positioned himself for the next kick.

I ain't got the nads to be a German yard brakeman.

Unless you are carrying something I find it easy to get into FL9's.

If someone did, would you believe them? LOL

We're talking about 49 CFR 229.14 I believe. Yes, there are so many exemptions that this is not a big problem.

As long as you stay off the general system, you are automatically exempt. The General System is the territory that REVENUE freight trains must necessarily roll over, other than the railroad or museum itself.
http://www.fra.dot.gov/pages/2348.shtml
http://www.railwaymuseums.org/Static/do ... rPart1.pdf
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=32680&p=169462&hilit=fra+tourist+railway#p169462

Now if you are in the general system, you still have some outs. If you are in the general system, 49 CFR 229.9 lets you tag it out of service and move it "dead". Nothing about this rule prohibits hauling passengers on it.

If that is not enough for you, write to FRA and get a waiver. You have a legitimate purpose for keeping the apparatus (it is historic) and your movements are on a lightly traveled branch line at <= 30 mph. It's rather unlikely that they would deny you. They definitely would not deny you if you added "and we are not using the equipment to control trains".

Did this arduous task have anything to do with why the throttle leaked on that locomotive? I noticed on several occasions where she was sitting idle with an annoying amount of steam exiting the cylinder cocks, particularly during the mainline trips I chased. Only reason I ask is, like you said, if the bolt pattern isn't taken down "very tight", there is a tendency for some steam to leak past the flange between the standpipe and throttle as I've witnessed on more than one locomotive. Sounds like that situation could have been present on 7002 with hardly any room to maneuver.

.

Now that you mention it, I forgot the innate passion the Pennsy had for hydrostatic lubricators, thus, 7002 wouldn't have anything other. Now it makes more sense, but you can see how one could interpret that as a leak past the throttle. Super-sized chokes would certainly make for some decent flow out of the cylinders as noted. Thanks for clearing that up.

Best,
DC

L&N 152, when it originally ran in service must have been pretty miserable to operate. It had two injectors, both controlled by the engineer, as was the practice of the L&N in the early 1900s.

The locomotive was nearly a full backhead locomotive, but with a small deck. The engineer sat next to the firebox, much like the N&W 475. However, in that small space, there was the large Johnson Bar, that took up any room for a seat, save for a tiny folding seat. I think the engineer either sat on the tiny fold down seat, on the window sill, or just stood. The fireman had no seat box of his own either.

Even in restored service, the addition of a power reverser made more room for a seat for the engineer, but one has to climb up over the seat to sit in it. Firing was always a challenge, as the left foot is on the small deck the locomotive has, and the right foot is ont he bridge plate between the locomotive and tender, meaining your body was usually contorting in different directions when firing.

Not from personal experience but wouldn't mechanical work on a BL2 qualify it as miserable equipment? Can one pull a power assembly in there?

Steve

Yes you can, though you don't have a lot of room. We used a pulley assembly operated by an air drill motor. Cramped quarters, plus some good old fashioned authentic railroad shop language, made for an "interesting" time.

Running a BL-2 backwards is also pretty miserable. The unit has an F-unit style control stand, with 24RL brakes, so the train brake is on the right hand side of the engineer when facing forward, and behind you when running in reverse. Also, when running in reverse, you are looking through a glass window in a door to the engine room, and through the tiny reverse window.

I gotta tell you though... I know a couple museums that'll be happy to relieve you of that problem you're having.