I've ridden (and once fired with supervision) steam engines several times and I can't understand why people don't go to a headset-based communications system. With all the yelling, hand signals and that Trains article that talks about 4449's "air puff" system, why don't crews just install a radio system and some headsets to tell each other what';s going on and cut down their hearing loss at the same time? Sure, it's not very authentic, but it's no less so than wearing jeans and baseball caps or having an MU controller in the cab with you....

The biggest reason I didn't wear the headset when running the 1522 (other than enjoying listening to the exhaust) was the fact that runing a steam engine involves several senses. You have to feel and hear what the engine is doing and I found that the headset interfered with that. The one time that I did decide to wear it, we left N. St. Louis and proceeded to the Missouri River bridge near West Alton, when I took it off to wipe sweat and heard air blowing. Our automatic brake valve had sprung a leak, not bad enough to notice on the gauges immediately, but blowing rather loudly.
It had a happy ending though as we stopped between switches at W. Alton and had it changed out and were moving again in 45 minutes.
I did wear it occasionally when we were switching, but not on the road.

I guess I don't get that. I've crewed plenty of airplanes and ridden the footplate of many steam engines and I would have to contend that each require about the same rate of input and concentration, but airplane crews have been wearing hearing protection (and communication) since the 1920s.
I'm not saying you are wrong in your point, I guess I just don't get it...

I too have tried to wear hearing protection while runnng locomotives, with the same results as Frisco. Hearing what the locomotive is telling you to do is paramount. Preventing wheel slips, dealing with priming or foaming conditions, setting the proper cutoff, &c. are all, in my opinion, best achieved using a combination of all senses. It's different to be a cab rider than it is to be at the throttle. There's less to be concerned with when one is simply enjoying the ride.

As someone who's been involved deeply in radio communications and also has a hearing impairment to deal with, I can tell you:

There are ways to "have it all".

Depending on the specific crew members, it is possible (albeit not necessarily cheap) to outfit them with earphones somewhat analgous to "Bluetooth" technology, with the crew wearing "throat mikes" and earpieces that allow them to hear both the locomotive and each other and at the same time offer a degree of noise cancellation or reduction. For kicks and giggles, my friend and I designed a system that, in this application, not only worked for in-cab communication, but automatically cut in the railroad radio channels for listening and response as needed, depending on which switch you used to reply.

The quality of the audio output can be critical. When working a major festival several times over the year, the security staff was given rental radios and inexpensive earbuds/earphones, while undercover security had Motorola-supplied "Secret Service"-style earpieces. I plugged my $350 Sony studio-quality headphones (found cheap in a pawn shop when they didn't know what they had) in to the rental radios, and the audio quality change was the difference between a scratchy Edison cylinder and quadrophonic full-range audio or a live symphony in the hall at fifty feet. Everyone kept trying to steal my headset for the rest of the convention!

Another precedent to consider: Motorcycle radio sets. They make a variety of two-way automatic radio headsets/helmet sets for conversation between motorcycle tourists, or between racers and pit crews. I would assume (no, I *know*) that listening to your bike and other vehicles is as critical (much more so, in fact) than listening to your steam loco!

It looks like a difference in opinion between those who are at the throttle and those who are riding. For the record, our other two engineers did wear the headsets, so it's probably a matter of preference for some.
In an airplane or on a motorcycle, you have instruments to refer to and listening becomes secondary, except for in traffic. I'm assuming that emergency sirens, etc, and horns would burn through the silence.
I'm sure that the headsets also offer a degree of hearing protection, but in my case, having Tinnitus tended to close me up with it.
We toyed with the idea of installing a signal whistle in the cab such as Doyle has done with the 4449, but never got it done. Personally, I never had any trouble communicating with my fireman, just as hundreds of thousands of steam engineers in the past. We stayed in touch since our engine is an oilburner and there needs to be constant communication.
That's just my opinion, as Dennis Miller says, and I may be wrong.

[quote="p51"]I've ridden (and once fired with supervision) steam engines several times and I can't understand why people don't go to a headset-based communications system.

The simplest reason is: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" or "Keep it simple."
Various signals sent between crew members in the cab, both visually and aurally, are very clear, very fast, require no equipment or maintenance, do not make your ears sweat or block other sounds, and are never in the way. The fireman is often up and out of his seat to check his fire, shoveling the thin spots, sanding flues in an oil burner, or in the case of a hand bomber, spending half his time on the deck swinging a scoop. Wireless technology, as in bluetooth, is often not guaranteed and, in my experience, often gets lots of static which makes it much more difficult to communicate. Unless you want your engineer in your ear all the time, you would need transmit buttons or buttons to change channels if you want to also hear radio transmissions. Wearing heavy gloves makes that much more difficult and you have to have a hand free to do that. Lastly, the heat, dirt and humidity of a steam locomotive cab is not a very favorable environment for electronic technology unless it's designed for that environment (our motorola radios handle it very well) Even my water resistent digital watch display will go blank on occasion due to the heat and humidity in the cab. Using radio communication between the engineer and fireman reminds me of two teens sitting five feet apart text messaging each other. Sure it works, but wouldn't a conversation serve the same purpose?

As others have stated, these are my opinions based on my experience, Others may draw different conclusions.

Ed Selinsky

If the idea is to run steam locomotives because they are anacronistic and inherently interesting, it would alter the expereince to add many "convenient" technologies. MU boxes are a requirement if you are to run on many routes or under amtrak insurance. Hotbox indicators are a requirement to prevent failure on the road which could impact steam programs everywhere. Earphone communication is a luxury. I fire locomotives almost every day now on an 8.5% railroad with capacity trains and have no problem communicating with my engineer. Sure it's loud, but I keep one eye on the right side of the cab and follow his lead so that usually you don't even need to talk. This is what I was told good firemen do so I do it. All my friends in the industry at least regard things like headphones as "wussy" (this is an observation, not a judgement on my part), so my approach has been to adopt the values of the community and hone my skills within these norms. Folks have devoted their lives to operating these machines for generations, and the community values associated with the activity have a deep history.

Stathi

I forgot to add, on the 1522 we had a sophisticated temperature monitoring system with in cab readout which our geek married up with a GPS program and made the information downloadable so we could get a printout showing time, bearing temp, speed, etc and see if any sort of pattern was developing. We had the latest cab radio, an electric speedometer and 26L brakes as well as roller bearings on pilot, trailing, tender and water car axles and a MU box in the cab as well as a FRED. So while we weren't "authentic", we were able to meld in with the railroad we were running on. The pilot crews appreciated it because they recognized most of it and it made our lives easier.
Bottom line is that the headset was a luxury I declined to use. My Dad survived in engine service for 48 years without it and would have looked down on me and laughed if I did it.

No.

The bottom line is that the railroad you're operating over is no longer your father's railroad.

Communication between your fireman and your locomotive engineer is an issue entirely between the two of you, and it matters not one iota whether you use profanity, sign language, e-mail, or mental telepathy, as long as it works.

What will be an issue in whether the railroad lets you out over their main line, assuming that is still your goal and not running fifty feet on a siding, MAY be whether the railroad feels safe in all matters, including communication. It doesn't matter how much the railroad's president loves steam; if the people assigned as your pilots or escorts--the road formen of engines, the division superintendent, etc., all of who have now been raised in the wide-nose safety cab era--aren't comfortable with the over-the-road communications, they're going to make a case that you shouldn't be there. It would be difficult to attribute a delay or disaster to bad communications between a fireman and engineer, but certainly not impossible, especially with the major view obstruction called a boiler.

I would agree that this is diverging from the original topic, but not by much.

It would appear that the real bottom line is that this is turning into a pissing match over something that the railroads really don't care that much about.
We had a headphone jack for the pilot engineer on the 1522 and I dont think one out of 10 used it. What the railroad's real concern is what kind of crew are you, what is your training, experience, how professional and safe are you and how is your equipment mechanically.
I dont' see the UP steam crews or the 4449 crews wearing headsets and yet they seem to run without Mr. Mitchell's approval. I can't speak for the 261 or 3751 crews or any of the other mainline operating engines.
Sol far, the people in this thread with real mainline steam experience agree that they are a detriment to operation of a steam locomotive.
I'm ready to call it quits on this thread and stop debating the issue with the experts.

Once again, you're missing the point.

Nobody needs my approval. I'd be worried if they did. Rather, the issue is, will the people who are graciously hosting you continue to feel that your locomotive's operating environment is compatible with their 21st-century railroad? Clear and unmistakable communication between the railroad's dispatchers and the locomotive--typically the railroad's representative riding on the loco, as we have damned few steam-qualified Class One employees anymore--is critical and paramount. As I said, the crew can communicate by carrier pigeon as long as it works effectively--just hope the supervisor agrees that it's effective, and no one misses a signal to call or whatever.

Now, granted, there's a huge difference between the old 2101/614 tonnage challenges over Sand Patch and Seventeen Mile Grade and 3751 making 75 mph over the Santa Fe. But as long as whatever's in use is considered adequate for the railroad's rep/pilot, be it a hand mike, a phone handset, a loud radio speaker, or whatever, that's all that matters.

My only insinuation is that, somewhere along the line, we're going to run into some unfriendly RFE or whoever, raised in the era of "quiet cabs," that insists that 261/3751/2816/whatever is so loud as to be in violation of OSHA noise standards, that he can't hear the radio well enough to communicate, and that as a result the loco is "unsafe". Sure, there may also come a day when all railroads are dispatched by GPS receivers; until that day, you'd be best to at least offer the alternative that overrides that potential excuse to shut you out of main line running.

Simply for the record, we installed a radio headset outlet and control with the radio headset available in the engineer's seatbox several years ago, perhaps as long ago as 2000, in 261 for the pilot crew and to date not a single pilot engineer or RFE has chosen to use it instead of the handset, to my knowledge.

First of all, no one listens to RFEs.

I have been on road freights, with standard cabs, flying track speed, windows open, horn blowing, cradling the mike against my ear in case the dispatcher wants to yell at us. (oh and you want to have real fun? Try copying a Form_D in that position.. and I know a bunch of people on here have). As long as you can have a speaker loud enough to hear, you're fine.

We have spots where you can barely hear the dispatcher, no matter what base he uses. We have radios on some engines which are lousy. We have dispatchers that sometimes can be hard to understand. But we get through it somehow. If we can survive on a daily basis, I see no big deal for a special excursion once in awhile. And any supervisor that would make a stink over that... well.. he's probably the same one that has an issue with EVERYTHING. And those types aren't taken seriously.

It is not just about hearing the stack to set the cut off. You also need to be able to destinguish the other sounds. Questions like "Is that just rod slap or do I have a wedge getting loose?" must be answered too. In fact these sounds are at least as important as the sound of the stack and sometimes more so. To the casual cab rider it is all just noise.

Again I go back to the days 30 years ago when I started on the railroad. We had no radios but could switch for hours without anybody saying a word. It was all done with hand signals, body jestures, and the whistle. Why does everyone today think you have to buy all the modern gadgets to do the same job? They often slow things down and create people who cannot work without the gadgets. I absolutely hate to see a brakeman standing on the front step of a diesel talking to the engineer on the radio when he can just as easily turn his head and talk to him through the window.

John Bohon