I went through this "mid-train" stuff with a passenger car I was escorting/expediting across CSX years ago. Back at the time, the owner made the judgment call that it was better to keep the train moving (over a pancake-level railroad) and take a chance of coupler damage than have the train stopped in a "lake-effect" snowstorm to switch it back. This happened in spite of my presence in the yard's tower the night it was switched from one train to another, emphasizing the "handle on rear" to the yardmasters, before crawling off to a motel for sleep.

As the car's owner said then (before the day when I could send cell phone snaps to him from the field), "You were there. You told them. You showed them the paperwork. The placards are all over the car. And they still [bleep]ed up. If they pull the drawbars, you'll be giving testimony in court while I sue their [bleep]es."

The old-guard yardmaster at the next terminal called the yard in question and, erm..... let's just say he had some very stern words with them. But that was probably because I showed up a half-hour before the train in question did, and just asked about the car in question. (He was "old-guard" enough to recognize it was a passenger car from the number and reporting marks alone, and he found himself that it was in the middle of the consist without my saying so.)

Why is it so important to have a piece of equipment like this at the end of a consist? I've seen various pictures and videos of passengers cars and the like always on the end of a consist, but I've never known why.

I was involved, as one of three riders, in a crew car move 30 odd years ago. (Two guys rode, the third chased with a truck). Conrail managed to push this car over a hump, in spite of paperwork, placards AND both of the guys on the car yelling at the hump crew. (It wasn't me, I was chasing in the truck at the time-). So my friends simply wound up the hand brake and shut down the hump for awhile, at least until the yardmaster or someone else in authority got there. I wasn't there, but wish I had been-

Typically--not always, but typically--the draft gear (couplers, drawbars, associated spring/cushioning, etc.) for passenger cars is designed differently than that for freight cars that can expect to handle 10,000 tons or more behind them. (I just had a report of a 15,000-ton mixed freight leave one of my local yards, nearly two miles long.) Think in terms of the difference between the stereotype suspension and ride of an old Cadillac limo, an SUV, a sports car, and/or a tractor-trailer.

A plain-box commuter car, or an Amfleet car, is not designed to handle lots of tonnage behind it. Ditto the couplers of a typical private car. (A railroad's executive business-car fleet is typically rebuilt with heavier draft gear, but even then you have to watch the weights.) The car I was escorting got away with it because the tonnage behind it was mostly light with quite a few empties; had there been a lot of coal loads or stone or the like behind it, it may well have been a different story.

In addition, the air brakes can have different settings. Others with more firsthand knowledge may chime in with more knowledge, but passenger car brakes are designed to react differently from freight car brakes, and putting that in the middle of a train can cause problems. Knowledgeable car shops will set up the brakes for freight travel if possible before shipping a passenger car long distances in freights between homes or gigs.

Sandy, 469 is set up with freight car brake release, so that wasn't an issue. The "accordion factor" potential with slack action, was.

A long running legal saga centers on a incident of just such actions, as described and pictured in an earlier thread on railroad.net:
http://railroad.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=57&t=64866

I'm happy to report that 469 was relocated to the rear of the train (well, next to last, allowing for a freight car to carry the FRED -which is acceptable), and is proceeding north.

Unless somebody in years past has done something stupid (improper welding) to the frame of your Budd I doubt she is in any real danger. Many years ago, CSX (yes, I know, railroading's village idiot) had standard restrictions for passenger cars allowing them to move on the head end providing the train did not exceed 7,000 trailing tons. I think they later modified this to apply to lightweight cars only and finally went with run on rear only. I can say that from the perspective of riding/escorting the car in freight service travel right behind the engines was always preferable to on the rear IMHO. Slack action on the rear of a 150 car train can be and usually was kind of brutal. I can also say that a 1947 Budd coach will make some "interesting" noises with 7,000 tons behind it especially if it hasn't been used in a number of years.

Nice looking old diner, BTW. Glad to see it headed home.

ETA

Thanks for the info. The thread about the Comets really put it into perspective.

469 arrived in Hagerstown, MD this morning.

Back when I was with the Bluewater Michigan Chapter NRHS, and we moved our cars by CSX frequently, we never requested our cars be moved on the rear end only. Our cars were 1937 to 1954 Budd, Pullman, and ACF, and at least once I recall we received two older cars from the Cleveland Chapter via CSX. Our only restrictions were no top-shelf couplers, and no more than 10,000 trailing tons. We preferred to have the cars closer to the front of the train as trackside rock-throwers were less brave when they were within line of sight of the locomotives. And if CSX could put the cars anywhere in the train they could just run the cars in the next regular train passing through, which sped up movement, and eliminated demands for special-train handling. We never had any problems I can recall with the cars being in the middle or front of a train. The only problems we ever had were with switching accidents caused by carelessness in the yards.

My most recent (few years ago) experience with CSX was that they would not put our car at the end of a train as they claimed they could not get the FRED attached to it. The movement order from Jacksonville was evidently sent out with end-of-train-only on it.

I had a friend that worked at Conrail's Selkirk Yard in the 1990s, and he confirmed to me that they did hump anything that came through the yard, even if it had "do not hump" written all over it. If your car is in good enough shape to move on a Class 1, and if the hump yard operators follow standard train-handling rules and regulations, while this is not desirable I don't see why it would be much of a problem. I bet far more of our cars have been humped in deadhead moves than any of us know.

Chris.

One car I was escorting had a broken coupler on one end (done by the railroad, mind you) and was being sent to a car shop for a major overhaul, including repair of said coupler. The crew was insisting they couldn't handle a car with a broken coupler because there was no way to couple to it. I, in the company of a railroad police officer that had stopped by to check out what I was doing in a rail yard at 5 in the morning, pointed out in increasing vocal and numbskull-piercing language, that the defective coupler was on the opposite end of the car from where their train would have to couple anyway, and that the siding it was on was a dead-end siding with the broken coupler pointed away from the switch. They then started whining about where to hang the FRED; I showed them a perfectly acceptable and obvious method using the vestibule gate and the air hose extension I had brought for just such an argument. After another couple rounds of whining, even the RR policeman was telling the crew to "shut up and get this damn car on the road, or I'm going to have some words with the yardmaster." And this was just a simple from-one-yard-to-the-next freight jump of about 60 miles.



They may "hump" it, but the technique I have personally witnessed from several yard towers is that the car comes up in turn (next to the loco or two cars from it, often, depending on how fast they switch in the next cut to be classified behind it), the pin-pullers read "do not hump," they cuss a little--you can hear it on the radio--and then they proceed to lower it to its destination track without actually uncoupling it and setting it free, and then have to back the cut back up the hump. Whether this happens because they're conscientious railroaders, because I'm there literally breathing down their necks or the bosses' necks, or because they don't like the thought of LNG tanks exploding is certainly open to discussion on a case-by-case basis. On the other hand, I have seen one or two examples of hump damage done to a vintage passenger car, and the settlement process isn't always pretty.

Many years ago, CN sent one of our cars down the hump at Taschereau Yard in Montreal. This was an old wooden Intercolonial Railway sleeper with a steel center sill and truss rods. She had steel plating on the body, so perhaps they never thought "wooden car". But it was a passenger car, which should never be humped.

The car's end was destroyed and given the cost of repairs, we had to let the old girl go.

Before any move, take tons of photos... preferably using a digital camera with the date turned on, so you can prove the car was sound before it moves!

Steve Hunter

While at Conrail, I was occasionally assigned to the staff of the Dynamometer Car (CR20) which was originally the NYC Chicopee Falls. This car had a dynamometer coupler and we measured the drawbar pull. I can tell you that this car was ALWAYS on the head end and MU'd with the power so that we could record the throttle settings. It was on heavy coal trains and 2 mile intermodal trains. One story that I heard from the regulars was that on a heavy coal train the drawbar reading was about 400,000 lbs and everyone ran to the middle of the car. That should be enough to satisfy the curious that that car had the capabilities to be on the front end.

Slack action is always a danger and it is worse on the rear end than on the front end. When we went into emergency, we always immediatedly sat down becasue we would expect a slack run-in. I never experienced one.

Crews did have a problem with the attached car. Once on a lite move from Philly to Oak Island, the crew was detrmined to set us off in the yard and take the power to the house. It took some talking to prevent that. Had to call the Blue Room. We had all of the instrumentation wiring in place and we were "part" of the locomotive consist.

When we were done with a test, the car did come back to Altoona in freight service. Anything that was not securely fastened in place could come loose. And this did happen.

Good Luck with the diner move.
Al

Around 1960, the Western Pacific busted up the BAERA's (WRM)'s Sacramento Northern 1005, a steel-frame wood interurban motor. It's quite bad - scroll down here.
http://people.virginia.edu/~ggg9y/holman.html

It was not the first time the car had been damaged being hauled in freight trains, but certainly the worst. The car went to the Sacramento Northern shops, where they had been able to repair previous damage, often borrowing parts from stock and similar cars they had kept for MoW and the like.

In this case the SN shops threw in the towel. WP returned the car broken and coupled to Sacramento Northern #1020, with the notion that BAERA could strip motors and controls from #1005 to turn #1020 into a viable motor, then scrap #1005.

Of course nothing ever goes to plan. The 1020 was restored as a trailer, and then the 1005 was restored as a motor.
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=30037

This is exactly why railroads do not want touch equipment outside of the regular freight cars they handle on an everyday basis. Special placement, riders, humps, slack action, etc... And then when something happens they get hauled to court. It's a wonder anything owned by a museum ever gets moved. I understand that they should be able to do it, they should have employees who can be trusted to read "do not hump" on the side of a car, but the fact is it's more trouble than either the employees or managers want to deal with.

http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/archiveThumbs.aspx?id=78730

Some good pictures, I like the one under the cutoff.