Prototype Railroading
Station earnings annual report/carload question
The Pacific Northwest Railway Archive recently uploaded some BN documents, one of which is an annual station report. It lists every station on the BN and the carload earnings for that station for that year.
I'm looking at the 1970 Annual Station Earnings and I'm trying to understand the difference between cars forwarded and cars received.
Siemens one step away from diesel dual-mode locomotive order
On Wednesday December 16th Metro-North is seeking MTA Board approval to award a $335 million contract to Siemens Mobility for the design and manufacture of 27 new dual mode locomotives. The contract includes optios for up to 144 additional locomotives.
The new dual-mode locomotives will be based on Siemen's SC-44 Charger adjusted to Metro-North's requirements. Source: https://www.thelirrtoday.com/2020/12/mta-selects-siemens-to-build-new-du...
The final specification hasn't been published.
Regards, Volker
Baldwin AS16 Questions
Okay... so I'm a putz. Seems I like a lot of diesels that were on the rosters of my "Foundational Four". (i.e. "Foundational Four" = Four regional railroads that I use to guide my proto/free lanced theme.) Anyway... thanks to the Mop (one of my "Foundational Four"), I've taken a likin' to the Baldwin AS16 engines. What's not to like??
President Elect and Amtrak
Thought this was a neat story about Amtrak use and not meant as a political statement.
Joe
https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/07/politics/biden-amtrak/index.html
Traffic on single track
I recently read (in Trains? Maybe Classic Trains) that traffic on a particular route "was, as usual for single track, coming in bursts" or words to this effect.
How do prototype lights work in a consist?
Santa brought me a ProtoThrottle for Christmas, so I've been working on reconfiguring my locos to work better with it. While working on the light functions, I went down a rabbit hole to better understand how lights are controlled while in a consist. I was able to find an SD40-2 operators manual online that briefly discussed a couple of switches on the back wall related to lights.
Bob Fallowfield does an interesting set of internet videos.
The current video is an interview with a CN train controller. Bob Fallowfield is a familiar interviewer from TMTV and does more than this single “Platforum”. See the link below. Enjoy!
About container cars ...
So there are so many styles of container cars out there. some not in use any longer, some in wide spread usage.
My question: why the different styles?
Yes I understand the reason for the draw bar, ver couplers.
But more to the style of how the car is built?
Is it do to weight ratings?
Meant only for single stack, built for double stack?
Not as in manf built styling.
Some cars have the containers close together, others there is a wide gap between the cars.
Any insights into 1950s signal installations?
The Missabe was in the midst of installing signals in my mid-1950s modeling time. I thought it would be fun to model a new installation in one place, and was thinking about showing the holes dug for the signal foundations, the concrete foundations sitting beside the holes, signal masts in pieces ready to install... something along those lines.
Questions arise... how were holes dug then? By hand? What kind of truck booms existed, presumably to drop the foundation in the hole.
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