Greetings all, Talk about handling speed tapes seem to be one of those
areas that are firmly rooted in real world but is tactfully never mentioned.
I grew up playing with speed tapes that were brought home by a railroading
parent although the only tapes ever brought home were ones displaying runs
of a hundred miles per hour or more. The blank paper rolls were about 3
inches tall and had a waxy feel to them. Unrolled they were marked into
mile increments and graphed from 0 to a hundred and twenty miles per hour.
The rolls were wound around a heavy cardboard tube with a single hole. Some
of the later inner tubes were plastic. One would open the top of the Barco
Speed Recorder and drop the paper roll on to a spindle and then thread the
tape to a receiving spindle. The Barco was calibrated to wheel diameter so
that as the locomotive's wheels turned, a flexable shaft connected to a
single axle would pass up mechanical information into the locomotive cab and
into the speed recorder which also served as a speed indicator. As the hand
of the speedometer moved, a plunger holding a pencil against the moving tape
moved. The pencil was a small pin of graphite held against the tape by
spring action.
The Barcos went for a long time with no locks, only a place for a seal
which was a braided wire with a piece of lead to crimp down on the other end
of the wire. In the last years, small locks were incorporated into the lids
on top of the Barcos.
I worked 11811 with engineer E.E. Eversoll many a night in '74-75, and
one of "many" favorite past times during the dark winter months was to take
the tapes, roll them into balls that would be lit with a match and thrown
into the small scrub trees along side our moving train. They used to really
burn and we hoped to provide the guys on the waycar something to look at.
Ed told me of one of the engineer's he fired for on Northern Pass. was
....overly cautious and tried to "doctor" a whole tape on a moving passenger
train by drawing in a acceptable run on a blank tape. Ed said it was a
disaster as the tap unrolled, greasy finger prints and as any who every
handles these tapes knows,..they really could smudge. Frustrated, the
engineer gave up and threw the tape out of the window of the cab, thinking
"no" evidence was better than "bad" evidence. Now picture the same train
stopping at Savanna depot with speed tapes fully unrolled sucked up against
the sides of the air vents of the locomotives.
Although measuring speed in the cab with a speed indicator had been
around for sometime, the Q announced in Sept of 1926 that automatic speed
recorders had been installed on all passenger train locomotives.
Bill
----- Original Message -----
From: <qutlx1@a...>
To: <BRHSlist@egroups.com>
Sent: Monday, December 11, 2000 7:45 AM
Subject: [BRHSlist] Recalibration
> Gabe and others. While I, of course, never saw an old mechanical speed
> recorder "recalibrated" I did hear many stories of how it was done. To
> "adjust" the speed recorder one needed access to the needle that had a
little
> piece of lead on it that moved in concert with the speed of the wheels.
That
> is a critical point as sometimes the overspeed would be tripped due to
wheel
> slip. Now to get at the needle in the back of the recorder the lock needed
to
> be left unlocked.Suprizingly this was usually the case. If unlocked the
> unauthorized individuals(engineers/firemen) had an assortment of
> "recalibration" tools. Some used a small piece of wood,pencils,and other
> sundry devices that I've forgotten about. All you needed to do was place
your
> device in such a way so as to prohibit the needle from moving beyond the
> point desired as it marked the paper tape. One did need to remember to
remove
> his device upon arrival at the crew change point.
> There are also many stories of tapes disappearing after certain
unfortunate
> incidents and various rivers and creeks became repositories for speed
tapes.
> Also if you go far back in this lists archives there is a discussion of
the
> fireman's duties on #21 @C.U.S. I believe that the first duty was to get
the
> morning papers for the "paper route" and the second job was to go done in
the
> nose of the unit and adjust the overspeed.
> Leo
>
>
>
>
|