Marshall,
Comments inserted.
Russ
> You should be chairman of the "Good Questions Committee", Bill! Since I
lived in or near Q territory for almost 2/3 of my life, I should probably
know the answer to that one - but I don't <sigh> . . . another place where
we're lucky that BRHSlist has a lot of ex-railroaders to keep us amateurs
straight!
>
> I *do* know the following, though - for locomotives which might have
extended shut-down times (such as branchline service GPs and SDs or some
switchers, the Q installed "overnight" heaters (the box-and-stack
arrangement behind the cab) which served to keep the engine coolant from
freezing during shut-down. *IF* such a heater were built into a freight or
passenger "covered wagon", your only external clue would be an extra stack
in the roof somewhere. On the other hand, none of the CB&Q cab-unit
diagrams I have indicate the presence of an extra heater.
The stand-by heaters were of little value and were gradually removed
as just another thing to maintain that did not work. The CB&Q's early
locomotive purchasing policies seemed to be "let's buy everything that
EMD offers". Thus all those dual controls and steam generators. The
stand-by heaters were bought by a few roads but not after the mid 50's.
Unless there was a heated building to park them in units were left running.
In really cold weather they had to be left running in the 3rd notch. Below
about ten below an idling unit will freeze. The "3rd notch policy" is what
is in place today. Units are only shut down for fuel conservation in
situations where is is know for sure that the temperature will not go
below freezing.
Locomotive shutdowns are always a point of contention because of the
difficulties involved in battery maintenance. Even the switch to unitized
batteries in recent years has not made this problem go away. As they
get older and are not properly maintained they will become just as
unreliable as the old ones.
Locomotive freeze ups are about the most expensive thing that can go
wrong and the repair cost often exceeds major wreck repairs.
>
> One other Q-fact may come into play here. The CB&Q had a unit-usage
program that was a model for the industry. By swiftly re-assigning an
incoming unit to commuter duty, for instance, the engine never shut down for
any length of time - it just kept making money. Real down-time for mainline
units (which included virtually all the covered wagons) was not common. If
units are only shut down for maintenance or repair, you don't have a
freezing problem.
Sounds like you're reading a little too much PR stuff here. In really cold
weather the concept of "any length of time" does not apply. As I said,
they will freeze while idling and you can never trust the batteries to start
even a brand new unit. Every railroad had patterns of usage for it's
locomotive fleet, especially it's passenger units. You just heard about
the CB&Q's more because I think that Morgan guy liked to suck up to
Harry Murphy and pumped back out everything he was told.
>
> You mentioned a unit-freezing incident on the Rock Island in 1968. The
Rock Island in its last few decades (sorry, RITS co-subscribers) was a
rather poorly managed road, and had inherited problems as well. For one
thing, it was unit-rich and assignment-poor by 1968. Extended engine
shut-down without protection is what causes the problem you described - I
had a similar thing occur while riding Amtrak's Lake Cities in 1979. The
train was maxed (it was the week of Five Mile Island, and lots of people had
decided to re-route away from Phillie) and they had pulled both extra cars
and an extra unit. We were well out of NYC but still unable to make speed
when they finally discovered that one unit had automatically shut down from
overheat. It was the added unit, and it was frozen. We were held for over
two hours in Albany until a fresh unit could be added . . .
Probably overheated because it was already down the road to freezing.
Unit probably did not have auto drain installed. CB&Q did not use auto
drain either. I will agree that the Rock Island did have a lot of
locomotive
maintenance money disappear before it got anywhere near one of their
units. The IMS scandal proved that. Like many other things locomotive
freeze ups get right down to employee attitudes and the impact, or lack
of impact, of first line supervisors.
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