Another Day, Another Dog
The "little BN" local got a new locomotive to replace the clanger that sat broken down for a couple of weeks. For a while, it looked like it wasn't going to make a difference.
Ex-Santa Fe BNSF 556 is similar to the locomotive that was broke down here a couple of weeks ago and that was finally hauled away recently.
Yesterday morning, a fuel tanker truck arrived (you can see its tail sticking out behind the black gondola on the near track) to refuel this locomotive. I took this photo while a Union Pacific train passed at speed on the main.
Later in the morning, the crew for the Little BN arrived by the contract shuttle van. The crew told the van to wait, presumably until they could be sure this locomotive worked. That was a good idea. They had a lot of trouble. They eventually got it started and connected to some of the cars they intended to pull out of the yard, but there was a loud hissing coming from the locomotive, and the engineer was complaining on the radio about not being able to keep the air pressure up.
Train brakes are powered by air. The air supplied by the locomotive is needed to release the brakes. To apply the brakes, you reduce the air pressure. This system is supposed to be fail-safe because if you lose all air pressure, either by the train air hose disconnecting or by the application of emergency brakes (known as "dumping the air"), then the brakes automatically apply. But that does mean that if you can't get air from the locomotive, you're not going anywhere because you won't be able to release the brakes.
The BNSF crew started to pull a cut of cars out of the yard, but with so much air leaking from the locomotive, they ran out of air and the train went into an emergency stop. They waited a while, pumping up the air as much as they could (at least enough to release the brakes), and pushed their train back into the yard. For a good while, I thought they were going to have to give up and get a ride back to Sparks.
I was busy with Day Jobbe, so I didn't hear how they managed to do so, but eventually they got the leak on the locomotive fixed sufficiently that they could pull cars from the yard and go on about their business. They weren't here last night, so I guess they must have made it into Sparks Yard, and Fernley Yard was mostly free of cars for the first time in weeks, giving us a clear view of the tracks.
Why BNSF keeps sending defective locomotives out here, I don't know.
Ex-Santa Fe BNSF 556 is similar to the locomotive that was broke down here a couple of weeks ago and that was finally hauled away recently.
Yesterday morning, a fuel tanker truck arrived (you can see its tail sticking out behind the black gondola on the near track) to refuel this locomotive. I took this photo while a Union Pacific train passed at speed on the main.
Later in the morning, the crew for the Little BN arrived by the contract shuttle van. The crew told the van to wait, presumably until they could be sure this locomotive worked. That was a good idea. They had a lot of trouble. They eventually got it started and connected to some of the cars they intended to pull out of the yard, but there was a loud hissing coming from the locomotive, and the engineer was complaining on the radio about not being able to keep the air pressure up.
Train brakes are powered by air. The air supplied by the locomotive is needed to release the brakes. To apply the brakes, you reduce the air pressure. This system is supposed to be fail-safe because if you lose all air pressure, either by the train air hose disconnecting or by the application of emergency brakes (known as "dumping the air"), then the brakes automatically apply. But that does mean that if you can't get air from the locomotive, you're not going anywhere because you won't be able to release the brakes.
The BNSF crew started to pull a cut of cars out of the yard, but with so much air leaking from the locomotive, they ran out of air and the train went into an emergency stop. They waited a while, pumping up the air as much as they could (at least enough to release the brakes), and pushed their train back into the yard. For a good while, I thought they were going to have to give up and get a ride back to Sparks.
I was busy with Day Jobbe, so I didn't hear how they managed to do so, but eventually they got the leak on the locomotive fixed sufficiently that they could pull cars from the yard and go on about their business. They weren't here last night, so I guess they must have made it into Sparks Yard, and Fernley Yard was mostly free of cars for the first time in weeks, giving us a clear view of the tracks.
Why BNSF keeps sending defective locomotives out here, I don't know.