The kids and I went over to the east side of Winnipeg late Wednesday afternoon. I wanted to take pictures of the grain elevator in Dugald, and I was hoping a train would come by when I was there. No train came by, so I went up to see what was happening with CP.
There was nothing visible when I got to Day Street, so I looked in the CEMR yard. I saw CEMR 4013 looking as bad as she did back in October 2009, now with a tarp half off the back end. ANY 5232 and ex-CP 5396 were there as well. CP 3027 and CP 1127 were idling together in CP's North Transcona yard.
Back at Day Street, a headlight was visible to the west. It turned out to be CP 114, rolling out with CP 9729 on the head end and CP 9527 as the DPU unit. It was 4:50 PM and the sun was quickly setting.
After that, we headed toward home. I saw CN 5557 and CN 8863 at the head of a train in Symington Yard when we passed. Funny to see an old unit like 5557 leading.
The sun was a red ball near the horizon, but with a weird flame-like distortion above it. I had to stop and take a picture. Prairie sunsets are often quite beautiful.
2 comments:
Steve, how to they control the locomotive in the middle of the train? I can't imagine anyone would be in it, so if it's remote they would have to use radio. But is radio reliable enough?
Hi Mike, you are right that noone is in the middle unit. It is done via radio and the predominant system is the Locotrol system.
The engineer can set it up so that the remote loco(s) act at the same time as the lead loco, just like if they were all directly coupled together. They can also put the remote loco(s) in "remote" mode and operate them independently.
Apparently it is quite reliable. I understand the only problems occur in mountainous terrain where the remote locomotive(s) may be behind a curve and do not get good reception.
Look it up in Wikipedia under distributed power.
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