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Post Info TOPIC: Torpedoes


The Forum Celestial Advisor

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RE: Torpedoes
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I was re-reading some old Trains Magazines and one had an article on
torpedos. The end came (using them) mostly because of radio
communication (the 2-way radio eliminated most uses) and the
end of a caboose on every train eliminated most other situations.

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Trains Magazine....The Cummpany Mans rag. Anti-union, Pro cummpany drivel. They report just what management wants cause they hold the key to legal access. If they weren't sucking the company cock they would be trespassing.

Torpedoes were dun in by safety cab Locomotives that had enough sound insulation in them to so muffle the sound of one going off when all the windows were shut and the air conditioning was on high.

The days of a man hopping off the rear and going the prescribed distance and laying 2 torpedoes on the rail on the engineers side, 50 ft apart, displaying a lit fuse(after dark) and returning half the distance to the train were loooooooooooooooong gone. 

The torpedo could be used as a warning device and that's how we were trained to remember them...

Torpedos....Have to place them 50 ft apart so its a distance...2 miles.  After hearing the explosion of a torpedo must slow down to restricted speed for 2 miles. (only have to hear 1, but you have to put 2 down) 

Fusees.......They burn for 15 minutes so its a time...............15 minutes.  After encountering a fuse on your track, slow down to restricted speed for 15 minutes.

 

If you can't hear it anymore, or can't be sure you heard one, its usefulness is nil. That's what happened to the torpedo. 

 



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Force Majeure

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Calvin wrote:

Torpedoes were dun in by safety cab Locomotives that had enough sound insulation in them to so muffle the sound of one going off when all the windows were shut and the air conditioning was on high.

If you can't hear it anymore, or can't be sure you heard one, its usefulness is nil. That's what happened to the torpedo. 

 


 Ding, ding, ding. We have a winner.

Not being able to hear something that had no usefulness on a modern railroad meant a perfect tool for unscrupulous (is there any other kind?) supervisors.

No purpose didn't mean that the companies got rid of them. They were forced by FRA and LERBs. Torpedoes had become nothing more than a rule check device that provided an easy way to fire people they wanted to fire. Because it's a de-certification offense, the FRA and LERB became involved. Union Pacific was notorious for red lantern at a crossing and torpedoes in the middle of nowhere rules checks. I think that ti was a Utterly Pathetic case that finally did them in.



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We had a crew in the long distant past, that got nailed on a fusee check when the TM, who had it in for the engineer, hid a fusee at a exceptionally high road crossing, laying it down just on the edge of the pavement on the far side of the crossing. The engineer, an old NKP man, served time over it, thirty days, I think.

The Red Team loved running fusee and torpedo checks but the last one I ever remember being involved in was where the TM generously laid them beside a concrete block building where there was lots of echo, in a town with a speed ordinance.

I remember firing for one very deaf HAWG when we hit some torpedoes at about 60 per, I was running the engine and started blowing the required whistle. He looked over at me and said, "What the hell?"

"Torpedoes, Rabbit".

"Oh, good job".

When we got to the yard office, the division RFE (Jim Hinkle, ever hear of him, Snip, off the Pokey) was waiting to tell us we'd complied. Rabbit told him, I couldn't hear those phukkers".

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RE: Torpedoes

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The Forum Celestial Advisor

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Calvin wrote:

Trains Magazine....The Cummpany Mans rag. Anti-union, Pro cummpany drivel. They report just what management wants cause they hold the key to legal access. If they weren't sucking the company cock they would be trespassing.

 


 I never thought of Trains Magazine that way. I mean I all I want to read

are the new artictles on railroading with lots of pictures. Much like today,

I skip the letters to the editor in my local newspaper and all the

regular columns that preeceded all the good railroad articles and

pictures in Trains Magazine. I was just a kid. Took me until 1998

to completly figure out all the politics in railroading. Being older now

I do try to read some of those editorials by Don Phillips, Ed Ellis, Ed King,

and others but there was good reason why I skipped it...boring.

I've got some Trains Magazines going back to 1959. I found a

Hobby Store in Bham that sold Trains Magazine and I started buying

them in 1969. Back then Trains Magazine was 60 cents an issue.

Subscribed several different times over the years to the magazine.

Owe a lot of my railroad knowledge to that magazine.



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