Saturday, January 7, 2012

Bad Order, Part 2

Bad order cars set out en route have to be moved to a car shop for repairs, once made safe to move.  Until the introduction of Railinc's Damaged and Defective Car Tracking system, that meant paperwork.  CN 9595-9488-4534 set out bad-order VIA LRC car 3358 on the east leg of the Queens wye on May 4, 1985 with cabooses 76687 and 79906 in tow.  Here are both sides of a CN bad order card for gondola CN 157023 from 1982:

Here's a CP bad order card for boxcar CP 51309 from 1975:

Railways meticulously recorded particulars of each set-out car.  Today this information is written on the train journal, and radioed to the RTC and Car Control.  Here's a CN report from 1979, for CN 286371 carrying glass and set out at Minaki, Ontario:
CP train 445's conductor fully documented defects on CP flatcar 505526 in 1981:
After repairs, the Rail Traffic Controller would send a message to the nearest station's operator, to attach to the train orders of the train designated to lift the car:

With its long Kingston Sub trains, CN has certainly had its share of Bad Order cars to deal with in recent years.  Some examples:
Nov/08: CN 406586 boxcar door popped open, two rolls of newsprint fell out, and loose door clipped VIA train Nos 46 and 64.  Car set out at Queens, road repair truck called, door chained.
Sept/08: CN train No 120 IC Eng 1006 fuel leak, set out at Queens, environmental field crew called.
Mar/08: GATX 46209 tank car lost drawbar, set out on Cataraqui Spur.
May/07: AOK 111926 boxcar broken trainline, set out at Queens.
Feb/07: MMA boxcar defective 'B' end brake rigging, set out at Ernestown.
Dec/06: CN train No 309 bad order car on west end, set out at Gananoque.
Mar/06: CN 49291 flatcar, after Kings detector, set out at Queens.
Feb/06: GMRC 78197 boxcar, set out at Ernestown.
Feb/06: CN train No 369 two bad order bulkhead flatcars: CN 624429 flat wheel set out at Queens, and CN 601865 drawbar set out at Millhaven.
Oct/05: CN train No 368 cars with knuckle and drawbar, set out in east leg of wye at Bath.

Running Extra...

Housekeeping item #1: Recent changes to Trackside Treasure's design include sidebar moved to left side, and increased width for entire blog.  This allows photos to appear extra-large, using Blogger's updated posting format.  I'd appreciate your feedback, and whether this enhances photo viewing and photo clickability for readers.  

Housekeeping item #2: Trackside Treasure's latest poll shows that 31% of respondents check in daily, 31% weekly, 19% once in a while, and 19% were visiting for the first time.  The good news is that posting frequency here will likely remain weekly, but I check in a couple of times per day to see what my blog partners are posting.  

Housekeeping item #3. Vacuuming spruce needles while taking down the Christmas tree, unstringing lights outside, then finding 'reduced for quick sale' fruitcake at No Frills while grocery-shopping.  

4 comments:

Adam Walker said...

Trackside Treasure - Now in Widescreen! I have to scroll left/right to see the whole thing now, but I expect I may be in the minority on that as my notebook still has a 4x3, 1024x768 monitor.

Nice series on the Bad Order cars. Seeing oddball cars in a consist is always entertaining.

As an aside: when was your current header photo, with the CN truck at Washago, taken?

Adam
http://walkerweb.ca

Eric said...

Hi Adam,

Thanks for that feedback. As long as the majority of readers don't have technical viewing issues, I'll keep it 'widescreen'.

I don't really like Blogger's new photo format, and this is an attempt to make my photos easily-viewable. I used to be able to click on each photo to view it at the size I scanned and formatted the image, but now the photo opens up in a black screen at a pre-set size as decided by Blogger.

Although I can view all the post's photos in succession, they come out smaller. If I want one larger to show more detail, it doesn't really happen in that black screen. Have you encountered this after clicking on any of my photos?

Washago 1989, original here. Recent discussion on Yahoogroups about diminutive VIA stations included Washago 'VIAmshack".

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Washago_Station_1989.jpg

Thanks for your kind comments, Adam. Drawbars, knuckles and hosebags, oh my! CN sure has its share. Oh, and the unit catching fire west of Ernestown, shown in the Jan 2012 canadianrailwayobservations.com

Eric

Zartok-35 said...

The consist in your top picture looks particularly great.

Eric said...

Yes, it's quite a smorgasbord isn't it, Elijah? The units' train is behind, on the south main track.

Now it's the job of Belleville-Brockville turn CN train No 518 to lift any B/O's and drag them back into Belleville for attention from the carmen.

Thanks for your comment,
Eric