Interesting stuff from the
past...
Transcisco Tours
Some years back, I worked for
Transcisco
Tours, who ran a train of their own equipment from San Jose, CA to
Reno,
NV twice a week. I started out as a locomotive and passenger car
electrician
and ended up as assistant chief mechanical officer. My main job was to
ride the train and take care of all the little things that would go
wrong
with the engines and cars, as well as deal with any shop repairs that
were
needed. There was a crew of about 35 people on the train in addition to
a four man mechanical staff and the Amtrak operating crew that actually
operated the train. They were the nicest bunch of folks I've had the
pleasure
to know in a long time. We worked hard and had a lot of fun together.
 |
This photo was taken at Jack London Square in Oakland, CA
before we
started running the train. All we had at this time was this engine and
one car. We were showing the equipment off to the press, etc. I was
there
to keep the HEP plant in the 1001 running so the car would be supplied
with power for heat, A/C, lights, etc. I believe the 1001 is alive and
well as #390 on Montana Rail Link.
I learned a lot when I worked here, including overcoming poor
engineering.
No, not running locomotives, but designing things. There are a
couple
of stories below about some of the results of second rate, so called
"engineering"... |
We had three ex- Burlington
Northern
EMD F45 locomotives that were rated at 3600 HP each, one of which,
(1001)
came from Doyle McCormick and had been painted in an interesting New
York
Central/Daylight scheme. These were basically good (not GREAT)
locomotives,
but as they were very near the end of their service life, they had
their
share of problems... They rode real nice at 80 mph, however.
We also had
a power car for head end power that was made out of an old Santa Fe
baggage
car and eleven passenger cars.
Taking care
of all that stuff was a lot of work, but I had real good help, and it
was
probably the most fun job I've ever had. Too bad it lasted less than a
year! I never worked for a company that went Chapter 7 bankrupt before.
What a long, strange trip it's been.
| This is an ad for the train. Note the price. You can't
get a
hotel package and go up to Reno on Amtrak for any less, and we had five
people per car to wait on you hand and foot. The food was good too. The
Amtrak crews considered running our train a "gravy" job. I would bring
dinner to the "head end" crew on a tray with china and silver. Unlike
Amtrak
engines, ours had nose doors, so it was possible to walk from the train
to the head end.. |
 |
 |
This is a publicity shot of the train on the SP Donner line
near the
California-Nevada border, photo by Tom Savio, who did a lot of
photography
for the company.
I did NOT design the
color scheme!
|
Later on...
1001 in a later life as WSOR 1001.
Today,
she labors on as Montana Rail Link 390.
|
 |
It was a GREAT idea, but...
When we first acquired the
equipment for the train, the first locomotive that came along was the
TTX
1001, pictured at the top of this page. Before we took delivery
of
the rest of the equipment, we used this locomotive to provide Head End
Power to the one car that had been delivered from the outfit that
rebuilt
the cars for us, so we could use it for publicity, press
previews,
etc.. The 1001 was the only unit of the three we had that had a
Head
End Power (HEP) generating plant built into the locomotive. The
plant
was located in the rear end of the locomotive and was a nice little 50
KW plant powered by a Detroit Diesel 8V92TA Diesel engine.
The cooling system for this engine was tied into the cooling system for
the locomotive prime mover, an EMD 20 cylinder 645E3 Diesel
engine.
Great idea! The cooling system for the prime mover was so huge
and
had so much capacity that it would never notice the heat output of a
little
ol' 8V92. Except for one little detail... It seems that the
person who designed this system was counting on the prime mover's water
pumps to circulate the cooling water for the HEP plant, which they
would
do, IF the prime mover was running...
We discovered this little
oversight while we had the locomotive and car on display at the
California
State Railroad Museum in Sacramento, CA. In the past, when
the HEP plant was in operation, we'd had the prime mover either idling
or under power. While in Sacramento, we were required to run the
HEP plant all night in order to keep the car warm. (it was winter and
COLD!)
Since one of us had to stay with the equipment overnight, this seemed
like
a good idea. However, we saw no reason to keep the prime mover in
the locomotive idling all night, as all that would accomplish would
have
been noise, smoke and the use of about eight/ten gallons per hour of
fuel
to no good purpose. So, we shut down the prime mover, leaving the
HEP plant running. OK, that's fine. Everything seemed
normal,
for a while... Then something unexpected happened. After 4
or 5 hours, the HEP plant shut down. Stopped!
Hmmm.
Well, I walked into the engine room of the locomotive to
investigate.
The first thing I noticed was that it was VERY warm in there. The
high coolant temp light was lit on the HEP plant. Huh? This
thing has a HUGE cooling system! What's going on. Further
investigation
revealed that the engine block of the prime mover was actually hotter
than
it would have been had it been in operation under load! Double
Hmmmm!
After Dan the Machinist and I traced out the plumbing and figured out
just
how it was connected to the prime mover cooling system, we both had a
little
light light up at the same time. When we finished laughing, we
started
the prime mover, which fired right off as it was already plenty warm
and
soon everything was back to normal. The HEP plant was soon
restored
to operation and everything was back to normal. What was it?
Well, it seems that the
"engineer" who set up this system had the water pump in the HEP plant
circulate
water through the block of the prime mover, assuming (remember what
"assume"
does!) that the prime mover would be in operation while the HEP plant
was
running. WRONG!
Without the prime mover
running, the little HEP engine was using the 20 ton prime mover block
for
a radiator. A large engine with 250 gallons of coolant in it can
absorb a lot of heat, but everything has its limits... After a
few
hours, everything warmed up beyond the setting of the over temp switch
on the HEP plant and to save itself, it shut down. If the prime
mover
and its water pumps were not running, NO water was being circulated
through
the radiators.
Later on, Dan and I made
a minor change in the plumbing of the cooling system for the HEP
engine,
which delivered hot water from the HEP engine directly to the
radiators,
which then ran down into the prime mover block and back to the HEP
engine.
End of problem...
This later turned out to
be a hell of a nice pre-heater for the prime mover on COLD nights in
Reno...
Just keep the little engine going, which supplied power for the train
as
well, and the big engine was ready to start after a turn or two, cause
she was already nicely warmed up...
When told about the problem that we had and
our solution for it, the "engineer" who designed the system came
unglued
and insisted that our modification WOULD NOT WORK! We quietly
informed
him that the system, as he had designed it did not work, so we changed
it so that it would.
I wouldn't
hire that guy to fix a leaky faucet!
A dissertation regarding
the charactaristics
of Diesel fuel in cold weather...
The same "bright boy" decided he knew more than EMD, Alco, Fairbanks
Morse,
Marine Engineers and truck designers when he designed the fuel system
for
the power car. The fuel tank was mounted in the normal place
under
the car, but instead of taking advantage of a charactaristic of all
Diesel
engines known to me and running the warm "return" fuel back to the
tank,
which helps to keep the fuel in the tank warm, this "bright boy"
decided
to set up a "day tank" inside the car, which is heated and from which
the
generator engines drew their fuel. He used a float switch in the
day tank to refill it from the underfloor tank as needed.
Great.
He forgot ONE little detail. At very low temperatures, no. 2
Diesel
fuel starts to solidify. Little chunks of "wax" form and the fuel
starts to gel. The wax-like chunks clog up the fuel filters and
the
result is sudden quiet and no power. This was the result of the
fuel
tank under the car being exposed to the outside air temperature, which
at times reached 20 below zero on Donner Summit and the Reno/Sparks
area.
Everything was just copasetic as long as the day tank had fuel in it,
but
as it emptied, the transfer pump was unable to pump fuel from the
under-floor
tank to the day tank, as the fuel in the under-floor tank would start
to
resemble Jello during a cold night in Sparks. This was not
noticed
until we got ready to leave for the Bay Area one cold (-20F) Sunday
morning,
as the train had been plugged in to "shore power" overnight with the
power
car generators shut down. As soon as it became necessary to pump
fuel to the day tank, disaster struck! NO FUEL! The quick
and
dirty solution would have been to fill the power car with no. 1
Diesel
fuel, which stays liquid at much lower temperatures. When I got
on
the phone to the fuel distributors, I found that there was NO number 1
fuel available in the Reno/Sparks area, AT ALL, as the truckers had
cleaned
it out! They're not so dumb... So, on the first westbound
trip,
I ended up alternately using one generator and then the other about
every
half hour in order to keep the HEP running, which worked for a
while.
After a few times doing this, I gave up on them and tried the generator
in the back of the 1001, which was not really hefty enough to supply
power
to all twelve cars. This machine managed fairly well, and only
kicked
off a few times from the overload during the trip.
On reaching San Jose, the
next day, we did a small plumbing job and arranged for the return fuel
from the generator engines to be piped to the underfloor tank in order
to keep the fuel in it warm, applied some foam insulation to the
underfloor
tank (temporarily) with duct tape and everything worked just fine from
then on... Oh, yes, and just to "cover our butts", we took on a
load
of number 1 Diesel, which was readily available THERE! Could that
have been because nobody needed it???
Some notes concerning
operation
of the train... (and flat wheels)
The Transcisco Train was
operated by Amtrak crews. Now, some of these guys and gals really
knew how to railroad, but others, well...
Our equipment was not
equipped
with Decelostats (they work like ABS brakes on an Automobile) on the
brakes,
nor did our locomotives have blended braking. (combining the air
with dynamics) All of Amtrak's cars are so equipped and as
well, their locomotives had "blended braking", so I guess some of their
Hogheads were a little "spoiled" as a result. At any rate, we had
a problem with wheels developing flat spots from excessive
braking.
Upon investigation, I found that this happened at station stops and the
most likely one was coming into Martinez westbound, down the hill off
of
the bridge. After convincing the smarter Engineers that the
PROPER
way to come off that grade into the depot was to use the dynamic
braking
so as to "take it easy" with the air, the incidence of flat spots
diminished,
but the problem never really went away. We could have saved a lot
of money had we installed Decelostats on the cars for about $2500 per
car,
but what do I know???
As a result of this
problem,
every Wednesday night, with few exceptions, we cut the car(s) with flat
wheels out of the train and took them to Oakland with one of our
locomotives
for wheel truing. This created some interesting situations, as
some
switching was involved, not to mention all the overtime I made from
this,
as this caused me to miss my day off in San Jose and I would have
to spend it in Oakland (and San Francisco) "on the clock" because I HAD
to stay with the equipment and "supervise" the switching and the wheel
work. DARN! Cutting the cars out of the train generally
took
the Amtrak crews somewhere between an hour and a half to two hours to
accomplish.
There was one exception...
One night, the Oakland
Crew Base was OUT of Conductors, so the crew they sent with us to San
Jose
consisted of three Engineers, one acting as Conductor and one as
AC.
I had two cars to cut out of the train, not together, (of course) and
the
whole job was done in under 45 minutes, with NO rough joints or
overlooked
HEP cables. I timed it and we were pulling out of the yard 45
minutes
after we started! I rode the head end back to Oakland with the
crew
that night and, while it was crowded with four of us in the cab, nobody
cared as we were having a lot of fun making remarks like "If you want
to
get yer switching done right, call a Hoghead", etc. We laughed
all
the way to Oakland. I was amazed! These guys knew how to
RAILROAD!
To set things in this story
up a little, we had leased a couple of cars from American Orient
Express
for a while. They were the "Istanbul" and another one which was a
sleeper, which I think was the "Berlin", but I'm not sure.. Now
the
Istanbul is a NICE car, as is all of the AOE equipment. The car
is
a lounge, with a full bar, beautiful interior and a "baby grand"
piano.
Well, in the process of cutting out a car or two for wheel work one
night,
the Istanbul got slammed pretty good as a result of a "rough
joint".
ARRRHGH!!! After I recovered my composure, I went inside the car
to check for damage. There were a few broken glasses in the bar
and
other minor damage, BUT the "baby grand" piano had moved about three
feet and
was resting with one edge on the windowsill... I tried a few
notes
on it's keyboard and the poor thing was so badly out of tune that it
hurt!
I called a local piano tuner the next day to fix it and sent his bill
to
Amtrak. He allowed as how he'd NEVER tuned a piano in a railroad
car before. He did a nice job and it sounded at least as good as
it had before the "incident". (AOE, if you wondered why the
Istanbul
may be a little tweaked, now you know...
Actually, while I knew
that the wheel work and the time spent by me covering it was an
unnecessary
expense to the company, I really enjoyed those extra trips to
Oakland.
We would tie down the Transcisco equipment in the coach yard, I would
head
over to the Jack London Inn, yak with the merchant seamen in the bar
there, spend the night and show up the next
morning
at 0800 to see that the cars were switched to the wheel pit, see to it
that the work started and split after two hours or so. I usually
would take the ferry from Jack London Square to San Francisco and visit
friends or whatever. Sometimes, other members of the Transcisco
crew
would meet up with me there and we'd play tourist or I'd conduct
another
comprehensive bar crawl...
We ALWAYS had a good time...
More stories like these will
be
seen here as they come to mind.
This page last updated on February 10,
2001
