On my way back to Sevierville this afternoon, I was traveling along Old AJ Hwy, went to Sun Road, saw that Hodges eastbound signal was green for the main. So I waited. It was about 1 pm so I though 16T was due through there. I didn't have to wait more than a minute when the train came by, 3 on the head end, a SD&0M-2 leading. Very long train.
As the last car passed, I saw that the back truck (wheel set) was wig-wagging terribly, sending the whole boxcar fishtailing on the track. Now I know the usual sway of a rail car, but this was no ordinary back and forth sway. Like I said, it was fishtailing on the tracks. The EOT was bouncing back and forth on the coupler. I had never seen a railcar fishtail or an EOT bounce like this one did.
So I raced ahead of the train, met up with it at Friends, by then it was slowing down. I met the train at Collins Road before it crossed. As I waited at the crossing for the train, I called NS on the 800 number on the crossing signal mast. I told them what I saw, then they connected me to Knoxville, and I told them again, and that I figured it was 16T. I stayed on the phone with them until the last car passed. It was not fishtailing as badly as by this time the train was probably doing no more than 20mph.
They confirmed it was 16T, and stopped the train at Jeff City I guess to do an inspection.
Does anyone know what the problem actually was? I didn't have a scanner, so I don't know.
It is very common for the rear car on a train to do some "hunting". Too much hunting will trip a truck hunting detector. If you have the car number, I can look-up to see if the car has been hunting in other situations. There are many things that can cause that, but by far the most common is zero side bearing clearance on a roller type side bearing arrangement. A freight car pivots on its center plate and on each side of the center plate are body side bearings and truck side bearings. Sometimes those are meant to be in constant contact and sometimes they are roller clearance type. When there are rollers and there is no clearance, that will cause the car to "boogie" as it goes down the track. You can tell a car that has been doing that by looking at the side bearing rollers and if they are shiny all the way around and there is little or no clearance, that is a sign that the truck has been hunting thus causing the car body to wiggle. However, I have escorted passenger cars in freight service where we had one empty car behind the coach to hold the EOT and the last car will always fishtail a little especially when empty.
No, I did not catch the car number, I just remember that it was a boxcar.
truck hunting detector ? what ??
Maybe that is why the train was already slowing down, as the truck hunting detector may have been tripped by the 'hunting' boxcar. This is the first time I have ever heard of a truck huting detector.
I am a conductor for NS and i do not know of any truck hunting detector. The only way a detector could know is if it derailed and the Dragging Equipment Detector picked it up. I have watched trains by and I dont know how the last car stayed on the rail.
Agreed. There is no such thing as a "hunting detector".
Salient Systems, Inc. of Dublin, Ohio, a wholly owned subsidiary of Portec Rail Products, Inc. sells a Hunting Truck Detector (HTD).
http://www.salientsystems.com/prod_hunting.html
Some other gadgets from the same company:
Rail Stress Module (RSM) / StressNet?
Wheel Impact Load Detector (WILD)
Truck Performance Detector (TPD)
Automatic Vehicle Overload & Imbalance Detector (AVOID)
Low Hose Detector