Thread by @mwichary

So I went on a tiny road trip, stumbled upon a railway museum on the way and yadda yadda I WILL BE DRIVING A LOCOMOTIVE FOR AN HOUR LATER TODAY.

Which is basically a life dream; my grandpa worked at the railways, but he retired too early for me to see any of it.

HOLY SHIT

I have been informed the proper term is “running the locomotive.” In the meantime, here are a few Dutch angles of other things in here.

In the meantime, I’m familiarizing myself with the UI of this little draisine here.

(I’m somewhat astonished the name of this thing was still in my memory since my childhood.)

I am being reminded how much I’ve always loved train type, words I didn’t fully understand, and that *smell.*

BTW I hope none of this comes across as insensitive; I am aware this is White Collar Tourism and what seems cute and fun to me was (and is) hard and sometimes dangerous work for many.

I love this place already, though.

My locomotive is a Western Pacific #917D. It is a freight locomotive. It was built in 1950, and weighs 115 tons.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMD_F7

This was really amazing. The best/scariest/most fascinating 6mph in my life. (The last photo is my instructor Bill.)

I need to get driving, but I’ll post more facts/photos/videos later!

(Of course, I’m driving home listening to Harry Gregson-Williams’s soundtrack to Unstoppable.)

On my way to steal yo g

The locomotive UI! Everything is operated by hand with levers, including throttle (acceleration) and multiple brakes. There are no pedals?

The throttle goes from 0–8, but we never exceeded two, which felt too fast for me anyway.

There are so many ways (levers, buttons, wheels) to brake or stop, which makes sense given behemoth with slippery wheels that weighs 115 tons on a light day.

(Although there was no dead man’s switch.)

In the video you can hear the bell (turned on to alert people at crossings or before starting to move, kind of like when a truck beeps when reverses).

There is also a rope-activated horn for signals, two short before going forward and three short before going backward.

The long-long-short-long horn you heard was Morse for Q, apparently done at crossings because that’s what they did in England back in the 19th century to alert people when the Queen was arriving?

Please nobody verify this, because I like that story.

Going backward (“long hood forward”) is scary since you only have mirrors to guide you.

Admittedly, the mirrors are pretty big, but the perspective makes it feel everything moves really slow when going back. Compare the mirror and its outside here:

You have to watch for people and deer, but also make sure the switches are in the right position – like the 1 here – so you don’t end up careening into another stationary locomotive or consist.

(I feel pretty proud of using “consist” just like that.)

Stopping is really tricky to get right. The curve is weird – the locomotive doesn’t seem to be doing much for a while, and then stops way too quickly. Only on my 8th run I managed to stop right next to “Malfunction Junction” sign and I felt pretty good about that.

I’ve been told stopping precisely is probably the hardest part of doing all this. You need to be delicate with cars or otherwise you can damage the cargo, not to mention endanger the people (called brakemen?) doing the coupling and decoupling.

BTW The Wikipedia page on train coupler designs is, somewhat unsurprisingly, very exhaustive: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_c…

Going forward is easier, although it feels really precarious, with the locomotive feeling rather wobbly? Maybe that disappears if you go faster. This one tops out at 90mph, which I’m told makes it relatively benevolent.

Oh, yeah, if you stop too fast you can literally flatten the wheel, which makes your boss very unhappy.

(I’ve heard a lot about unhappy bosses today!)

You probably already noticed it is REALLY LOUD inside a locomotive.

This here is actually in the engine compartment, which is even worse, and this is with the engine just idling.

Also, no, that place wasn’t scary at all.

And this is Bill doing the parking with me observing from the passenger seat.

A lot of the locomotives we’re passing are also operational!

This is passenger view, another look at the main UI, and finally one thing I could somewhat relate to: a row of buttons!

Speaking of which, here’s a funny thing.

When I was volunteering at the Computer History Museum a decade or so ago, I got certified to operate Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine No. 2. (Here’s an old photo.)

It was a 5-ton calculating machine that felt unlike any other.

But today I know exactly what it feels like, and it’s mind blowing to me, and I feel lucky to be able to have had both these experiences to compare them.

Babbage’s Engine is a calculator that feels like a locomotive.

(!!!!!)

Oh, yeah, of course there were keyboards also: one on a typewriter for some local paperwork, and another on a teletype connected to the outside world in the pre-internet age.

And some artifacts of railroad bureaucracy.

That’s it! Check it out if you have a chance – it’s a Western Pacific Railroad Museum in Portola, CA.

(Wish I could talk to my grandpa Kazimierz about all of this.)

Oh, wait! I just saw Bill filmed more things, like this exact sequence of events needed to happen before you start running. This is by the end, where I had it all memorized:

Warning bell on
Direction switch forward
Horn signal two short
Check mirrors
Throttle from idle to 1
Release brake
Warning bell off
Throttle to 2

(Write it down somewhere, you know, just in case.)

This was otherwise an unexpected coda to a day that started with me just wanting to hike around some beautiful lakes in a place recommended by a complete random stranger some time back.

Morals of the story, I guess: Stop and visit a local museum! And… erm… talk to strangers?

(My next goal is to find a railway museum where a tour guide could explain all of the strange markings and words on train cars and locomotives, and the stories behind them.)

Museums are great.

https://twitter.com/darkgreendesk/status/1020673013866467328

Oh, wow, @ForeverAgile tells me those coloured bars are called KarTrak, and are an abandoned scheme for train barcodes… aaaaand of course @ShortFormErnie already wrote about it at some point: motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/…