SIDE SHOT SATURDAY

[doctorwayne]

Aren't the lights under the cab to show up the ballast so that you can tell when the loco's moving?

That's what I thought, too, David, but I suspect the ones on the Stelco locos also serve as safety devices:  while lots of areas within the plant are floodlit, there are also lots of places where there's little to no lighting at all, and, of course, operations go on 24 hours a day.

A few years ago, a good friend got me a ride in this locomotive....



......and as it moved its train through that coal-loader in the distance, there was no sensation of motion, even if you looked out the window at the trees on one side or the river on the other.  I knew that we were moving though, as the over 100 hoppers in the train were being loaded as we moved along.  The only way to really verify that was to look down at the ground alongside the track.....





I recall the loader operator asking the engineer, over the radio, to "slow 'er down a bit" (I don't remember the exact wording, but something like 1/3 of a mph - in any case, a very precise and minute amount).


Wayne