06-30-2010, 07:26 AM
It means you need to have a car or cars already in the track with handbrakes applied. This would ensure the car you are kicking, which has no brakes, will indeed stop where you wanted it to (it will couple to the car that is tied down). If you kick a car into an empty track it will just roll until it hits something, rolls off the track, or up a grade.
Charlie I guess I am not too great at wording what I am thinking. Yes, it is ok to bleed the air off of cars to work industries, though I admit to having only done it once in my relatively short RR career. I never saw the need to do that, the one time I did do it I was being lazy, it was below freezing, and the car I had tied down in the siding rolled when I kicked the car into it. I ended up having to run and hop on and tie down the car I kicked, negating the purpose of kicking it in the first place. I never kicked a car out on the road again. But it IS an FRA violation to leave your initial terminal without 100% functional brakes which is more what I should have said. Not a problem if all your industries are within yard limits tho.
Charlie I guess I am not too great at wording what I am thinking. Yes, it is ok to bleed the air off of cars to work industries, though I admit to having only done it once in my relatively short RR career. I never saw the need to do that, the one time I did do it I was being lazy, it was below freezing, and the car I had tied down in the siding rolled when I kicked the car into it. I ended up having to run and hop on and tie down the car I kicked, negating the purpose of kicking it in the first place. I never kicked a car out on the road again. But it IS an FRA violation to leave your initial terminal without 100% functional brakes which is more what I should have said. Not a problem if all your industries are within yard limits tho.
-Dave