Mike Kieran Wrote:Actually, The Milford-Bennington Railroad runs the entire length of its mainline caboose first because there's no sidings on its entire route. The train runs empty caboose first up to the quarry in Bennington and returns engine first to the interchange at Bennington. This is where it would make sense to have a remote controlled caboose operating in a push-pull capacity.
Mike --
A remotely
controlled unit is controlled (by radio) from
somewhere else.
There is no point in standing on a caboose, use a radio to contact the caboose you are standing on, and then running a cable from the caboose all along the train to the engine on the other end of the train, when you instead can use that radio to contact the on the other end of the train directly.
What you are thinking about is not a remotely controlled unit - it is a cab unit. A locomotive or car with engineers controls, which is used with train sets that are permanently coupled with cables running all through the permanently coupled units. Used for passenger trains in push-pull service.
There are also (for long trains which need more power than you can put at the front without putting too much strain on the couplers) DPU (distributed power units), which are controlled by radio from the cab of the front unit on the train. The mid-train DPUs or end of train DPUs are remotely controlled units.
For a local train where you can't run cars around, and where you don't need the engine power of two units, you can also just put one non-radio controlled unit at the front and another at the end of the train respectively - and just have the engineer move to the other loco before the train returns.
There just isn't any obvious sensible need for putting a radio reception unit at one end of the train, stringing cables all along the train, and then stand on the radio reception unit with a belt pack.
Having a shoving platform makes sense. Standing on some car (including a shoving platform) with a belt pack can make sense under some circumstances. But radio controlling a shoving platform and then using MU cables all through the train to reach the loco just doesn't make much sense.
I'll stop flogging the dead horse now :-)
Smile,
Stein