Sometimes..
Worked to finish up two survey projects this morning. Not one vehicle passed us at either site. The surprising thing is that no train came by the first site. There are something like 20 trains per day every day headed southerly. Zero going northerly.
Told the brother of the owner of the first site to ask his sister how much she would be willing to sell it for. 3.6 acres in desperate need of a chain saw. It would come with the farm house that hasn't been occupied for at least 50 years, probably longer than that.
Start from scratch. Dirt, trees, weeds, remnants of things that once had a value, but no more. Raw. No way to make it worth less. Next to the railroad. Once in a great while a stopped train would deny exit due to it blocking the closest crossing plus the one half a mile west and 3/4 mile south. No other way in or out. Only one other house along the route between the two crossings. Surveyed it off for the ex-husband of the client. Might make an offer on that 5+ acres as well. It will be for sale as soon as the owner loses his drivers license permanently from excessively frequent inebriation.
How busy is that rail line?
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About 20 or so trains per day. Some are what I call double trains with an engine or two on the front, a couple in the middle and at least one at the end and on the order of 200 total cars. Three of the trains are coal only, headed to power plants in Oklahoma, that return to Wyoming to be reloaded.
reminds me of the Pilot Hotel in Montello NV, trying to get sleep 150 yards from high speed freight trains. I never got used to the seismic undulation and general noise that created. Luckily, they didn't blast the horns as there were no signal intersections that side of the highway.
I had a city transit bus in Atlanta run over some cones and clip me with his mirror back in '96. Glad that experience wasn't worse that it was.
You get so accustomed to it, you rarely notice them.
an engine or two on the front
I think I've been told that a train has one engine, perhaps consisting of multiple locomotive units.
There are two reasons for distributing the locomotives throughout the train. One is to reduce the force on the coupling knuckles. Broken knuckles are not a rare occurrence. Engineers have to be careful how much throttle they apply in various situations.
Al Krug has a story on line about broken knuckles.
The other reason for distributing them is to reduce the sideways component of pull on the curves. This can increase wear and in extreme cases pull a car off the rails.
