What Happened to the Choo-Choo?

I walked down to the railroad station in Sandpoint just to watch a train roar through. It was interesting, but something was missing. I realized that the romance of the train had slipped away. When one watched the old steam trains it was as if you became part of the operation. The clicking of the telegraph, the orders being passed from the station master to the engineer as the train sped through the station area. Waving at the man in the caboose had warmth about it and one felt as if he was a friend. Train watching today reminds me of watching kids with their modern gadgets. Most of today’s youth do not play—they watch their gadgets play. I determined what was missing, for me, was a sense of involvement with the modern day Choo-Choo. Change had to come to the railroad but there was a price to be paid. Let’s take a look at some of the things that have transpired over not too many years.

Sandpoint came into being because of the railroad and timber. The advances in technology in these two areas are mind boggling. When one goes down to the railroad station to see the "Choo-Choo," sights and sounds have changed. The sight of the old steam locomotive with its string of cars, with a caboose at the end, has vanished. Today, it is diesel and there is no caboose with an arm waving out the window. No longer can the men in the cab dressed in over-alls, red bandannas and striped caps be seen. Today it is a sport shirt or an occasional shirt and tie. One does not hear the clicking of the old telegraph machine, with a Prince Albert tobacco can attached to make it louder, receiving orders from some unseen source. Today it is radio and the FAX machine that fill that role. No one goes out to the track to manually lift a large rod to divert the train onto a sidetrack because that is done electronically. There is no evidence of the record books that tracked the owners and destination of the many cars along miles of track for that is done by scanners and computer print-outs.

The technological strides made on our railroads are many and varied but let's review a few:

The next time you see a train with an engine on the rear you are, more than likely, seeing a helper engine. When more power is needed a remote control unit, located in the front of the train, sends a message to the engine in the back to help out. This unit sees that the power needed to move the train is distributed in the most efficient way.

On the old trains there was a journal at the end of the wheel shaft that was packed with waste material and oil. When these got hot it spelled trouble and the man in the caboose had the job of detecting the "hot boxes." He also was ever on the lookout for anything dragging, like a chain.  Today this high maintenance job has been eliminated because roller bearings are used and a scanner tells the crew if the bearings get hot, or if there is anything dragging from the train.

In the cab a computer screen has replaced the speedometer and the air gauge. From the end of the train an electronic device tells the engineer the air pressure and if all systems are working correctly.

Have you ever wondered how the railroad keeps up with all those cars? An Auto Equipment Identifier, which scans each car, does it as each car passes. There is one along the Burlington-Northern and Santa Fe Railway line here in Sandpoint. Each car has a box on it about the size of a half-carton of cigarettes cut lengthwise. The scanner sends a signal to the box on the car activating its battery. The box then sends information to the scanning unit, such as: car number, name of owner, and the destination of the car. It is easy to see why the crew of a train has been cut from five members to just two.

Dispatchers are no longer found at various places along a rail line. This is done at Centralized Traffic Control located in Fort Worth, Texas. From this location, 34,000 miles of rail activity is monitored and train activity is both seen and heard. BNSF alone has approximately 1800 trains on the move at any one time.