Railworks America

This one is up and running and a representation of the radio receiver cars used extensively by the Southern and later Norfolk Southern. Maybe someone can come up with a list of the dedicated radio trains the Southern and NS ran! Enjoy!

does it work? (sorry i couldnt resist asking a stupid question today )

thecanadianrail wrote:does it work? (sorry i couldnt resist asking a stupid question today )

If only it did... if only it did... lol

Thanks for the hard work Jim

SCLALINE wrote:Thanks for the hard work Jim

Glad I'm able to help as I love working on this stuff! Send me those drawings you were talking about and check my blog for a new project I started, if you haven't seen.

SCLJim wrote:

thecanadianrail wrote:does it work? (sorry i couldnt resist asking a stupid question today )

If only it did... if only it did... lol

Stop with the distracting ideas! :P

Fortunately there are no cabs with working DPU gear...

Payware indeed thank you so much for this.

Kali wrote:Stop with the distracting ideas! :P

Fortunately there are no cabs with working DPU gear...

Wouldn't it be nice though if there were! I love the idea of having a high nose Southern GP50 master in the lead with a DPU set up.

The DPU thing is doable, but it'd be a bit of a hack & you'd have to modify all the locomotives - you couldn't do it with some arbitrary one.

Looking great. Love to see new progress for the game.

Also, can't wait to be able to try out your U-boat later for the game, think it will make a great engine.

Forgive me for being an ignorant Englishman, but, could someone please explain what this Locotrol radio receiver car does, please, why is it a boxcar ?

Thank you.

Cheerz. ex-railwayman.

Sure thing, I think I can. These cars were custom built by the Southern Railway for Locotrol purposes from old 40' boxcars (hence the shape). The cars were outfitted with radio control recieving equipment inside and a vestible door at each end like a passenger car. Basically the purpose of these cars were that you could control mid-train helper locomotives from the lead engine using radio signals, instead of having an engineer inside every helper unit. Nowadays this is done using DPU (distributed power units) and there is no more need for these Locotrol cars, or hasn't been since the 80s or so. Hope I could help, I wasn't around to witness these in operation and am going off a Southern Railway Historical Society article.

I don't think there's any particular need for it to be a boxcar; I seem to remember seeing passenger cars ( or maybe baggage cars ) and old stripped locomotives do the same job. I'm not sure why it took until the 80s to build it into everything, perhaps cost? you can use the DPU gear in the control car with any MU fitted locomotive.

We don't really have a British equivalent ( not one I can remember anyway ).

Actually the particular cars I based this model on were built specifically as receiver cars by Berwick Forge and Fabricating back in '66. When the Southern started testing Locotrol, they originally started out using a few old FT and FM B units but those were later stripped of their radio equipment and converted to scale test cars after the Southern received the new cars. Two of the converted FM B units were sent to Northern Pacific for testing of the Locotrol system.

The really wild part about the Locotrol system was that, for many years, GE locomotives were restricted from Locotrol service. Fast forward several years, not only were the newer GEs allowed to pair with the radio cars, but also GE bought out Harris and Locotrol soon became part of GE Transportation Systems.

As mentioned before, the early system took up a lot of room. In fact, the nose of the master units were soo packed with electronics that the number boards had to be mounted outside of the nose itself instead of the usual flush mount. This was the number one tell for identifying a loco set up as a master.

I'm thinking they used these cars up until the mid 90s. The last one I personally saw in service was around 93-94.

Here's a link to my wip thread that gives more info on the units in addition to a list of all the units that were equipped as masters.
viewtopic.php?f=31&t=5512&p=55528&hilit=locotrol#p55528

Csxgp38-2 wrote: Hope I could help, I wasn't around to witness these in operation and am going off a Southern Railway Historical Society article.

Thank you, it was very helpful.

Kali wrote:We don't really have a British equivalent ( not one I can remember anyway ).

Probably because we never ran freight trains with lash ups of engines and anything in the middle of the consist that would require this device for communication purposes.

Thank you all guys, I'm learning something new every week.

Cheerz. ex-railwayman.