Introduction to Railroad Operations (IRO) Class

So, I'm finally taking my IRO class! It's down in McDonough, GA. Yesterday we went over a lot of railroad operation basics. Terminology, safety, how signals work, and how dispatchers control train movement throughout our system in the same manner air traffic controllers keep airplanes safe and organized.

Today, we went over the specifics of how the braking systems work (auto air brakes and dynamic braking), how knuckles work to couple cars, and how the diesel/electric locomotives function.

I spent an hour "driving" a locomotive simulator (pic above). That was neat. I got a good feel for how the motor and braking systems are applied and how long it takes to both start and stop a loaded train and to keep it at the correct speed going up a steep grade and down.

We walked through a GE D9-40CW widebody locomotive right before lunch (next three pics). They call these widebodies the "Caddilacs" of the fleet. The one we went on was built in 2000. Pretty new for a locomotive.

At the end of the day, we got to tour 3 different locomotives. 1 was a smaller GE and the other two were made by EMD. We were encouraged to crawl all over them and open every door and compartment we could find to take a good look at them.


While we were out in the yard, our instructor had us practice moving track switches too. That was pretty cool too.
Tomorrow, I get to drive one of the locomotives a couple miles around our test track. I'm pretty excited about that! I'll get some pictures then too. Maybe I'll even grab a little video clip with my camera. The last picture is a model manufactured by EMD. I'm not certain the exact model number , but it's probably a GP-40 (4000hp Diesel).

Savannah

So, we went to Savannah over the weekend and it was cool. Anyway, we ate lunch at the Boar's Head down on the riverwalk on Saturday before we went out to Tybee Island.
(See downtown Savannah map on right)

Tybee Island was better than Laura and I remember it. When we went the last time it was off season, so a lot of things were closed. This time, we only spent a couple hours out swimming in the Atlantic, but we did do a quick cruise through town and there was REALLY a lot going on. The water was warm and we caught 3 live sand dollars! Of course we put them back to go about their merry little ways when we were done photographing them. Laura got pinched on her little toe by a crab or something. My money's on it being a 20+ ft. great white shark. I just figure it saw me and got scared off...that's just how I roll. :-)

Then we headed back to the hotel, which I might add was quite the find by Laura. It was about 3 miles out of downtown, but the place was like half the price of the hotels right in town and it was a NICE place! The rooms were a good size w/ 12ft. ceilings. The hotel looked like it was quite new, 3-6yrs old I'd guess, and the rooms had a 40-something inch plasma TV in them! That was fun when we got back at the end of the day because I could stick my SD memory card from my camera straight into the TV and watch a slideshow of all the pictures. There also was a nice pool and hot tub. There was even a foosball table in the lobby. FYI, I destroyed Jill in our first and only game.

Then we headed back into town after a severe, but brief t-storm rolled through. We went to Churchill's Pub and had a good dinner (after searching through 5 or so restaurants that had huge waiting lists). I'm glad we ended up there because it was a more upscale looking/feeling place but it still was priced at your typical Friday's/Outback prices. I had a prime rib that was cooked almost perfectly. It was a little too big though. It was definitely more than a typical 12oz., so naturally, I over-ate.

On Sunday, we grabbed the free breakfast at the hotel and headed back into downtown. We parked at the Visitor's Center and Jack and Sally went on a Savannah Movie tour on an airconditioned bus where they'd show you a scene from a movie right as you drove up to the actual site where they had filmed it. It was about 1.5 hours and they had a good time. While they did that, Laura, Jill and I bought a self-guided Historical Savannah walking tour book. We saw many of the city
squares, beautiful homes, and a couple very ornate churches. We followed the tour for 1.5 hours and got roughly half-way through before it was time to pick up Sally & Jack. It was pleasantly overcast that day, providing some relief from the oppressive heat that was beating down on us on Saturday (it made for a nice day at the beach though). Then, we picked up Sally and Jack and we and drove over to Colonial Park Cemetery where we wandered through this old cemetary where Union troops camped out for months near the end of the Civil War.

I just can't say enough about how beautiful Savannah's squares are. There's really some nice old buildings too, but not as many survived as have in Charleston, SC where they had a much stricter policy on teardowns and renovations over the last 60+ years.