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).