Southern Railway Receiver Car -- 4 Photos
The morning of April 29, 1970 was foggy in Potomac Yard (Alexandria, Virginia). From the bridge that crossed the middle of the yard I found 2 new Southern SD45s mid-train with a radio receiver car (a boxcar red boxy car) with antennae on its roof. Placing the receiving equipment in the receiver car allowed any locomotive to be used as a Distributed Power Unit (DPU). Also the electronics of that era took up a lot more room than modern DPU electronics and there was plenty of room in receiver car.
This was "Locotrol", a locomotive "radio based" communication system, that converted (head end) engineer manual control selections (including both power and dynamic braking), to outgoing radio signals, via equipment in the nose. Locomotives so equipped were referred to as "Masters". These signals would then be picked up by an receiver car (or, later on, locomotive), and further converted to m.u. commands on the helper.
Southern locomotives equipped to lead "radio trains" had white number boards with black letters, instead of the usual black number boards with white letters.
I want to thank members of Train Orders who commented when I originally posted these photos.
Southern Railway Receiver Car -- 4 Photos
The morning of April 29, 1970 was foggy in Potomac Yard (Alexandria, Virginia). From the bridge that crossed the middle of the yard I found 2 new Southern SD45s mid-train with a radio receiver car (a boxcar red boxy car) with antennae on its roof. Placing the receiving equipment in the receiver car allowed any locomotive to be used as a Distributed Power Unit (DPU). Also the electronics of that era took up a lot more room than modern DPU electronics and there was plenty of room in receiver car.
This was "Locotrol", a locomotive "radio based" communication system, that converted (head end) engineer manual control selections (including both power and dynamic braking), to outgoing radio signals, via equipment in the nose. Locomotives so equipped were referred to as "Masters". These signals would then be picked up by an receiver car (or, later on, locomotive), and further converted to m.u. commands on the helper.
Southern locomotives equipped to lead "radio trains" had white number boards with black letters, instead of the usual black number boards with white letters.
I want to thank members of Train Orders who commented when I originally posted these photos.