LST&T Railway No 102 Loading the Incan Superior Car Ferry on October 12, 1984
This image shows better than any other that I have of the Terminal's Incan Superior railroad car ferry operation. A lone NW2 was all that was needed to unload and load the boat. The grade coming up from the bay was steep though and sometimes the little engine would slip its wheels so badly that it would have to double or triple tracks out of the bay front. But that only took one crew so money was saved by not adding a second engine to this job.
The four ex-NP idler cars provided just the right amount of leeway to reach onto the boat deck proper to pull cars from the vessel or to push them aboard. The whole idea was to keep the weight of the locomotive off of the moveable loading apron. The little NW2s weighed 250,000 lbs. fully loaded with fuel, oil, water and sand. While the typical 70-ton capacity freight cars of this era weighed slightly less than that with a full load, the larger 100-ton capacity covered hopper cars and box cars weighed a fair bit more than the locomotive.
So the real reason that the engine was kept off of the loading apron is a bit of a mystery, especially in the modern era when big rail cars actually outweighed these small locomotives. I suspect that since locomotives always outweighed cars in the early days of railroading and shipping, that the general practice of keeping engines off the apron was simply upheld as a safe and normal procedure because the safety rule book said this is how it should be done.
While the common saying is generally known to be, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it", the railroad way has been slightly different as long as I've been walking around on the properties and that is, "Even if it is broke, don't fix it."
So today we kind of stick with these old ways of doing things just to keep anything from braking at all. That may have been the idea back in this time too. Don't mess with the existing rules even though common sense says things could be done differently and for good reason.
LST&T Railway No 102 Loading the Incan Superior Car Ferry on October 12, 1984
This image shows better than any other that I have of the Terminal's Incan Superior railroad car ferry operation. A lone NW2 was all that was needed to unload and load the boat. The grade coming up from the bay was steep though and sometimes the little engine would slip its wheels so badly that it would have to double or triple tracks out of the bay front. But that only took one crew so money was saved by not adding a second engine to this job.
The four ex-NP idler cars provided just the right amount of leeway to reach onto the boat deck proper to pull cars from the vessel or to push them aboard. The whole idea was to keep the weight of the locomotive off of the moveable loading apron. The little NW2s weighed 250,000 lbs. fully loaded with fuel, oil, water and sand. While the typical 70-ton capacity freight cars of this era weighed slightly less than that with a full load, the larger 100-ton capacity covered hopper cars and box cars weighed a fair bit more than the locomotive.
So the real reason that the engine was kept off of the loading apron is a bit of a mystery, especially in the modern era when big rail cars actually outweighed these small locomotives. I suspect that since locomotives always outweighed cars in the early days of railroading and shipping, that the general practice of keeping engines off the apron was simply upheld as a safe and normal procedure because the safety rule book said this is how it should be done.
While the common saying is generally known to be, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it", the railroad way has been slightly different as long as I've been walking around on the properties and that is, "Even if it is broke, don't fix it."
So today we kind of stick with these old ways of doing things just to keep anything from braking at all. That may have been the idea back in this time too. Don't mess with the existing rules even though common sense says things could be done differently and for good reason.