Question: Does
the Alaska Railroad heat their fuel tanks?
Answer: EMD engines by their nature heat their fuel tanks. Fuel is fed to the injectors at a rate much higher than what they need, the excess being used to cool them. This hot fuel is then dumped back into the tank, warming it. Even the Florida East Coast's engines work that way. The Alaska Railroad does have fuel oil preheaters which are thermostatically controlled heat exchangers that use cooling water to heat cold fuel after it leaves the fuel pump and before it goes to the injectors.
Furthermore, their batteries have built in heaters.
This feature is unusual, but it is not unique to the Alaska Railroad.
The only protection they have for the cooling system is the winterization
hatch. EMD engines cannot have antifreeze in the cooling water.
They are too prone to leakage and coolant in the lube oil (a common problem)
would be catastrophic to the silver wrist pin bearings if that coolant contained
antifreeze. And speaking of the lube oil, no heat is provided.
In applications where oil pan heaters are used, it is for the purpose of reducing
wear at the time of cold start. EMDs cannot be started cold. Its
the nature of the beast. (Anonymous)
Answer: Yes, the autoracks
only show up sporadically and appear to only come on the CN barges. A while
back when SeaLand and TOTE had union contract problems in Seattle, one dealer
(at least) decided to send his trucks and cars to Alaska via the CN barge
as Seattle was tied up with the strike. This seemed to work well for the dealer
and they continue to get new vehicles this way. They do get mostly trucks.
You will see many different road names such as CN, ATSF, BN, Conrail, DRGW,
CP and CSX autorack. (Jeff Childs)
Answer: The first and only head on collision on the
Alaska Railroad occurred on October 19, 1943 when northbound freight Extra
901 collided head on with southbound train #553. Both locomotives were
badly damaged, two freight cars were completely wrecked and many other cars
received minor damage. One passenger and three employees were slightly
injured. (Bernadine Prince)
Answer: A bridge at milepost 138.7 is a reminder of one of the most tragic accidents that ever occurred on the ARR. In the spring of 1959, a rail motor car collided with a tie tamper. The motor car operator jumped to safety without injury. Unfortunately, the impact reverse the car, disengaged the brake and opened the accelerator. The car gained speed, flew around a curve and struck three men killing them instantly.
At milepost 117, a broken cable from a winch and cable
operation snapped and wrapped around a set of telephone and power lines next
to the railroad. This cause a short circuit which burned up telephone
equipment and caused phones to ring many miles up the line. At milepost
159.8, an employee answered the ringing phone and at the same time stepped
on a metal plate on the floor of a railcar. He was instantly electrocuted.
(Bernadine Prince)
Answer: The Alaska Railroad
passenger cars need electrical power for lights, intercom, kitchen, heat and
air conditioning. Since these passenger cars don't generate their own
electricity, they get it from Head End Power (HEP) units. The HEP equipped
baggage cars, when they work, are barely enough power for the train.
If they try running too many electrical items on the train at once they have
brown outs. SD70MACs are not equipped with HEP so an additional unit with
HEP (GP40-2's 3009, 3010, 3011, F7B 1503 or E8B P-30) is added. Note
that Westtours and Princess cars have their own generators and thus are self
supporting (John Combs)
Answer: In 1956, 72 feet
of snow fell in Whittier. (Pat Durand)
Answer: Before track is
laid the right-of-way must be cleared, leveled and the road ballasted.
Here gravel is used as ballast for the base of the roadbed. In some
parts of Alaska the foremost maintenance problem is the sinking of the roadbed.
On top of a well ballasted bed, the ties are laid. In the rush to construct
the railroad, untreated spruce trees were used because they were readily available
at low cost. Today all ties are treated with a protective coating.
However, hardwood ties are used on curves where there is much more stress
while cheaper more available softwood ties are laid on the straight aways.
Rails come in various weights ranging from 55 to 136 pounds. This weight
designation indicates pounds per yard. When the Alaska Railroad was
built in 1915 through 1923 55 and 75 pound rails were used. This light
weight rail warped easily because Alaska's extreme winters and permafrost
hasten wear on the track. These rails were replaced in the early 1950s
by 115 pound rail. Today, all mainline track on the Alaska Railroad
is 136 pound rail. Gauge describes the distance between the rails measured
from inside to inside. The width of narrow gauge is three feet, standard
gauge is 4 feet, 8 1/2 inches and wide gauge measures five feet from rail
to rail. In the earliest days of the Alaska Railroad surplus cars and
engines from the Panama Railroad had to be converted from five foot wide gauge
to standard gauge in order to operate here. (Potter sign board)
Answer: Termination dust, the local term for snow covering the high mountains, signaling the end of summer. (Randy Thompson)
Answer: "An Alaska Railroad
freight train on a run between Anchorage and Fairbanks hit and killed twenty-four
moose in a single night. I've been here fourteen years and I can't remember
anything like it," said Arnold Polancheck, assistant general manager of the
railroad. "Normally you hit one or two on a trip." (New York Times)
Answer: A section of rail that elongates and bends out of alignment due to heat expansion. Here are two photographs of sun kinks along the Alaska Railroad (photo1, photo2).
