E-60 F-40 Windshield Wire Mesh

What's up guys,

I've seen old photos of the E60 and a lot of them show some sort of wire mesh across the windshield. Even the F40s had them at one point. Does anyone know what was the purpose for that?

I provided a photo that I found. The thing I'm talking about is clearly visible across thewindow.

Thanks!

I'm pretty sure it was simply to protect the crew from debris. I'm not sure what prompted their removal...perhaps they limited visibility too much?

MBTA use them too.

The grating over the windows on the E-60's were intended to protect the
engine crew from injury from objects thrown at the train. Sometimes they
did as intended.
Several years ago the FRA required the railroads (Amtrak included) to
equip all of their engines with an improved window and after that occurred, the use of the grating was less necessary than before.
Noel Weaver

As Mr. Weaver indicates, locomotives are now required to be equipped with FRA "Part III" glazing, which will stop both bullets and large rocks.

Back in the 1970s, it was quite the fashion to find an old metal pail along the ROW, fill it with spikes, bolts, or whatever, and suspend it from an overhead bridge at just the level of a loco windshield. Thus, MBTA and Amtrak fitted sets of heavy metal bars in front of the glass, to protect the train crew from death or injury.

I had a cab ride in an E60 in 1977, and one of the bars was bent...I never did find out what it was they'd hit.

Around 1970 I recall hearing a traffic report on WOR AM in NYC that a MTA engineer was "speared" by someone who threw a spear-like object off of an overpass and it penetrated the cab window. The engineer was very seriously injured according to the report.

That's also the reason many overpasses over highways have strong fencing - to keep concrete blocks etc. from being intentionally dropped onto passing traffic.

There was a "Pioneer Days" incident regarding the Turbo that resulted in a passenger fatality when someone threw a brick at one of the dome cars.

Also note that I have slightly modified the topic title to reflect the wire mesh on F-40's the originator, Ms. Mary Lindsay, notes. Those assigned to the Corridor were so equipped. In the movie "The Verdict" (often makes rounds of the TV movie channels) Paul Newman's "expert witness" came to town by Amtrak; the F-40 at So Station clearly shows the mesh.

Apparently, by the time the AEM-7's came on the property circa 1980, their windshields were deemed sufficiently improved so that the mesh could be dispensed with.

The use of "ghetto grates" (as they were somewhat indelicately known at the time) in the Northeast Corridor goes back to the New Haven Railroad, which in its final year (1968) began to install protective windshield screens on a few of its locomotives. As already noted here, it was a response to rocks and debris being thrown from overhead bridges, especially in the South Bronx (which is why several of the NH's EF-4 freight electrics got them).

While it may be hard to believe now, locomotive windows in those days were glass, not the bulletproof shields that they are now, and a number of crew injuries had occurred. The nadir, as Mr. Norman mentions, was probably the death of a TurboTrain passenger circa 1970 from a rock that hit the rear dome.