Do Freight RRs Wash engines?

I see some real nice new paint jobs but it seems no railroads wash the engine? Why not ? any real reason beside costs?

tahawus84 wrote:I see some real nice new paint jobs but it seems no railroads wash the engine? Why not ? any real reason beside costs?

All the Class 1 railroads do occasionaly run their power through the wash rack, but I surmise not as frequently as in days past..I think it's fair to say that there are fewer such facilities then in years past..
http://seattlesubblog.qstation.org/wp-c ... -12-08.jpg

Why not? Well, a dirty locomotive runs just as well as a clean one.

I'm sure a clean locomotive makes better PR for customers than a dirty one.

JLJ061 wrote:I'm sure a clean locomotive makes better PR for customers than a dirty one.

No, not really.

Running a locomotive through a "wash rack" is not really cleaning an engine. I imagine the cost factor is prime motivator for not washing/cleaning one. I know CSX has a washer at Hamlet that they still use, but all it accomplishes is getting loose dirt off. Personally, I'd rather have a clean engine than a dirty one, especially on the inside.

don't forget ,people have to come in contact with those locomotives. when your away from home(working the road) and cannot carry a complete change of clothes, a cleaner loco is desired. its not just how they "look" to the general public.

RDGTRANSMUSEUM wrote:don't forget ,people have to come in contact with those locomotives. when your away from home(working the road) and cannot carry a complete change of clothes, a cleaner loco is desired. its not just how they "look" to the general public.

Well when I work on the road and go out of town I always take my grip with clothes. Everyone who goes out of town does. Yes I wish they would clean the inside of the cab, but they dont. They wont even clean the dirty windshields, we have to do that ourselves.

We have a wash rack at the Woodcrest (Homewood, IL) shop... It really doesn't clean much. A hand washing with brushes would be 1000 times better.

Presumably the design of hood units makes an automated washer less effective than it would be on a cowl unit or passenger car.

I thought the original topic referred to washing the outside of the engine. But, my take on the inside is "leave it cleaner than it was when you got on it." I tend to work road jobs where we just swap off locomotives, or get/deliver them to a shop. Engines on today's railroad are generally so much cleaner than 20-30 years ago that there is really no comparison. I've gotten on engines that you almost had to shovel the trash out to get to the control stand. Even the outlying point "local" where the same crew kept the same engine for a week, was nasty. They would "live" with the trash rather than take it off, and it would build up for a week! Of course, back then, we had laborers whose job consisted of cleaning up after us.

So, we cut off jobs as cost saving measures and now the cleaning is left up to us.

Another point: I got wrote up a couple of years ago at a final terminal for "trash" on an engine. The conductor and I had hauled off three bags of trash when we got on the train at our on-duty point. When we got off, he left a newspaper in his seat and a trainmaster got up, saw the paper and wrote us both up for trash on the engine.

10more years wrote:I thought the original topic referred to washing the outside of the engine. But, my take on the inside is "leave it cleaner than it was when you got on it." I tend to work road jobs where we just swap off locomotives, or get/deliver them to a shop. Engines on today's railroad are generally so much cleaner than 20-30 years ago that there is really no comparison. I've gotten on engines that you almost had to shovel the trash out to get to the control stand. Even the outlying point "local" where the same crew kept the same engine for a week, was nasty. They would "live" with the trash rather than take it off, and it would build up for a week! Of course, back then, we had laborers whose job consisted of cleaning up after us.

So, we cut off jobs as cost saving measures and now the cleaning is left up to us.

Another point: I got wrote up a couple of years ago at a final terminal for "trash" on an engine. The conductor and I had hauled off three bags of trash when we got on the train at our on-duty point. When we got off, he left a newspaper in his seat and a trainmaster got up, saw the paper and wrote us both up for trash on the engine.

It makes you wonder how some of our coworkers live at home!

CN_Hogger wrote:

10more years wrote:I thought the original topic referred to washing the outside of the engine. But, my take on the inside is "leave it cleaner than it was when you got on it." I tend to work road jobs where we just swap off locomotives, or get/deliver them to a shop. Engines on today's railroad are generally so much cleaner than 20-30 years ago that there is really no comparison. I've gotten on engines that you almost had to shovel the trash out to get to the control stand. Even the outlying point "local" where the same crew kept the same engine for a week, was nasty. They would "live" with the trash rather than take it off, and it would build up for a week! Of course, back then, we had laborers whose job consisted of cleaning up after us.

So, we cut off jobs as cost saving measures and now the cleaning is left up to us.

Another point: I got wrote up a couple of years ago at a final terminal for "trash" on an engine. The conductor and I had hauled off three bags of trash when we got on the train at our on-duty point. When we got off, he left a newspaper in his seat and a trainmaster got up, saw the paper and wrote us both up for trash on the engine.

It makes you wonder how some of our coworkers live at home!

My favorite is the half fulled cup of stale coffee with the cigarette butts in it left on the control stand........its like COME ON.........

Jtgshu wrote:
My favorite is the half fulled cup of stale coffee with the cigarette butts in it left on the control stand........its like COME ON.........

What about the water bottle full of chewing tobacco spit that's been cooking on a hot control stand in the middle of July? That's one of my favorites!

I have to admit that coffee cups and water bottles filled with either tobacco juice or cigarette butts look nasty, but an engine with the stale smell of cigarette butts or a bad toilet just cooking in the summertime heat will take your breath away or make you sick. I had a female conductor years ago, who has now moved on to another craft, that told me that nasty toilets were the worse thing about her job as conductor. It's close to the top of my list , too.