OportRailfan wrote:yeah, so would you send the engineer to the working cab car, and have the conductor or someone qualified call signals to the engineer?...I see what you're saying with the marker lights and all, but I think if you throw it in reverse, it shuts off the headlights on the end with the reverser in the reverse position
and there beholds the problem, nothing is known about what happens to the master controller. for your emergency configuration to work, the reverser switch has to reverse the operation of the master controller in the rear facing cab car. but it doesn't. it just turns it off and transfers power control to the foward end of the train and the forward cab's master controller, which once again doesn't help the situation if the forward cab is broken or something...
plus, the engineer at the back of the train has to really have a feel for the brakes in order to time stops at stations perfectly.