N&W Shop Codes (Was: Stencil on RS-11 Air Tank)

[NW Mailing List]

Very interesting. Would all of these shop codes have been viable locations for car reweigh stencils also, or just some subset of locations?

 

Don Trettel

 

 

From: NW-Mailing-List <nw-mailing-list-bounces at nwhs.org> On Behalf Of NW Mailing List
Sent: Wednesday, June 21, 2023 7:42 AM
To: N&W Mailing List <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org>
Subject: N&W Shop Codes (Was: Stencil on RS-11 Air Tank)

 

Senator Rector's question about the stenciling on RS-11 main reservoirs led to a comment about N&W Shop Codes.  Which is an almost-forgotten topic. 

  

Below is a list of the Shop Codes which I have found.  There were obviously a few others over the years, which have now been lost. 

  

The place we working stiffs saw these codes was in the COT&S stencil on each side of each car.  COT&S stood for Cleaned-Oiled-Tested-and-Stenciled.  This information pertained to the Triple Valve in the air brake system on each car.  (Modern weenies insist on it being called the "Control Valve," but I refuse to be reconstructed, so I still call it the Triple Valve.  The function of that valve is to Charge, Apply and Release, and those functions are three in number, and three is called Triple, so the device is still the Triple Valve.  Harrumph !!! ) 

  

At one time, every freight car had to go to a Shop Track every two (?) years for test of its Triple Valve.  


At certain intervals (which I do not now recall,) the Triple Valve had to be "Cleaned, Oiled and Tested," which was generally done just by unbolting and removal of the Service and Emergency segments of the valve, and replacing them with reconditioned and properly tested valves segments. 

  

If either the Service or the Emergency portions of the Triple Valve failed to work, the brakes on that car might not apply, or they might not release, and if the piston did not move smoothly, in a graduated fashion, but released violently, that could result in a "kicker" situation where the air brakes on the entire train went into Emergency braking.  And that caused delays and wrecks.  

  

The test of the Triple Valve given on a Shop Track was administered with a bench-mounted or a portable test rack called the Single Car Test Device.  The portable devices were mounted on a small four-wheeled cart which could be pulled around the shop area.  I will not attempt to describe how that device worked, as I would probably mess up the description, but if you are interested in this topic you will find descriptions in the Westinghouse Air Brake literature. 

  

So, to keep track of this periodicity of testing, each car which had received the was stenciled with the date and location of the latest test.  The stencil would read something like this:  COT&S SC 11-5-65.  When Car Inspectors did their inbound train inspections, cars overdue for COT&S were tagged and set out.  All the shop tag would say was "COT&S" and everyone knew what that meant.  (Well, most people.) 

  

Things in the air brake side of railroading began to improve with the invention of the Neoprene Gasket and the Neoprene Diaphragm, somewhere around 1959.  The great advance touted for the #26  brake equipment on engines was the introduction of the Neoprene diaphragm, replacing the moving brass piston.  Pistons required good, effective lubrication in order to function properly; Neoprene diaphragms did not.  And inside the freight car air brake Triple Valves, a diaphragm replaced one of the moving parts there, too.  If you ever see an air brake marked "ABDW," the letter W indicates it functions with a diaphragm.  "W" stands for Wilson, the Westinghouse mechanical engineer who invented the improvement, and the company named the new version in his honor.  "AB," of course, stands for Air Brake, and D was the fourth version of the equipment since the AB valve replaced the original Type K Triple Valve sometime in the 1930s.  As of my last contact with active railroading, the latest version of the Triple Valve was the ABDWX, and as I recall the "X" version incorporated some improvement designed to address the problem of drastically increasing train lengths. 

  

The railroads (and the lobbyists) have at last convinced the Feds that all these improvements have resulted in freight cars which can run forever without any attention to their air brake equipment, and now days the only time a car gets its Triple Valve tested is when it goes into a shop for some other work (e.g. broken carrier iron, bent ladder, door problems, draft gear work, brake beam, wheel work, wreck damage or whatever.)  Just think about that for a while.....  And as I recall, the period for required change-out of locomotive air brake equipment is now 96 months. 

  

There was another Shop Track test of the Triple Valve, which did not require removal of the Triple Valve components.  That test was called the Single Car Test and was given with the portable Single Car Test Device.  This was a pretty complicated and sensitive test and men who administered it had to be trained and certified on the test device and procedure.  Cars which received this test were stenciled "IDT" with the date, e.g.  IDT 11-5-65.  "IDT" meant "In Date Test."   The shop code may also have been included in the IDT stenciling, I just can't remember. 

  

Without doubt I have garbled a few details in the above description, especially as relates to the intervals at which the COT&S and the IDT tests were required.  Mr. Gordon Hamilton, an N&W Mechanical Engineer who worked with such things, can level out the bumps in my rag-tag, fuzzy little Brakeman-grade description.  Shucks, it was all I could handle to switch out the red cars from the green ones, without making a mistake... 

  

So, here are the Shop Codes, as best I have them: 

  

BL N&W Bluefield WV 

BR N&W Bristol VA 

CL N&W Clare Yard OH Cincinnati 

CO N&W Joyce Yard OH Columbus 

CR N&W Crewe VA 

DE N&W Denniston VA 

DU N&W Durham NC 

HA N&W Hagerstown MD 

IA  N&W Iaeger WV 

KE N&W Kenova WV 

LP N&W Lambert Point Yard VA Norfolk 

LY N&W Lynchburg VA 

NK N&W Norfolk VA 

NO N&W Norton VA 

PO N&W Portsmouth OH 

PR N&W Princeton WV after 1959 (previously VGN) 

RA N&W Radford VA 

RI N&W Richlands VA 

RO N&W Roanoke VA 

SC N&W Shaffers Crossing VA Roanoke 

SH N&W Shenandoah VA 

WC N&W Wilcoe Yard VA Farm 

WI N&W Williamson WV 

  

Has anyone assembled a list of Shop Codes used on the Virginian?  That would be a good job for Attorney Jerome Sandermann and Judge Bongiovanni. 

  

I have never looked up the exact origin of railroad shop codes.  But the Safety Appliance Act of 1896 would be a good place to start looking for the origins.  All those requirements were taken over in the ICC regulations, and all that morphed into truly massive Title 49 of the United States Code of Federal Regulations... good grief.  You can get Title 49 USC for free on the Internet and learn more than you ever wanted to know about the regulations under which American railroads must operate.  

reading that volume is a good replacement for sleeping pills. 

  

If anyone wants, I can take photos of a few brass air brake pistons from the insides of Triple Valves, which now live here. 

  

I also give advice on Farming, Horse Racing, the Lottery and Women.  If you need counsel in any of these areas, Mr. Rector, just send me a Telegram. 

  

-- abram burnett, 

  

Send Up Your Old Turnips - Get Remanufactured Ones Back ! 

     ... and we will stencil them for COT&S and IDT, too ! 

  

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