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

[NW Mailing List]

Abram;

Good question.  I don't know Shop Codes from tuna fish.  But I'll see what
I can find out--meaning I'll try to figure out who to ask to find out who
to ask.

I sure wish I could get the flux capacitor in the GT to work and go back 15
years and crash one of Skip's Brethren dinners again and ask the
questions.  Had a wonderful time the twice Paul and I got to Roanoke to do
that, and now in hindsight so many regrets.

Frank Bongiovanni

On Wed, Jun 21, 2023 at 3:23 PM NW Mailing List <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org>
wrote:

> 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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