Water Trailer Big Lift and a few hacks in Tales of the Jointed Track

A call on the radio, “Can ya inspect our DP’s?” “Yeah bring ‘em on” I had a cheat sheet, and on LISS (Locomotive Information Service System) I had an idea on what was on the rear DP consist.

GE EVO’s were a big problem, and of course the BNSF Mechanical Denver General Superintendent, overall blamed us for failures. Well over time, it was a GE problem. Call us or call Mechanical, and it is still a problem.

Running hot …high rev’s trying to cool the unit. The water is short and thrown into the radiators. We had the “puke” test, vent the water system and if it shot up the water sight glass, we were good. Another trick was to pull wires off the magnet valves, there were three and a wire off of each would dump the water into the storage tank. This was quick, why? Ya didn’t have to got deep into the computer to make it dump. Yeah was a cheat, but it served the same purpose. They sparked and made noise when ya pulled em, and when ya placed em back in. LOL ya got used to it. Make sure yer gloves were on and nothing could arc ya. Go back, and look at the other unit and come back. If at full at idle, good to go, if not well we’ll pull out the water hose and fill up. Yeah they would probably run us off for doing it. But we kept the mainline flowing.

On the flood reroutes in 2011 I did the same thing, and called Big Lift to correct.