Discovery ’70 Fast Freight to Nashville

[Music] more than a hundred years ago during the civil war the general led an historic chase from big shanty georgia to ringgold tennessee 87 miles away then the trip took 10 hours today a modern diesel engine travels at speeds up to 60 miles an hour in between these two trains there's been a lot of progress we'll see how a modern railroad operates today when discovery goes along on the fast freight to nashville [Music] discovery 70 the award-winning program for young people with virginia gibson and bill owen [Music] that's number 73 out of cincinnati pulling 130 cars it'll stop at louisville and then go on to nashville [Music] number 73 belongs to the louisville and nashville railroad known to railroad men as the lnn although it's the lnn it could be any railroad a freight train is made up of cars from railroads all over the country freight cars with raw sugar from louisiana to be refined for breakfast in new york lumber from the pacific northwest forests to build homes in georgia special tank cars with chemicals from delaware to make plastic toys in st louis automobiles from detroit for the highways of new mexico the makeup of the train is carefully planned to keep the switching at a minimum that's what helps to keep the freight moving fast this is the strawberry yard at louisville and we're now adding on cars that will be going on farther south 14 of the freight cars in number 73 will be cut off in louisville they're at the end of the train making it easy to take them out the switching engines are something like tug boats especially built for pushing and pulling rather than long hauling operations [Music] much of the switching and making up of new trains is completed in a couple of hours okay once a process that took days [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] today railroading moves fast at the beginning a little more than a hundred years ago a sturdy little engine called the general made an exciting 87-mile run in 10 hours [Music] during the civil war the general carried troops and ammunition for the south right to the battlefront some union agents stole the locomotive on its way from atlanta to chattanooga and attempted to drive it across enemy lines to the north it was a daring plan and just as vigorous and daring a pursuit to delay their pursuers the northern raiders destroyed the track behind them they cut telegraph wires tried to burn down bridges the southern pursuers at first used a little hand push car then they found a locomotive facing the wrong way which they put into reverse and continue the chase often getting close enough to see the general at times the engine did almost 60 miles an hour an unheard of speed for that time the union raiders in the general drop cross ties behind them hoping to derail their pursuers but finally the general ran out of fuel at ringgold the great chase was over and the raiders jumped off the train into the nearby [Music] woods the general was a wood-burning engine but coal soon became the fuel for the big steam engines needed to pull the heavy freights this is one of the last of the steam locomotives and one of the biggest its driving wheels are almost six feet in diameter steam engines are classified by their wheel arrangements starting from the front this 284 has two leading wheels the eight driving wheels in the center and the forehand back under the firebox the solid portion of the wheel is a counterbalance to offset the weight of the driving rods these old steam locomotives now stand quietly in an outdoor museum their work done they've been replaced by modern oil burning diesels with greater power and speed what's it like to ride in the cab of a huge diesel locomotive we'll see as we travel on a fast freight to nashville we'll do that in just a minute number 73 is getting ready to roll air hoses for the brakes are coupled up and the brakes are tested [Music] learning to be a railroad engineer takes a lot of on-the-job experience sam spinelli train master uses the cab as a classroom to teach apprentice engineers do the fact that when somebody makes a couple and he's liable to bump his head we should always remember these things safety is very important and when you're out on the line of road remember these things [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] the coming and going of the freight trains are part of the life of the small towns along the way in some towns the train goes right down the main street people know the sound and meaning of the crossing whistles there are industrial areas along the way where raw materials can be brought to the factories and the finished product shipped out for much of the trip the train passes through rich farmland it's an important means of getting produce to market and for bringing machinery and supplies back to the farm often the engineer picks up his orders on the run they warn him to look for crews working on the road bed along his route [Music] [Music] the brakeman at the head end and the conductor and flagman in the caboose keep a constant watch for trouble and sometimes they find it they've spotted smoke l m 273's engines to lnn 273's caboose how's it look on those stuck brakes back there that smoke clear up i'm back here on the caboose mr spinelli everything looks okay the brakes are released don't see any smoke okay fine that means you won't have to stop and cut any brakes off fine [Music] oh you know of course you've got to remember that each car uh has two draw bars and of course each drawbar has approximately six inches of slack so you take that multiply that by 130 140 or maybe 150 cars uh you have a considerable amount of slack and if you don't handle the slack properly while you can snap a train in two with no effort at all so that's why it's so important to know the whereabouts of the various portions of your train because by improper brake handling or improper throttle handling you can allow the slack to come in abruptly you may part your trainer [Music] when trains pass each other the crews are always on the alert looking for any sign of trouble on the other train [Music] when number 73 pulls into nashville its 130 cars will be headed for as many as 50 different cities farther south the cars are sorted out in a hump yard how do you get the right car on the right train we'll find out in just a minute this is the radnor yard in nashville tennessee the train we've been on will now be divided up into various sections and sent on to chattanooga memphis mobile new orleans atlanta [Music] the terminal superintendent of the radnor yard is g d mccall here in just a few minutes and you're gonna be ready to make up 75. yes sir okay what [Music] the overall general purpose of this yard is to classify trains that come into us unclassified and to do this we have 56 tracks to classify our trains into of those 56 tracks i would say 48 would be different cities located on different portions of the railroad a train coming into us would possibly have cars on it for as many as 40 of those 48 cities so it is our job to classify or sort out these cars into separate tracks in our classification yard and these separate tracks are each filled up with cars for one city and this is later made up into a train which goes to the particular city [Music] when 273 arrives in our receiving yard from louisville or the hump engine uh comes through on it shoves it to the hump and the pin has a list showing him where to cut the cars then the pinpointer takes his list and as the train is shoved over the hump at a mile and a half to two miles an hour he will pull the cut levers and the cut levers separate the two cars and he'll hold onto this cut lever now until the car that's going off is taken by gravity and then it gets over the center of gravity and starts down in the hump it picks up speed real sharply then goes on into the master retarder a retarder is a series of uh steel plates located on each side of the rail that the car rolls over which comes up and closes against the wheel of the car and exerts pressure on the wheel of the car to slow it down the uh degree in which the retarder operator sets the power up will uh govern how much pressure is put against the wheel of the car if it's a heavy load it put the full pressure on it if it's a light load why they probably will use one section only of the master we have to the cars after they uh separate on the hump and come over the hump because of if they were not they would go in and strike at a speed that would damage both the car and the contents of the car we would like for all cars that are switched into our classification yard to go down and couple on to the car that's north of it at a speed not to exceed four miles per hour we have arriving in our yard approximately 35 trains and humping in the neighborhood of 23 to 2400 cars these cars of course will be classified and made up into approximately 35 trains departing our yard each day hump is operated 24 hours a day seven days a week uh 365 days a year freight is moving faster in box cars today than uh it ever has before the clackity clock of a train ride caused by joints between the rails isn't hurt as often these days because rails are now being welded into long lengths william lutz supervises the welding shop here [Applause] the operation here consists of taking rail and 39 foot lengths and putting them in our welding machines and turning out the rail approximately a quarter of a mile we require 37 of these rails to make one quarter mile length [Music] and with an oxy settle in flame we heat these rails up to approximately 1800 to 2000 degrees and with pressure being applied they are forced together making the what we call a pressure well [Applause] hmm [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] tomorrow another number 73 will move more freight from cincinnati to louisville and from there to nashville engineers brakeman conductors flagmen and switchmen working together to move the freight we'll be back in just a minute we hope you've enjoyed fast freight to nashville if you'd like to find out more about railroading then ask your librarian for these books trains at work by mary elting and railroads in the days of steam by albert l mccready be sure to be with us next week for another exciting program as discovery continues to discover the world bye bye [Music] oh [Music] this has been a jewels power production in association with abc news