FormerOBS
Conductor
Few stretches of track are perfectly level. Over a given mile or so, there can be some significant variations of grade. The dispatcher expects the engineer to maintain track speed to keep everything on time. If the engineer maintains maximum track speed on a slight upgrade, his train will naturally begin to exceed the maximum as he crests the grade and starts down the next slight downgrade. Extremely fine control using the brakes is a wonderful goal, but not often achievable, even by the very best engineers, so a certain amount of leeway is given to the engineer to allow for this. It's just physics.
I remember timing mileposts while riding in the boat-tail observation car on the rear of the old Seaboard Silver Meteor in the spring of 1967, cruising through Central Florida. Pretty much a steady 90 mph.
I remember timing mileposts while riding in the boat-tail observation car on the rear of the old Seaboard Silver Meteor in the spring of 1967, cruising through Central Florida. Pretty much a steady 90 mph.