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BNSF Ding-a-Ling
Mar. 27th, 2022 09:16 amI wrote a few days ago about how BNSF sent an (apparently) freshly-painted locomotive 502 out to serve as the power for the "little BN" job that serves the Fernley area. Crews often park this locomotive across the street from our house while a contractor shuttles the crews back and forth to Sparks Yard, rather than taking it back to Sparks. This is usually okay, but last night things went wrong. Not catastrophically wrong, but very annoyingly wrong.
( Ring My Bell )
The main bell on the locomotive rang all night long. It never stopped. Every now and then the secondary bell sounded and the engine attempted another restart, but nothing happened, and the bell kept ringing.
After an hour of putting up with the bell, Lisa called BNSF's 24-hour alert line, as it's their locomotive. BNSF told her to call Union Pacific, as the locomotive is sitting on tracks owned by Union Pacific and is apparently operated by crews contracted from UP. They asked her for the cross-street where this was happening, which is very easy: the corner of Front and Center Streets. The UP agent told Lisa that they would send someone right out. They never did.
Around midnight, a Lyon County Sheriff car turned up. The deputy examined the locomotive for around twenty minutes, then went away. Now, the Sheriff's department is supposed to have the emergency contact information for the railroad. They might even have contacted them, but nobody came to fix it.
( Close Up and Noisy )
As of 9:30 AM Sunday, nearly twelve hours since it started ringing, the locomotive's bell was still clanging away. Lisa did not sleep very well at all last night. At this point, we expect it will ring either until the locomotive's batteries die (which might take a long time; locomotives have big batteries) or the little BN crew shows up. We can only hope that they will be out today, as they typically work a Sunday-Thursday schedule these days.
( Ring My Bell )
The main bell on the locomotive rang all night long. It never stopped. Every now and then the secondary bell sounded and the engine attempted another restart, but nothing happened, and the bell kept ringing.
After an hour of putting up with the bell, Lisa called BNSF's 24-hour alert line, as it's their locomotive. BNSF told her to call Union Pacific, as the locomotive is sitting on tracks owned by Union Pacific and is apparently operated by crews contracted from UP. They asked her for the cross-street where this was happening, which is very easy: the corner of Front and Center Streets. The UP agent told Lisa that they would send someone right out. They never did.
Around midnight, a Lyon County Sheriff car turned up. The deputy examined the locomotive for around twenty minutes, then went away. Now, the Sheriff's department is supposed to have the emergency contact information for the railroad. They might even have contacted them, but nobody came to fix it.
( Close Up and Noisy )
As of 9:30 AM Sunday, nearly twelve hours since it started ringing, the locomotive's bell was still clanging away. Lisa did not sleep very well at all last night. At this point, we expect it will ring either until the locomotive's batteries die (which might take a long time; locomotives have big batteries) or the little BN crew shows up. We can only hope that they will be out today, as they typically work a Sunday-Thursday schedule these days.
