Bruce Chandler said:The stuffed animals, or the bheer????
I wonder where they are today?
The Rodents !
All I know is that they are not at our house.
Chris Onnink said:
I stumbled upon this thread while looking around the forums, thought I'd throw in my .02 worth. The RCL units we use on BNSF in the NW are either equipped with the older CANAC RCL system or the newer GE RCL (for some reason the GE's are only used for the hump since they interface with the hump speed controller). Anyways, the CANAC system just have one amber strobe light mounted on the cab roof to indicate when in remote. The GE system's have 2 amber strobes, one mounted on the outside edges on each side of the cab. Not as visually interesting as the RC's used by industrial operations, but are a bit easier to model.Modeling wise, the CANAC system’s also have an interesting arrangement of antenna’s for the remote gear. I have a bunch of photo’s I’ve taken at work that I can post up if anyone’s interested. Another given for remote’s is the signage put up to warn people. The one’s around our yards are lime green and say: “warning” “remote control locomotives operate in this area, cabs may be unoccupied”.
Chris,
It would be great if you’d post of those photos. Thank you.
I think Bart has em
Bart has what, the rodents, the bheer, the stuffed animals or the photos?
All of the above 
That Bart, he gets all the good stuff…
Boy…And don’t tell me this is not a great hobby… I like the rodent…
HAPPY THANKSGIVING…
Sorry for the delay gent’s, seems I’ve lost track of the boatload’s of pictures I took before i transferred out of the diesel shop. Anyhow, here’s what I did manage to scrounge up… Roof view of the BNSF 3422. The platforms to the left and right are specificly for the CANAC RCL antenna’s, two antenna’s on each platform. Not sure the reasoning behind it, but only 3 are used… 2 for “channel” A and one for B. The CANAC system is setup to use to two OCU’s (operator control units, aka the Beltpack), and each one “talks” to the engine on it’s own channel. In middle is the amber strobe light which only flashes when the unit is in remote mode. Just ahead of it is a cobbled together radio antenna since the orginal “firecracker” got displaced in an incident involving the engine going somewhere it physically was too tall to fit… Ooops.
(http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n225/railroadjeep/Locomotives/DCP_1469.jpg)
Front view of the same goat. You can see why the horn, which was moved to the cab roof, was relocated to make room for the cell phone antenna. The phone is used to both track when the unit is (big brother is always watching us out there…), and to allow mechanical or CANAC to remotely montior/troubleshoot the locomotive.
(http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n225/railroadjeep/Locomotives/DCP_1470.jpg)
This is a diffrent unit now, the BNSF 1711. Just shows a slightly diffrent install of the same equipment. Out of view is the phone antenna which was mounted atop the nose.
(http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n225/railroadjeep/Locomotives/canacantennas.jpg)
If/when I find some more of my photos from the roundhouse days, I’ll try and post them up. THe ones I’d really like to find were all the detail/modeling photo’s I took of one of the mother/slug set’s used over at the Pasco hump yard. I think that might spark some modeling ideas…
Chris,
So the transmitter is called a “BeltPack”? Did you see my question in Prototypes?
http://www.largescalecentral.com/LSCForums/viewtopic.php?id=10112
The question is - “Does anyone have a picture or literature about the harnesses that are worn by the Yard Engineers that operate the unmanned radio controlled engines?”
Ric,
The technical term for it is the OCU (Operator Control Unit), Canac's system is called BeltPack. In the yard we just call the OCU's beltpack or more commonly just "the box". The tech termins FWIW are RCL-Remote Controlled Locomotive (the engine's), RCO- Remote Control Operator (the person), and then OCU (what the RCO uses to control the RCL). Then within in the yard you have RCZ's, Remote Control Zone's, which when in effect are only to be occupied by the RCO job that requested the zone.
As far as the harness’s, I have 2 of the three styles we use here in my closet at home. Alas, my digital camera is at work though… I’ll bring the camera home tommorw and snap some pictures of the harness and belt I have.
Chris
Chris,
Thanks, that would be great! Just looking at options and ideas.
Hmm, connec light t to the motor power to indicate throttle…