1. Water extracted from the Ground is going to be between 58-67 degrees F year round 2. As long as the water is in motion the water won't freeze unless you are below the flash point for Freezing 3. basic level insulation works wonders 4. Just spend a day looking up how New York City Water towers work cause they've basically haven't changed in over a 150 years and they were what most railroad water towers worked as. 5. they sometimes in the winter would do complete dump and refilling of the Water towers to keep water flowing and prevent major freezing. 6. they'd install steam pipes at the bottom of the tank that ran to the pump house that'd connect to a boiler in the pump house and that keeps the pump from freezing over. in places dump and refilling couldn't be done. 7. Water tanks freeze from the Top of the Tank to the Bottom.

The story of 491 and the roundhouse is just so perfectly illustrative of little bad things needing big fixes.

Yesterday I was playing and purchased the Cooke 2-8-0, and discovered that it is capable of reaching the spicy speed in the game where everything derails.

Successfully ran 3 trains solo last due to the telegraph system. Knowing the times it takes for a train to arrive and areas that I can "set it and forget it" is so much fun. Thanks for the content guys.

As a locomotive mechanic, I have to say that coolant is also used depending on application. Since I'm also in Canada, coolant can be used in first and second gen EMDs in industrial settings where they get shut down when not in use. A danger to using coolant is that if it gets into the engine oil, it can eat the babbit off the main and con rod bearings and cause problems. Another issue with coolant is the environmental inpact if it leaks out of the locomotive onto the ground. However, there is a locomotive i have been working on that the water inside froze and cracked the air compressor and possibly the block since the previous owner, CN didn't run guru valves on their locomotives.

On the note of the crashes, the cause is the loads on the train cars. This happens all the time for my friend who is a client on my game. The "fix" to stop the repeated crashes is Kan has to completely restart his game before you can reload back into it, or else you will crash forever once you get within a certain distance to the train. I had a ticket in the bug reporter, and I think one of the Dev's responded after a few updated reports on what we were doing at the point of the crashes. Basically, he said, "That's just how the game is because there are a lot of bugs". So yeah, when you crash Hyce, Kan has to shut down and restart his game to clean the files. He can save so you don't keep going backwards, but relaunching is the only way.

I have actually seen steam-era pictures of Alaskan water towers in winter, and some of them actually have smoke coming out of a smokestack running up the side, so I'd assume that Kan is correct in that they'd have a fire going to keep the tank from freezing.

Regarding the discussion of crew roles and management, conductor seems most like a tank commander, his job to tell the driver where to take the vehicle and act as an extra set of eyes, and the driver's job is to get them there safely.

The insulated tender problem actually reminds me of a Thomas story, one from the books. James was trying to rush his departure from a station, his driver and fireman spilled some water over his tender cap, they slap it shut, get underway, later down the line he starts feeling thirsty, his injectors aren’t working, turns out the water that spilled on the tender cap froze into an airtight seal, so the injectors couldn’t suck any more water out of the tender.

13:30 The new refrigerant you were speaking of is R-1234yf. It was created to be more environmentally friendly than the R-134, but it is mildly flammable and requires special handling. That's why your AC bill is more expensive on a car with R-1234yf than it is with R-134.

To add on a little to your guys' discussion of wood cars/refueling wood burners on the road, I have a DVD that covers the Eureka's visit to the C&TS in the late 90's, one of the things that I found interesting was that there was a point where the crews had run out of wood in the middle of nowhere somewhere on the Antonio half of the line and had to stop. They were in such a bind that the crew started taking dried up bush and chucking into the firebox just to keep the thing going.

Now I'm just imagining a future update where there is a small map of the surrounding area in the telegraph office (or maybe a new building) where you can see rails and switches and be able to control them like a control office.

I find it really interesting that diesels in the modern era don't have heat tracing on their radiator. You talking about the temp valve reminded me of heat trace systems I worked on out at my power plant, wherein literal electric cables would be laid under the insulation of water pipes to heat them when it got below 40 in there (common occurrence on the lower floors even when all 4 200'~ foot boilers are running)

About a week ago I got my hands on a copy of Little Engines and Big Men and have loved every page. Just read the excerpt where they jumped the icy switch and almost nailed a hay stack.

You mentioning Ward Kimball and Disney, and how he was a bit of a train enthusiast, instantly reminded me of Casey Jr. from the 1941 classic version of Dumbo. You know, the Circus Engine? He managed to make Casey such a memorable character in that film, even though he doesn't really speak all that much except for the beginning and the "I think I can" scene. And he also just put in so many little details that you only really notice when looking for them. The movie itself didn't really need to focus on the circus train as much as it did, and I suspect it's because Ward was involved that the Circus Train became a memorable character in it's own right. I think it's rather telling of how well they did it back then that Casey Jr. is still a popular character, even though he never really shows up again after the 1941 film.

Since the telegraph houses are a bit like a non-driving aspect that has now been included. If they ever start including passenger operations, what if you could build some earlier 20th century tramways and as part of that build working substations with big glass mercury-arc rectifiers that glowed brighter the more power is used on that section. There doesn't seem to be any simulators that represent early tramways, it just tends to be modern stuff.

Listening to you two talk really brings back memories of both of my grandfathers. My paternal grandfather was an engineer and mechanic on the Mt.Emily Shay when she was a lumber hauler on, well Mt.Emily back in the 30's -50's. My maternal grandfather was a diesel engineer for Northern Pacific. Took me to the switchyard once and I was in the engine as he backed her up and coupled the cars. Told me to hold on so I had both hands on a bar as we hit. To this day that is the loudest sound I can remember ever hearing. My young ears were ringing for the rest of the day. He had railroad friends in many states and was a big time ham radio operator. He was 4F during WWII because he had a club foot, so he ended up being one of those guys who listened to radio frequencies in an effort to pick up enemy transmissions. He also knew Morse Code and was an active telegraph operator. So yeah, lots of memories.

9:52 at least on the Maine narrow gauges, we had fully enclosed towers with attended stoves in the base to keep the tanks warm and un-frozen. If you look up footage of the WW&F Ry, we have a replica tank at our station in Alna Maine , only modernized with an electric heater

Hyce “They didn’t see the curve Kan, they came off and fell half a mile… there screams still keep me awake at night.” Kan “So you used to be and engineer?”

@9:48 the answer to freezing water tanks is that they usually didn't, just like ponds don't usually freeze solid, water tanks are usually big enough that only the tops freeze. Although it is true that there are some places that are cold enough, for long enough, that heating water tanks was required. For instance the SP lines over Donner Pass during freezing times. In these cases, steam heating was fed into the riser (the column that brings water from the tank to the water spout) and prevented the assembly from freezing solid. @59:40 I know on many standard gauge railroads, freight cars had "Retaining Valves" that would keep a constant brake pressure applied to the car when they were engaged, even when the main train line returned to full pressure. They were also adjustable so that you could set the car brakes at the rear of the train to be more engaged than on the cars near the locomotive. This would prevent bunching and the overloading as mentioned on the driving wheels. Once you reached a flat grade, you would send the brakemen to turn off the retaining valves and remove the braking pressure. @1:23:45 Small telegraph houses usually didn't have teleprinters, so not many of them would have to rip off a page of printed messages, typically an operator would write down the message and relay the information to the yardmaster, or switchman on duty. But kudos to kAN for the dedication by adding sound effects.

Hyce's crashes made me wonder if there was ever a run-away train due to the crew passing out or dying on the job. Seems like something Hyce would know about if it ever happened.

i really love this series because i get to learn way more about choo choos then i would ever have even guessed to know clicking on the first video in the list and i get to watch you guys do wacky train stuff like 6 percent grades and what not. so thanks Hyce for reigniting my passion for trains

Fun fact I learned from a couple old heads I worked with was back before CTC and when you had telegraph operators. The term highball (which nowadays is mainly given after a roll by) was because a ball was attached to a string. Typically you had two, one high and one low. The higher one was for the engineer and the lower one was for the conductor on the caboose. They would put their arms out the window and hook the paperwork. The term highball was the ball attached to the string to let them know if they had paperwork and if the ball was high that meant keeping going. Hope I explained that, any confusion let me know.

Also when it comes to brake propagation some logging railroads would have both automatic and straight air so they could take a set starting from either the front or the back end of the train as needed, or when cresting a hill they could release the set on the back of the train while taking a set on the front of the train. West Side was known to do this.

Hearing you talk about your friend hand laying their own track and building their own switches for their layout brought back so many memories of my father. He had a HO layout with nothing but hand laid and hand built track. On top of that there were working old style amber signals and a switchboard off to the side with lights signifying which block the train was in. All coded by himself on an old pc.

Yay more RRO from hyce! And right before Christmas!

I wrote a semester paper in college about telephones and for that paper researched telegraph and telephone technology as of the late 19th century. The US Navy has a technical textbook that dates back to the 60s with brilliant descriptions of late telegraph technologies titled "history of communications-electronics in the United States Navy" so if you want to learn more about late 19th century communications I'd highly recommend reading that!

This is a really good Christmas present, thank you for making videos for us with kAN, and Merry Christmas!!!

@Hyce Love that you and @kANGaming revived the RRO series. You guys make work easier, and I absolutely can't wait for your vids to release

I can totally agree with the comment about stopping your GTO, my 67 Chevy C-10 has a 4-speed and when I let off in gear the truck will throw you forward from the engine breaking, it also has manual drums all the way around. My 80 Datsun 280ZX with a 5-speed on the other hand doesn't throw you forward but does still slow me down coming down the mountain pass near me that has ~6% grades.

On my setup we've got telegraph offices all over the map, including occasionally along longer routes just in case one falls off... Or teleports away from a moving train to check switches, then wants to catch it before it hits a pesky downhill. Putting them at opposite ends of yards and wherever there's a junction that's important, which makes switching and nonstop runs equally more convenient

kAn: "hmmm...my car is losing coolant...🤔" Tech: "There's a leak somewhere..." Me: *first thing that comes to mind is blown head gasket*

47:35 that is exactly how Swedish level crossing bells work. You have 2 bells, one slighty faster than the other. It's like music.

Not every move is 15 minutes (1:17:20). See David Lassen's article in Trains Mag from June 2020 on the NY&A "Clearing Hurdles on Long Island." Four crewmembers orchestrating a dance for 14 minutes to switch one customer in a tight window between LIRR trains. It's a good read if you want to increase your anxiety lol!

6 minute reference, you guys we're talking about conductors. A better way to describe the conductor might be as a "dad" figure instead of evil management, where their job is to be in control but also supporting and helpful

A telegraph was a message sent over wire by a telegrapher. Telegraphy back then was usually morse code back then, now it's pretty much the entire internet. A telegram was an still is a message carried from one point to another, usually by postal service.

With new thermostats, oem or aftermarket, it always pays to put it in a pot on the stove first to check for function and opening temp. About 30% of the ones I replace are out of spec or outright bad out of the box. Better to have a cup of coffee while watching it once than having to cuss under the hood twice.

Love that you said causing confusion & delay, Hyce. Merry Humbug to you and rest of the choo choo dweebs here. Have a good rest of the year too.

As an auto tech, I know straight water actually is superior to antifreeze chemicals in transferring heat. But along with lubing the water pump seal, preventing ice from cracking the block, antifreeze coolant also raises the boiling point. But if there's a leak and coolant finds a way in the crank case and mixes with the engine oil it will destroy the bearings. My friend's 80's chevy van with a 350 has a slow seeping head gasket. So he runs straight water to save the bearings until he can pull the heads off. So down here in Texas last night, me and him were scrambling underneath his van in the freezing wind to drain the radiator and remove the water passage pipe plugs in the bottom of the engine block lol 🥶

I drive a 1931 Ford model A and will soon be using it as a daily. Which is a 201 cubic inch 3.2 liter 4 cylinder flathead with Babbitt bearings, and an unbalanced crank. It also sports truly manual drum brakes all the way around. I find that I rarely need to even use the brakes just the engine is enough.

The way Hyce keeps jumping of the engine while at full reg: I feel like the next engine needs to be number 8888 "Kenosha".

Also, I kinda feel that you could just have the designated switchers in their own numbering system, so Betsy is the No.1 switcher, then say the other porter would be switcher 2, etc.

The new refrigerant in cars is R1234YF. It's incredibly expensive, an 8 ounce can run you 45 dollars at an auto parts store. Cars are no longer being made with R134a due to environmental regulations but they'll continue to make it due to cars for the last 25 years using it.

When unloading the iron ore, if you go slow enough you can actually unload it while it's moving.

Finally, teleport.

Speaking about peeing in a cup I probably have to do a lot with the mess I made with shunting on Train Sim World 3. Sometimes I was going slightly too fast detailing the train about 3-5 times 🤣

I can definitely relate with you there Mark when it comes to driving a manual and letting off the gas while in gear. My 1957 Chevy 210 four door is the same way, which is great in the hills of Northern Michigan since it saves on my brakes so much. Though it's not a V8, it's original 235ci straight six can sure hold it back on the down hill. But to be fair it had a disc brake conversion and a dual master cylinder swapped on at one point which helps a lot (disc in the front, factory drums in the rear).

On3 is 3/4” gauge, HO gauge is 5/8” and is used for 30” gauge in O scale (On30 - Bachmann has a lot of it). Both models are 1/4”=1’-0”. You can actually use radii as small as 18” to 24” in O narrow gauge but 32” plus looks better. It’s a nice scale to model as the locomotives and cars are physically not much larger than HO standard but twice the scale so the details are larger. True On3 gauge track is not easily available commercially but is not bad to hand lay. For On30 any HO track can be used if you don’t mind out of scale ties.

I love to see the tracks in the grass, makes it look seasoned.

I just watched both POV's in stereo. Really helps keeping track of what the two of you are doing. I just have to turn off the audio of one video though, otherwise the echo and reverb caused by the delay and imperfect sync melts my brain.

0:50:00 You don't need two tracks on the firewood depot. Just align the input side with your track, and accept the fact that on any load of firewood that you carry to an engine/tender there's a platform in your way.

on the water tower and possibly tender freezing up in the winter, snow makes a great insulator so they might make an igloo around the water tower

I always look forward to these episodes and always learn something new from them :) keep it up Hyce, can't wait to see what comes next :)

Railroad studio can show the map, Railroads Online Extended allows you to control locomotives, change switches, and it shows you all your trains as they move in real time the way a signal operator(definitely not the right term) would see.

I think it would be so cool to be able to run a steam engine. One of things I have always wanted to do since I was a wee lad.

1:08:05 Betsy's powers of invisibility and teleportation is way too modern for the era RO is in. Betsy is from the future!

I woke up to this on my birthday, Love the video Hyce, can’t wait to see more!

i use railroads online extended for a live map of my tracks. It has cheaty tools like remote controlling engines and switches but you can disable those or choose not to use them. It also has live map of where all your carriages and engines are which is pretty cool. I would love to see a map of how you guys laid your tracks in this save!

When you quoted that quarrel between the conductor and engineer: "It's your train, but it's my engine." I remembered that a train is technically defined as a set of lights or flags that may (or may not) have cars in between them. On one hand this exemplifies how the conductor's responsibility is the beaurocratic side of things. And secondly, I would argue that instead of decoupling the cars from the engine, a mutineering crew could just take the lamps off the consist, put them in the conductors hands and leave him out in the wild without even any cars.

About cars holding back, my dad’s 69 Chrysler convertible actually holds back pretty good because it has 2.76 gears. It really doesn’t need to because it has really good heavy duty power drum brakes.

Fun fact! Montréal Métro use wood brakeshoe! When they change them, the new one must be oiled by peanut oil! They try tho change to more conventional brake show, but the trains were braking to hard, so they went back to wood!

absolutely love the unstoppable references as it's one of my favorite films regardless of realism lol

Oh wow Hyce, for once a fundamental point I can answer with "yeah exactly" and not "you do *what* across the pond?!" 😂 And that's the "it might be your train, but it's MY engine" trope with verbal headbutting afterwards 😂 Lovely

Great episode! Personally, for the iron, I’d see what good gives you the biggest bang for your buck. That’s to say, how much does refined iron sell for on its own? Let’s say it’s $100 a pop for the ease of the math. If rails take three iron and sell for $300, then it just becomes a matter of which is easier to move and load/unload. If, on the other hand, rails sell for $350 or $400, I’d say only sell rails. Same goes for any other goods. As for being able to use coal, that’d be great, but you don’t **have** to use coal until you’re making steel, and even then you can’t use coal, you need to use **coke**. Coal, after all, has trace amounts of other minerals, most importantly sulfur, which is used as fuel for your fire in smithing, will **RUIN** anything you make, because the sulfur ends up in the air and then the iron, which becomes extremely brittle and useless. Which *probably* doesn’t justify its own industry, but having another building at the coal mine or smelter that you need to move coal to in order to get coke would be the more realistic way to do it. Though speaking of realism, it’d be really really cool for the cordwood to be in little charcoal making piles outside the smelter, since that’s what it’d actually be used for:to make charcoal, because wood simply doesn’t burn hot enough to smelt iron, even with blowers adding air.

Battle of Gettysburg, 1863. There was a signal tower (flag tower/semaphore) on Jacks Mountain which allowed Union forces the ability to see Longstreet's movement towards the Union Left. This resulted in V Corps being moved to the Round Tops which was a turning point in the battle unto itself. Also how in the hell did kAN build down to the smelter. Im trying to build down in my own game and I cant get anything more than a 50m circle radius loop to get into the smelter yard Ive built. Also also I love you guys and these videos. Really makes my day(s).

Always nice to see your videos! Merry Christmas!

Cost of kAN’s sports car: $CAN50,000 Cost of kAN’s wedding: $CAN2,500

1:20:13 Can confirm that I have seen anime use Japanese whistles for every locomotive.

Thank you for the videos and happy holidays! Always look forward to your content

Tell @Khan, that lighting a fire under the tender is basically how they unfroze oil in engines during ww2, before all weather oil was a thing, cant say about tenders though, but seems like it could work.

Some guy running his old Ford pickup truck on vodka for a couple dozen miles: *agree* Don't buy the Mosca, get another C48 as now it is .7k TE more powerful. Just did the math, one cord of wood is approximately 3.5 cubic meters.

There’s a line in California that still has its old telegraph poles alongside it with their insulators and cables still ~ relatively intact. Many of the poles are falling apart, but the old cables are still attached to many of them. I’d love to get permission from the powers that be to collect at least one of the insulators for myself and then move the rest to our local railroad museum for preservation, but I don’t even know who I would contact. I imagine the line belongs to Union Pacific, but I don’t know if the poles are part of that line.

8:50 pretty incredible when you think about it. A system designed so well that it functions better when worn!

Northern Mi. We have 30 mph winds and climbing with gusts of 60 ,the suspended snow looks like fog, visibility varies between 3 feet and 100 feet

Finally finished the whole video lol I love the long videos Also the Glenbrook is a great loco! Been using as my road loco from the start of this save.

i like how startk the contrast is in comparison to aviation where to de ice they spray a hot glycol on the surfaces on and once they can take off, it just get's blown dumps off the wing

Also something with engine numbers On the sumpter valley they had engines numbered 1,2,3 etc But then when they bought more locomotives they also numbered them that so you actually had engine 1 but then later there was a second locomotive 1 And even cars and such would match, so you had engines 3,5 and 6 but you also had cabooses 3,5 and 6 They had a coach numbered 20 and then eventually they had a locomotive numbered 20

I've said this before and I'll say it again, I like the cover of Battle Hymn of the Republic that you put in the videos. It feels immersive and nostalgic

In regards to automotive coolant, straight water is perfectly fine and typically better at cooling an engine that a coolant mix. The 50/50 mix of coolant/ water is not for better thermal efficiency, but to provide various forms of protection and lubrication. Rust and scale inhibitors Water pump lubricant Lowers freezing point Can raise boiling point Unique to diesel rated coolant, cavitation inhibitor. Pouring just water is certainly not ideal since it lacks the additives and often has a lot of contaminates, but overall is perfectly fine. There have been times where I had a hose fail and lost a bunch of coolant before I could patch it. Thankfully it was winter with a bunch of fresh snow and I just kept shoving snow into it until the melt was enough to fill it back up. As far as the braking for cars and engines, my car has not merely manual, but mechanical drums on a car that weighs over 5,500 lbs. Thing is BIG, but with proper adjustments the brakes can still lock up the wheels. Engine has loads of torque so despite it being gas, is superb for engine braking.

East Wayne Yard in Fort Wayne, IN, uses only 2 handbrakes except 4 tracks that need 3 handbrakes and a C-102 brake test. They are basically sidings that are off the main that run on the north and south side of the yard.

I'd take with the frozen tender that if say you got stuck in a blizzard at lizard head for about 2 weeks that you'd try to keep a low fire going to keep not only warmth for the crew but keeping the tender from freezing.

One way we tackle the cold is with braziers, usually they’re placed close to the injector bodies as we have to keep our running engines outside between washouts

Yes, thank you for this!

Water is the best at dissipating heat the "coolant" we use is only used for protecting against rust and lubrication. I guess I should mention I'm an ex diesel mechanic turned truck driver lol but we don't use freon type to cool engines because they can't handle the heat produced. And it's not 50/50 everywhere, 50/50 is for more moderate climates but more antifreeze would be added to the mix in colder climates

When making unstoppable apparently they reached out to the actual crew and people that helped on the crazy 8 incident and had them help them with the movie for better real railroad accuracy. But yet the movie still was still what it was

I was physically hurt when you donked the cordwood cars

26:39 I loved the Unstoppable reference! 💀😁👍

There are ways to use light in towers similar to semaphore towers, but we don't know if they were common. Or even used.

When kAN made the helper station I was wondering if you could use the turntable as an actual switch instead of having a switch there. Guess I know the answer now, and it's awesome.

I love the series! great fun to listen to while working on... secret choo choo things ;) I will say though, because I listen to these rather than watch. I don't see much purpose to head over the KAN's channel and watch his side of things (or if I land on KAN's version first, no reason to come here) mayhaps, if you had rather different edits, or covered different parts of an episode (while still having enough overlap that people aren't left in the dark about parts) it'd be reason enough to watch both. either way, love the stuff!

Looks like Montezuma's tender needs to be refilled with wood at the beginning of the episode

Engine braking is why I love my Toyota Hybrid, it has something very close to the dynamic brakes often found on diesel-electric locos.

My local BNSF Yard (Gibson Yard) always kicks cars, with B40-8Ws (they’ve got 2, often paired with a GP)

Not double checked, but I think early semaphore towers were staffed by the Royal Navy. Think I'm recalling a Sharpe book and Bernard Cornwell usually gets those kind of details right.

The telegraph offices have made things run like real industries, and it’s exciting. Time to add another little Diamond stack engine to the roster!

I have a problem with numbering the engines as per the fibanaci sequences. It's a good idea, but I means the CRaP will never have it's own peaches, or any of the Colarado Railroad Museums engines for that matter, with the exception of one of the galloping geese (are they even real engines, they look more like automotive vehicles someone chucked on rails??) and the tiny pikes peak engine. :(

22:27 I'm starting to get Lone Ranger final train chase vibes with Montezuma catching up to Betsy who is in reverse

norfolk southern the valves pop at 35. We have to leave our motors idling all the time if it gets around 40 just to be sure it doesnt pop.

Hyce, I had the exact same response to the semaphore signaling “kAN wait those are the wrong kind of sema…oh wait, I didn’t know this. Carry on”