gong bells - Trains Magazine

• Member since
  June 2001
• From: Lombard (west of Chicago), Illinois
• 13,681 posts

Posted by CShaveRR on Tuesday, January 12, 2010 10:42 AM The oldest engines on which I remember seeing them were the GP30s. They may have been retrofitted to commuter F and E units and installed on cab cars before that time. The last units that received the gongs were CNW's GP50s. The GP38-2s (RI), SD50s (MP), and SD60s (SOO) had all been ordered by other railroads originally, and consequently had air-actuated bells. The gongs may not have been an option by the time CNW was ordering its GEs. The one advantage (from a safety standpoint) of the gongs was that they were trainlined--on a multi-unit consist of CNW units, the gongs on all of the units would be ringing (possibly safer when backing units where the bell was required to be audible). The trainlining eventually caused problems when the units were used with those of other railroads (we leased some Chessie units once or twice, and I forgot what ringing our gongs did to those units, but it wasn't desirable--they lost their load or something). After the merger, as UP was assimilating the SD38-2s and SD40-2s, they began to eliminate the gongs. Of our six former CNW SD38-2s still around here, only two have the gongs still in position on the nose, but even those have been replaced by bells in the usual position behind the front truck on the left side. Personally, I miss them, especially on the Metra cab cars. They were innocuous when they rang on those cars--now the bells are quite annoying, particularly if one happens to be sitting on the lower level, up front.

Carl

Railroader Emeritus (practiced railroading for 46 years--and in 2010 I finally got it right!)

CAACSCOCOM--I don't want to behave improperly, so I just won't behave at all. (SM)