Suppose you have two (or more) units ready to hook onto your consist. All prime movers are running, but when you are ready to move, can you tell if a trailing unit is not working? That is, you have to notch up more than usual to compensate for a "dead" unit. Or you would not know the trailing unit is not on line until you hit hills and stall? Or do modern engines consoles alert if a trailing unit is not pulling its weight?
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I'm going to let someone who works in engine service answer that one, however I did witness a train trying to start on a 1%+ grade with only one unit after the second unit had shut down.
At the north end of Green Top siding, near Newnan, GA, Atlanta bound CSX Q614 took the siding for a meet with Q669, headed to Birmingham, AL.
After Q669 cleared, the engineer attempted to start his train on the better than 1.00% grade, however his second unit had shut down and he actually started slipping backwards while the sole remaining unit was in Run 8.
Once the conductor walked back and restarted the trailing unit, the train got under way again.
Here is the entire sequence as I recorded it on January 7, 2008.
Let me add here, when Q614 arrived and stopped, both engines (1 GE, 1 EMD) were running. 7-8 minutes later the second unit (the EMD) shut down and the alarm bell began sounding as some of you have noted here.
Eventually the alarm bell quit sounding. It is heard on the original raw recordings but not on these edited clips. The original event, including the meet, was just a little over a half hour long.
If the unit was on line when you started the trip and quit later on . there'd be a warning bell (really loud and annoying) that something was wrong with the unit.. Someone would go back and fix the problem if possible or isolate the unit. (take it off line). warning bell would stop as soon and the engine was isolated.
If you just have two units to start with, you will know pretty quickly if you only have half the consist working. If you have five or six units, and one is not working, you might not notice it as easily. When we still had a lot of engineers cut back firing, one of the things they would do is walk through the consist as soon as you started moving to see that everything that was supposed to be on line was, and that they were all working. Now, if you suspect something is not right, you have to pick a spot where the conductor can watch it for a few minutes, and quickly trot back through and take a look at the load meter on each unit, unless you can talk him into doing it for you. At a crew change point, the inbound crew will usually give you information on units not online, or not loading, DB's nad traction motors cut out, and so on. If you take a consist off the pit, you should walk through and see what you have, and what you don't, and if you don't do it there, try to take a look after you get coupled to the train. If you loose one enroute, you will usually feel it drop out, and most of the time the alarm bells will come on. In the days when most units would make transition at about 22-24 mph, you could usually feel it, and see a puff of exhaust smoke in the mirror, and most of the time you could feel each one drop it's load momentarily. If you were really tuned into your consist, you could also feel it when they failed to load after that, or kept dropping their load after failing to make transition. Most newer units are wired to not make transition, so that's less of a problem. Sometimes you could see EMD's running sand all the time for no reason after transition, a good clue they quit loading or can't complete transition.
What everybody else said is correct, you will know if a trailing unit quits loading(pulling) or just shuts down, older units just gave you an alarm bell, newer units will tell you more on the computer readout, but it depends on what unit went down. Older units will just give you the "alarm from other unit" message, newer engines can tell you more, even reporting back to the shops via satelite linkup. The next fun part is hiking back to that dead unit to restart or get her back "on line" at track speed. Its not fun, take off your hat, and hold onto the handrail at all times! Done that to many times when I worked for NS back in the late 90's as a conductor. Now if your just towing a dead engine, its just like any other heavy freight car, its when a unit goes down that you previously had pulling that you notice a differance in the way the train is handling. Slower acceleration, or wont make track speed. Mike
Thanks for your replies!! Now this armchair RRer can sleep tonight, knowing this insomnia pressing question has been answered! 
Yeah I've had that happen way too many times Wyhog.
The inbound was just not wanting to report the problem and have to maybe take a unit to the pit.
Correct the older units will only give a bell from the control stand for the leader or trail units.But the newer units will not give a detail of the trail units,but will give you somewhat of a clue to as what the leader having an issue with.
The main problem I see the railroads have with units issues is the fact people aren't reporting problems when they have them.
It's required by the NS to report any enroute issue to Mechanical Operations Center or M.O.C. . Their is a tone-up on our radio to have a mechanic come on the radio and you will tell them the problem,they'll try to help you resolve the problem if possible or they then make a report and from there the unit will be fixed at the next available location with a mechanical force that can fix it.
Main thing though.If possible I always walk thru your units before I start and double check for "tagged" problems not reported by the inbound or crew I've relieved and check that all the units needed are online for the tonnage and rule requirements.
Collin,
My experience with MOC was hit & miss. Mostly miss. First of all, it was hard to get them to answer the tone. Many, many times I had to get the dispatcher to call MOC to have them get in contact with me. Then, I would give them a less than 10% success rate of solving the problem.
Jim what's MOC's best answer to fix an engine ?
Knock all the breakers down let it set a minute,and then put all the breakers up and see what happens 
Full tonnage ore train on the last leg of the trip coming into the home terminal. 80 loads -1 empty ( caboose). 14000 tons. ..... Power 4 CN 2300s . (Alco 3000 horse, 6 wheel trucks) Please don't ask me what they're called. Anyway the last unit quit, the fireman goes back and fixed the problem puts the engine back on line,,, ka boom. The engine tries to take one big leap forward and pulls a knuckle right at the engine. Easy fix though. not much walking . I don't think I could even lift a knuckle now.
Not my worse trip though.. Winter -10 lots of snow. same train. 1 draw bar and 2 knuckles all at once. in train order territory .
That reminds me of a trip where I was still training and we were waiting for a crew to bring a coal train off Wolfe Creek Branch here on the Pokey.
The crew had already stopped us,since the branch came into single track to double track,because they were having a tough time pulling the tonnage.
Well one of the brakeman went back to the third unit put it on-line and just like you mentioned ka-boom,but instead of a knuckle they got the draw bar on the rear of the third unit !
Apparently the Engineer didn't notch down before the brakeman placed the isolation switch into run 
We nearly outlawed a hot time freight waiting for them to get things fixed 
!
A friend worked on the Suffern Pacific right before Rio Grande bought them, he said SP would if they had one add an extra unit to the consist figuring at least one would die before it reached its destination. Shades of Penn Central.
Gee, formula for everything!
Once again I'd like to tip my hat to Wyhog. For the information of those without engine service experience, Wyhog was a truly fine Locomotive Engineer who had good habits and paid a lot of attention to his work. That's how he got all his knowledge. Anything he posts is good information. He always had things well planned in advance, knew what to do when things started to go wrong, and took appropriate action. And that is the measure of a Locomotive Engineer.
Once again I'd like to tip my hat to Wyhog. For the information of those without engine service experience, Wyhog was a truly fine Locomotive Engineer who had good habits and paid a lot of attention to his work. That's how he got all his knowledge. Anything he posts is good information. He always had things well planned in advance, knew what to do when things started to go wrong, and took appropriate action. And that is the measure of a Locomotive Engineer.
1000 
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