Steam Hauling Freight on Deadheads

When we hauled freight cars behind NKP 765 on deadhead moves back in the 80s, it was most often just so we would have some cars for braking purposes. Occasionally it was revenue freight and sometimes it was just some empty hoppers headed back to who-knows-where to be loaded. A steam locomotive and tender with only one or two cars behind it has very little braking power when compared to the weight of the overall consist.

The railroads of today are much more computerized than they were back in the 80's. It would be a lot of trouble and upset the freight schedules if they were to give us a piece of a freight train to pull. They would have to take it out of a scheduled freight, then switch it back in when we got to where we were going. That is a LOT of extra work. Today we usually have some passenger cars behind us anyway, which works out well.

Also, back in the 80's and early 90's we could run at track speed, so we could keep up with the rest of the fleet on the railroad running at 50 or 60 mph. Today, with the 40 mph speed limit, we would be the slowest freight train on the railroad!

The locomotive was not leased to the railroad for these moves. They provided some freight cars so we had brakes, that's all. We still paid for the move. Because of the additional switching involved to provide us with a small train, we were not doing the railroad any favors by moving this freight!

These days is it a federal regulation or just a rule-of-thumb as to how many cars are necessary for a deadhead/ferry move?

During the early stages of the UP 4014 move, I seem to recall there being several empty hoppers in the consist in the early early stages of the move with UP 4884 and the SP heritage unit. I figured they were there just in case the engineer needed to "throw out the anchor" as it were.

It makes perfect sense to have a consist of cars there for braking, especially if God forbid the brakes on the locomotive were to fail en route, or if you have 1.25 millions pounds of dead weight to keep under control

I'd still like to see a couple steam engines pulling a set of container trains. Just to mix old and new

The UP Steam Crew, previous to having their own complement of "support passenger" equipment, always had added freight cars for braking purposes. The down side to that was always, when arriving at a large terminal, such as North Platte, the steam train had to enter the Eastbound Arrival Yard, cut away from the freight cars, and then spend hours trying to get out of the Arrival Yard area, and into the diesel terminal for servicing and over-night "storage". Plus, the final straw was having an empty bulkhead flatcar in the freight train, which limited the speed for the whole day.

When there is sufficient passenger equipment hauled behind the steam locomotive, the train can then arrive into their planned overnight stay/servicing location without any further switching nor interference with normal freight yard operations. The steam train is thus, out of the way, quickly and smoothly.