Today I went to the CP yard. I met Salem and Jim and Shane and John and Doug. First we went to Jim's office and learned all about signals. He told me how the computer works. When it's blue, there are workers on the tracks. When it's green there are green signals and when it's red there are red signals. And all the CP train traffic is controlled from the Rail Traffic Control in Calgary.
And Jim told me about the crossings and how they work. There's a sensor on the tracks that once the train wheels go over it, it tells the barriers to go down at the crossings. And the sensor knows the train is coming a couple of crossing ahead. It has lots of wires to make it work, but it also has a battery that backs it . There's other sensors too to keep trains safe. Theres a sensor on the tracks that scans the wheels when the train moves by and if the wheels get too hot it tells the engineer to pull the train onto a siding and a mechanic comes and fixes the train. Jim was very nice.
Then we went to the simulator room and I got to drive the simulator. There were lots of different kinds of buttons. They were different than the ones at the railway museum. And if the engineer doesn't press any buttons in 30 seconds the alarm goes off. And I had to press the alarm reset button to let the train know I was still there. If you don't press the alarm reset button the train will come to a stop. That was my favourite part of the visit. Here's a video of me driving the simulator:
Then we walked down the road to another building. We went into the back of the building and saw the radio room. John programmed the walk is talkie and I could hear someone all the way from Calgary. The cool thing about this was that John talked on a train radio and I talked on a walkie talkie and we could hear each other. Here's a video:
Doug and Shane and John also showed me a remote control that controls a real CP train. It was heavy. I was surprised it was so heavy.
But Doug and Shane thought it was light. The old remote controls were much heavier than this one. Can you really believe it controls a real CP train? Here's a picture of it.
I learned a lot about signals and I had fun at the CP yard. CP is a good safe company with safe trains. And you should be safe too.
Thank you to Salem, Jim, Shane, John and Doug for making this happen.
I hope everyone keeps safe during rail safety week! See you later CP!
I hope everyone keeps safe during rail safety week! See you later CP!
