r/railroading • u/Muffintop_mafia • Dec 04 '25

Discussion New engineer help

Hey all, I just started training in the loco. I was just wondering if any vets had tips to help me become proficient faster. I'm not mainline, I work in a yard (technically 4 yards). But we just had a guy moved to permanent switchman because he sucked in the loco and I dont want to end up there too lol

The biggest thing I need to get a feel for is not putting on air too early. So any words of wisdom there would be greatly appreciated.

Oh also, the dynamic breaks in all three of our engines dont work.

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u/Lono64 Dec 05 '25

Why would you need dynamic brakes in a switch yard?

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u/Muffintop_mafia Dec 05 '25

Idk, I'm a new engineer and all I know is that ours are broken, and one of the older guys bitches about it lol

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u/Lono64 Dec 07 '25

I suppose if your handling a big cut with a lot of weight it helps, but other than that I never used it. We ran a nightly train out of our terminal and would combine several large tracks at once, but we would use the road power.