Railway emergency locomotives?

[Steamdemon]

So, I was thinking about what equipment the railways/railroads have for dealing with emergencies. I mean, for broken down trains in Britain, we have the Virgin Thunderbirds. But we don't have firefighting locomotives. Over in Switzerland, they have this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5U93FCH0Nk

It's the LRZ NT. It's quite a beauty. It's also known as the SBB-CFF-FFS.

In America, the BNSF has this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwtk0QRP9hY

It was used in some serious fires.

So, are there other rescue locomotives in the world?

 

[RRSignal]

The U.S. calls "protect" locomotives if a train breaks down. Here on the NEC and SEPTA, there is usually an engine at most an hour away, usually much less. Often other commuter trains or work/freight engines can provide this service, but during especially busy travel periods, railroads sometimes keep a few engines on standby specifically for such an event.

 

[cascaderailroad]

I would think that there are only a handful of firefighting trains in the entire US, most dozens of hours distant any catastrophe ... Most US RR's just call out a spare loco from a distant repair shop, somewhere on the division, if a train needs a tow ... and they do not have dozens of emergency locos sitting, chomping at the bit, ready and waiting on spurs, in the event of an emergency ... they just do not exist

Most RR's rely on emergency responders from the immediate surrounding areas to fight fires

They no longer have their own wreck crew 250 ton cranes ... They just call in wreck contractors like Herzog to clean up the mess

 

[Vern]

With the exception of the Virgin "Thunderbirds" any sort of standby provision in the UK is pretty rare.

Most passenger trains are now formed by some sort of MU traction, which can generally drag itself clear in the event of a partial failure or if necessary by isolating the relevant on board system (electrical or control faults tend to be more frequent than a traction equipment failure). In the UK there are numerous different types of couplers fitted depending on the type of train, not necessarily compatible. So if a "Sprinter" type DMU fails generally the only traction which can assist is one with the same coupling. A locomotive can only couple to a Sprinter via a special coupling, with technical staff in attendance and subsequent movement at walking pace. Can't recall the last time it was done (last time I did it was in 1990 when I had a Class 47 off Bath Road to couple to a Class 155 which had the air system frozen near Keynsham).

Only certain locos can couple to the front of HST's, with the most numerous Class 66 generally not being compatible. Even if a freight train fails, often the only way to move the disabled train is to loop another freight and take the engine off that to drag the failure clear. In areas where there isn't much freight running, things are very much out on a limb if something does go wrong.

And of course it's not just locos, these days there are not spare crews sitting around waiting to jump on a rescue move even if traction is available.

 

[bendorsey]

The Durango & Silverton keeps one steam loco fired up as a "just-in-case" loco. After all you can't just turn the key to start one up from cold iron, lol. When I took the trip our loco had a problem a little out of Durango and had to stop and fix it. If they had not been able to do so we would have had to back up (2 or 3 miles) and use the "ready spare". The problem was with the water spray above the smoke stack. Trains run a boxcar right behind the tender with a 500 gallon water tank inside that provides a mist-like spray above the stack to douse embers. If it ain't working the train ain't moving. Fortunately they fixed it (some dope forgot to open a valve, lol).

All trains are followed by a speeder pulling a trailer with a 100 gallon water tank on it with 2 gents to put out any fires that do manage to get started. They are supposed to stay about a mile back but don't often do and once you know what to look for you can occasionally see them.

The D&S also has a real fire train consisting of a small industrial diesel, a tank car with pumps and nozzles, and a caboose. Its usually kept at Cascade where trains stop and turn on the wye during the winter months.

Ben