Locomotives

Add locomotives, read the record page and its tabs, and log service days, fuel, and mileage.

The Locomotives page is your fleet roster and the anchor for everything else in RailCompliant. Inspections, work orders, fuel, mileage, the Form 4 card, and the annual report all hang off a locomotive record.

The roster

The list is headed Locomotive Roster and shows one row per engine: Reporting mark, Type, Description, Pressure / HP (MAWP in psi for steam, horsepower for diesel), and Built. Click any row to open it. + Add Locomotive sits at the top right.

Each row starts with a small picture of the engine: its cover photo if it has one, and otherwise a drawing of its type — a steam locomotive, a diesel, or an electric.

Adding a locomotive

One record type covers every kind of motive power. Steam-only fields sit alongside diesel-only fields and you fill in whichever apply.

• Reporting initials and Number — together these make the reporting mark shown everywhere else.
• Type — Steam, Diesel-electric, or Electric.
• Year built, Description, and Builder — the description is the line that identifies the engine at a glance, for example "4-8-0 Mastodon".
• Boiler No. and MAWP in psi — steam only. MAWP is normally set by certifying the Form 4 boiler specification rather than typed here.
• Model, Horsepower, and Air brake — diesel and electric.
• Fuel type (coal, oil, diesel), Fuel capacity, Fuel unit, and Water capacity in gallons for steam. These are what the app uses to work out consumption per mile and estimated range.

The compliance baseline

Two fields at the bottom of the form matter enormously for a fleet coming onto the app mid-life, and are easy to skip:

• Service days since last boiler inspection — the 1472-day count carried over from your existing records.
• Last 1472 / boiler inspection date — preferred if you know it.

Without these the interval engine assumes the engine has never been inspected. The date matters twice over: the 1472 is due at 1472 service days or 15 years, whichever comes first, and without a last 1472 date on file the app cannot know when the 15 years run out — the compliance row says so rather than guessing. Fill both in from your existing paperwork when you create the record.

Click Create locomotive to save. The record and its first history entry are written together.

The record page

Open a locomotive and you get one page for everything about it. The header shows the reporting mark, type, description, year, and builder, with Edit, Delete, and a link back to the roster.

Tabs run across the top: Overview, Compliance, Maintenance, Fuel & service, Photos, Procedures, History, and 6180.49A. Procedures lists the pages of every shop procedures book that is for this locomotive. Small counts on the tabs show what is inside. The Compliance tab's count turns red with the number of obligations overdue, or amber with the number coming due, when there are any.

The panel on the right

A panel stays alongside every tab, so the essentials are always in view:

• the cover photo, or, until there is one, a drawing of the locomotive's type with an Add a photo link to the Photos tab;
• a status note. It names how many obligations are overdue or coming due and which is next, or confirms that every inspection interval is current. When something is due, click the note to go straight to the interval detail;
• the key facts: builder, model, year built, boiler number and MAWP for steam or horsepower and air brake for diesel and electric, miles logged, and maintenance cost;
• quick actions: In service today, File inspection, New work order, 6180.49A, and Log fuel / service day.

Administrators also see the Public page panel here, folded away until opened; see Photos and public restoration pages.

Overview

The Overview answers three questions at a glance: is the engine working today, how hard has it worked this year, and where does it stand on compliance.

Under steam today? The card at the top logs today as an in-service day in one click (In service today). For a diesel or electric it asks In use today? instead. Beneath it the card quotes the rule it serves, so nobody has to remember what counts as a service day. Once today is logged, by this button, a run, a mileage entry, or a daily inspection, the card turns into a confirmation, and if the daily inspection is still owed it offers File daily.

Four figures. Each one is a link to the tab behind it:

• Next due — the date of the next obligation and which one it is, marked "projected" when the date depends on how often the engine runs. It reads Clear when every interval is current and Overdue when something has run out.
• Open work orders — how many are open, and how many of those are high or urgent.
• In service · 12 mo — in-service days over the last twelve months, with total miles logged.
• Shop hours · 12 mo — labor booked to this locomotive's work orders and inspections over the same period, with its maintenance cost to date.

Last 12 months. Two bar charts, month by month: in-service days and shop hours. Together they show the engine's season and when the shop was busy on it. Hover over a bar for that month's figure.

Compliance posture. A dial shows the share of this locomotive's inspection intervals that are current, with one bar per interval beside it.

Each bar is how much of that interval has been used since it was last done, with its CFR citation, the count ("20 of 31 service days") and when it falls due. Where a rule has two limits, such as 1472 service days or 15 years, the bar shows the one closer to running out and names the other beside it. Bars turn amber when an interval is coming due and red when it is overdue. Interval detail opens the Compliance tab.

How the score works:

• It is the share of the intervals tracked for this locomotive (Part 230 for steam, Part 229 otherwise) that are current, each counted equally.
• An interval is overdue when its clock has run out or a hard limit has passed, such as the 15-year boiler limit.
• An interval is due soon in the last 10% of its interval, with at least 14 days' warning on calendar clocks and 180 days before the 15-year boiler limit.
• Due-soon intervals lower the score too, so it measures how clear the locomotive is, not only whether it is legal today.

Green means every interval is current, amber means something is coming due, and red means something is overdue. The fleet score on the Dashboard uses the same rule.

Identity. Below the posture is the Form 4 — Boiler Specification block for steam, or Part 229 Identity for diesel and electric: reporting mark, railroad, boiler number and MAWP or model, horsepower and air brake, fuel and capacity, year built, and when the record was added, with maintenance cost to date, miles logged and a link to the 6180.49A annual record.

Compliance

The tab opens with Interval status, the locomotive's own due schedule. Each row is an obligation with its Citation, Last done, Due, and Status — current, due soon, or overdue. Every row has a File button that opens the right form for this engine. Rows that are not current make it File now, and add Open WO to raise a work order for the obligation, or View WO when one is already open. It is the same calculation as the fleet-wide compliance dashboard, narrowed to one engine.

Projected dates and pace. Service-day intervals count days in service, not calendar days, so their due dates are projections and are marked as such. Under the table the page says what pace the projections use, and anyone who can edit the locomotive can set Expected service days per week for it:

• Leave it blank and the app uses the engine's recent pace, the faster of its last 30 and last 180 days.
• Set it and the projections use your figure, unless the engine has run faster than that over the last 30 days, in which case the faster pace is used. A setting never pushes a due date later than the engine's actual running implies.
• Status never depends on the pace. Due soon and overdue always count the days actually logged.

Out of use (diesel and electric locomotives). Record each period the locomotive is out of use: the first day, the last day (or still out of use), and the supervisor responsible who attests it, as §229.33 asks. Periods can't overlap and are audited. Each run of at least 30 consecutive out-of-use days with no service since an inspection extends that Part 229 clock by those days. Steam has no such credit, so steam locomotives don't show the card.

Condition monitoring (diesel and electric). If the locomotive has the condition monitoring controls §229.23(b) describes, turn this on. Its periodic interval becomes 184 days, and a 33-day clock is added for the daily inspection done by a qualified mechanical inspector, which a Part 229 daily records with its "Performed by a qualified mechanical inspector" question. The change is audited with the citation.

Below Interval status are any active waivers and special approvals covering the locomotive, then Inspections & tests — everything filed against this locomotive, with + New inspection — and links to the audit binder and, for steam, Form 4 and Form 5.

Maintenance

Work orders lists open and closed work orders with priority, status, and cost, with + New work order, followed by Parts used and the running maintenance cost — paid labor plus parts across every work order for this engine. Volunteer time is not a cash cost and is not included. See Work orders.

Fuel & service

Total miles broken into run miles and manual miles, then a table of consumables with quantity added, cost, consumption per mile, cost per mile, and estimated range from the capacity you entered, and the forms described below.

Photos, History, and 6180.49A

Photos is the gallery. History is the permanent audit ledger for the locomotive and the records filed against it — inspections, work orders, service days, fuel and miles, its 6180.49A and Form 4, photos and runs — newest first, with what happened, when, and by whom. 6180.49A is the annual FRA record for any year, described in The 6180.49A annual report.

Logging service days, fuel, and mileage

Three small forms live on the Fuel & service tab, and they are what keep the compliance clocks honest.

• Add fill records fuel or water taken on. Pick the From store it came out of, the Quantity, and the Date: the store supplies what it is, its unit, and its price, and the quantity comes off the store's stock. For a fill bought outside your own stores, choose — not from a store — and the form asks for the Consumable (coal, oil, diesel, or water), the Unit, and an optional $/unit instead.
• Add miles records manual mileage with a date, for running that did not come from a logged excursion.
• Log day records a service day — the engine was in service but no run was logged. Service days are what most Part 230 intervals count.

If something you type cannot be used — a quantity with a unit in it, a store that holds sand rather than fuel, more than the store has on hand — nothing is saved and a sentence beside the form says why, so you can fix it where you typed it.

Service days are deduplicated per date across excursions, mileage entries, and days you log here, so recording the same day twice does not double-count. See Fuel and mileage.

Editing and deleting

Edit reopens the same fields; the change is recorded in the history with what it was before and after. Delete removes the locomotive permanently. Deleting is refused while the locomotive still has related records, and because the locomotive is the anchor for that engine's inspections, prefer editing over deleting for anything with history behind it.