Locating a Kicker car.

  The Kicker Calculator will tell you the maximum number of brake checks that should be required to determine which railcar has a brake problem ("Kicker"). The calculation is based on a computer science algorithm known as a "binary search" where a list (railcars in this case) is halved and halved again until the item (railcar with a brake problem) is found. Once the car is located the air brakes for that car can be bypassed and your log updated.

For example...
  You have a train consisting of 100 freight cars. During the course of your trip you start having a brake problem which the crew decides is probably a kicker. At this point you would usually choose to ignore it, log the problem and have it fixed when you get to the yard. Your initial reaction to locating the problem car is that you'd have to check every car until you found it and that could take all day (or night). But what if there was an easy way to locate the problem car and bypass its air brakes?

That's where a binary search can be useful and here's how it would work with a 100 car train:

  • Walk to the 50th car (½ the length of the train), close the angle cock on that car and ask the engineer to perform a brake test.

  • If the brake problem has disappeared then the problem car is further down the line. Now you would open the angle cock, proceed to the 75th car (½ way from your current position to the end of the train) and repeat the test.
  » OR «
  • If the brake problem persists then the problem car is between you and the engine. Now you would open the angle cock, proceed to the 25th car (½ way from your current position to the head of the train) and repeat the test.

  • Repeat the process by halving the distance between your current position and your previous position until the railcar in question has been located.

  Continuing with this example, let's say the problem continued when the 50th car was checked but disappeared when the 25th was checked. That would indicate the problem railcar is between the 25th and 50th railcars, you would then proceed to the 37th car and repeat the test. As you can see the number of cars to be checked is halved with each brake test.

  A train with 100 cars should require a maximum of 7 brake tests to locate the car with the brake problem. A train with 50 cars should require a maximum of 6 brake tests while a train consisting 200 cars should only require 8 brake tests.

  Locating the problem railcar while you're on the road can make for a less frustrating trip for the crew, save the company money by maintaining their schedule and since the problem railcar has been located it can be repaired/returned to service quicker.

* This method for locating a kicker car is not approved by anyone. It's something I thought of during my training course and should save a lot of time when you're trying to locate a specific railcar.

** I discussed this idea with CP Rail during my job interview, their reaction was something like ...OMG!! Why didn't we think of this..it's brilliant... Out of curiosity, does anyone know if they implemented it?