My wife, Lynn is an engineer...she finished number 27 on the whole Union Pacific Railroad for their fuel conservation program. They probably have 5500 Engineers, so a nice honor. She got a Gold Award Plaque with her name spelled wrong, (You gotta love them.)

This fuel conservation is monitored by transmissions to a satellie and then transmitted back to earth to the appropriate drone that keeps track of this stuff. They know to the gallon how much fuel you have used on your run.

Locomotives have 8 throttle notches...They monitor how long you were operating the locomotive in each throttle notch and then factor in elapsed time for the run to come up with a rating. New locomotives at full throttle burn about 208 gallons an hour. At notch seven it goes down to around 188, notch six, 165.

Oh, the other thing, she got a set of Waterford Glasses in a nice box...Sad thing was they were filled with air bubbles...Obviously, factory seconds, Waterford doesn't have bubbles in the glass for the good stuff.

Mabe Waterford has a new China or Mexican division...who knows...

BTW, if you are in the top 25 at your terminal Union Pacific gives you a Visa debit card with a princely $100.00 credit on it for saving them 1000's of dollars in fuel expenditures.

Ain't they great...???

Mark