Modern Practice
Nowadays helpers/bankers are often controlled by coded radio signals from the locomotive at the head end of the train, allowing one engineer (driver) to simultaneously control the helper(s) and the train being helped. If radio operation is not possible, electrical control might be used, by way of cables running the length of the train (especially in case of passenger trains), or else the helpers are manually controlled, which is still the usual for bank engines at the end of freight trains in Europe.
Read more about this topic: Bank Engine
Famous quotes containing the words modern and/or practice:
“The opera isn’t over till the fat lady sings.”
—Anonymous.
A modern proverb along the lines of “don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched.” This form of words has no precise origin, though both Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations (16th ed., 1992)
“Tricks and treachery are the practice of fools that have not wit enough to be honest.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)