Before you tell your engineer " for the cut", you better test a car or cars hand brakes. You set enough hand brakes that will hold the cut of cars without moving once the engineer release both the automatic and independent brakes. Wait 60 seconds to all brakes to fully release. If the cut does not move, it is ok to cut away. If your current amount of hand brakes does not hold, you better set some more. Here is a great example of what happens when you do not test or set hand brakes. If you are wondering, no one was in that locomotive at impact. The locomotive was wrecked beyond any further use. Here is a link to an article written about the crash.
