[8D] TGIF !!! hi fellow rail fans. i notice so many rr acidents in last year and this year. why so many and also please what are the top 5 reasons for accidents on the main lines? thank you for your help. GOD BLESS AMERICA[:)] lee boy
- Human Error (Trespassing)
- Human Error (Motorist)
- Human Error (Railroad)
- Track Problem
- Signal Problem
Would be my guess…
LC
I agree. But how about natural disasters, (meaning ice, rain, etc)
That would be my guess.
Good guess. I have no idea if there are current “official statistics”
If you are talking about derailments, #4 would likely move to the head of the list. The derailments that get general news coverage seem to be mostly track-caused
People being stupid as usual. What happens in most cases.
define people being stupid?
csx engineer
define people being stupid?
csx engineer
[/quote]
My guesses:
“walking on RR tracks with a headset on, not paying attention to surroundings”
“driving around lowered crossing gates”
We all forgot the most important one: GRAVITY! [:D]
What you are looking at in the FRA notes are the “FRA reportable derailments” that meet a damage threshold of $6370/$6700 or more to track or equipment. (No Labor costs)…It does not show every time a wheel hits the ground, every time a switch crew shoves 10 cars into a track that holds 6 cars, bypass knuckles, overspeed couple, running over derails or running thru rigid switches. The original statement almost requires a Clintonesque response of “define accidents”(?) …The numbers are just that, figures without explanation / not the whole story. Those figures do not usually include pedestrians and motorists going stupid in the zone surrounding an operating railroad.
Old legend #1 around the railroads is the one about the department whose supervisor who gets to the derailment scene "last" winds up as accepting/ being the cause of the derailment in the closeout report.[X-)]
Old legend #2 is that trainmasters, yardmasters and superintendents can see “wide gage” from 50 miles away through the little holes in their radio microphones and cell phone receivers.[8D]
Old legend #3 is that dispatchers can tell you how much a derailment costs (always less than $6370) and how long it should take to fix track and re-rail cars (always 10% of what it actually takes)[%-)]
Roadmasters Lament: Broken rails at a derailment site are often the result/af
Human Error-yaking on your freakin phone when you should be watching for trains.
stay safe
Joe
Idiots driving and what-not, not the crew was what I meant if it was taken the wrong way.
I wouldn’t exactually call that a guess.
There’s more truth in that than you know.
Wait a minute,we all forgot one,and it doesn’t really,totally
fall in to the human error catigorey. It’s called “IDIOTS”
Case in point: A friend was working a conductor job last week. The train was making a shove and my buddy was riding the point. Crossing a grade crossing the train was struck by a vehicle, my coworker had his legs amputated by the car crashing into the corner of the boxcar.
Randy
Man. My codolences.I know it won’t bring his legs back,but when
Police came,I hope the auto driver got locked up.
There is NO call for something like that to happen. Your friend was doing his
job,very much looks like the auto driver wasn’t doing his by looking
where they were going.
I would submit that equipment failures probably cause more derailments than signal failures…things like hotboxes, shifted loads, dragging equipment, etc.
(No, hotboxes are not a thing of the past…with roller bearings there may be fewer of them, but things go from bad to worse a lot more quickly.)
If you were to back up one step from the broken rail, would the most common cause (maybe as a sub-category to Gravity) be “wide gauge” or “out of gauge” or “out of level”?
Some years back I got a gift of train videos (made by the RRs, not railfan videos). One was from the Santa Fe, which mounted a camera underneath a freight car frame to see how the freight car wheels moved while the train was “at speed”. The video was very grainy but did show the car wheels lifting up at certain spots, but no derailment.
MP
“FALLING ASLEEP” at the throttle!
BNSFrailfan.
You beat me to it! That’s what I was going to say.This was the cause of the BNSF vs.Metrolink wreck near Atwood, last year.
Ouch. Hate to hear that. Condolences…
LC