The first is the feature article by Fred Frailey, and the second, a news item by Roy Blanchard. Given the possible cause of the CN train wreck in Rockford, the timing of the publication of the third is a bit ironic.
On the Technology page, Sayre Kos writes about the Picton ballast integrity sensor. Invented in 2000 by former BNSF locomotive engineer Dan Picton, the sensor is a small canister buried in the ballast with the top part anchored to the track with chains hooked to ties and a base plate supported by the ballast. If a shift in the track or loss of ballast supporting the base plate causes the base to separate from the upper part of the device by two inches, an internal circuit is broken. The device can be integrated into an existing signal system, or in dark territory, can be set to transmit an alert in the same manner as a wayside defect detector.
Set at strategic locations, the device can alert the railroad to “washouts, flooding, sinkholes and water erosion…” as well as “sun kinks, or shifted tracks near hit or damaged bridges.” Successfully tested in 2000 at the AAR’s Transportation Technology Center about 50 units are installed on the BNSF, the BL&E and a couple of rail transit operations. There is no assertion that the device would warn of every ballast/track condition that might cause a wreck, but Kos reports that a device installed on the BNSF alerted the crew on the BNSF’s B9 track integrity car to a washout that could well have caused the loss of that multi-million dollar car.
“I’ve always said that for the first derailment I can prevent, I can pay for an entire systemwide [sensor] installation for a large Class I railroad,” Picton says.
He may be right. The device itself is only $800, but the article notes a cost factor indicating average installation and hookup may run about $5500. (Nine ye
[tup] Not much to add - this pretty much says it all - except: Why didn’t I think of that ? [%-)]
Simple, cheap (comparatively - will be much less in a mass-production mode), reliable, durable, fills a need, etc.
Maybe a variation to detect high water = water up on the rails would be useful, esp. in low-lying or flood-prone areas. That’s not a condition that anyone should be comfortable with on a track - washouts, signal integrity, damage to traction motors, risk to crew if they have to dismount for any reason, etc.
I couldn’t agree more . . . well, actually I could. Even at $5500 per sensor, I think the total cost of all of this will well exceed the cost of 1000 sensors.
Of course, I aree with Mudchicken’s comment that we should avoid hysteria and hearsay. Although it certainly leaves a bad taste in my mouth, I don’t know what happened with that wreck and it is premature to draw any hard conclusions. But, given the report that the train engineers were actually increasing their speed over the washout and the assertion that 21 minutes should have been enough warning (to reiterate, I do not know that such is the case), no self-respecting lawyer is going to settle this case cheaply.
Should the cases go to trial and appeal, it will cost well over $1,250,000 for CN just to defend this litigation–$2,250,000 is my guess depending upon which lawfirm CN hires for this, and this does not strike me as the kind of case a defendant goes to Mike’s discount lawyers to find an attorney. Of course, my estimate is the trial and appeal number. Should the case settle, earlish, the cost will be much less than 25% of my estimate. Should CN settle the cases pre-litigation, it will probably be less than 10% of my estimate. Usually, most of the hard expenses in defending a lawsuit come later in the case.
If there is evidence substantiating either that the train crew should have noticed a problem–apparently noticed by civilian motorists–while passing over the washout or that 21 minutes should have been enough warning, I estimate the liability in this case to be somewhere between $4,000,000 and $18,500,000–depending on the number of survivors of the deceased victim, the severity of injuries for the surviving victims, and the ability to settle the case rather than go to trial. Of course, if there is hard and convinci
Gabe - I’m not disagreeing with anything that you’ve said - but just wondering -
What was the ultimate conclusion / judgment of the CSX derailment and toxic leak in Louisiana about 10 years ago, that had like an 800 million punitive damages award attached to the compensatory damages award [Q] I know the punitive damages were appealed as excessive, but I recall those appeals were largely unsuccessful, and that judgment was affirmed and remained - if I’m right [Q]
What is the basis for your estimates of the defense costs and liability for the compensatory damages - esp. for the 1 death and the 3 personal injuries components [Q] Cynics will say that value can’t be placed on human life, but I disagree - see second point below - and anyhow, the judicial/ legal system will do that anyway as part of the liability determination.
Total costs for defense and liability for compensatory damages for this would be in the range of 5 million to 20 million, per your estimates, and maybe 50 million with the punitive damages.
How often does a derailment from a washout occur each year on CN - I’ll bet its several times a year, if memory serves. Then, how often does it turn into something this bad - maybe once in every 10 years[Q], so that there is a 10 per cent proabablity of this happening in any given year [Q] If so, then the system of sensors to better warn of such occurences would justify spending from 500,000 [10 per cent of the lower bound of 5 million in damage costs] to 5 million [10 per cent of the upper bound of 50 million of damage costs] per year to cover the installation and on-going maintenance costs of such sensors at the most trouble-prone areas. For 1,000 such sensors, that would work out to between 500 and 5,000 per sensor per year - ‘seat-of-the-pants’ analysis of that seesm like it’s reasonable. Either that, or budget a
Needless to say, even the cost factors I offered for cars and lading were rough guesses. Absent almost any knowledge base on litigation cost and awards, I wasn’t going try for those numbers.
I have to add this. Even if the device had been in place, it is entirely possible that it may not have worked in the Rockford case. More than half the train passed over the crossing before cars derailed. If the actual cause was failed track structure, it may have taken the motion of the cars moving over a “weak” spot to get the track to failure point. If there was no track movement before the train hit the weak section, the device would not produce an alert.
So with that, my point was not to say that the sensor is the perfect device for preventing every accident resulting from bad track/ballast integrity. Rather, I was trying to determine if there is a good cost/benefit ratio for the device. It seems there could be.
Feel free to disagree; I am not above error or reproach.
Don’t know of the top of my head. However, your cited case is a case of apples and oranges when compared to the CN wreck. For reasons discussed below, there is a huge difference between a toxic spill and an accident of this nature–most importantly, the number of people affected.
At least a three-part question:
(1) Cost of Defending the Case: My experience in dealing with cases of this nature. For the four lawsuits combined, you are probably looking at 10-13 merits depositions; 3-5 expert depositions (on at least two separate subjects–the plaintiffs’ medical conditions and railway operations); 3-20 bankers boxes of documents to review; written discovery; summary judgment; a possible motion to dismiss depending upon how aggressive the Plaintiffs want to be with their Complaint; at least 8 actual days of trial–probably
Also, something else to add to the analysis, if it can be shown that such a device could have avoided the wreck in a cost effective manner, it will be another possible basis for liability.
We deal with lots of big, multi-million dollar, national companies, who have had the my way, or the highway attitude for many years. Now, business is slow, and they all suddenly want to be our buddies. Will CN have the same problem our new found friends have- we chose the highway, and we’re no longer interested in what their phone number is?
Does a scheduled railway lose all of its advantages, on days when there aren’t enough cars to build a train?
First - Murphy, are you sure you don’t want to put this under a separate thread, titled ‘Hunter’s Way - Now What [Q]’, or similar [Q]
‘It depends’, I suspect, on how good and permanent the alternate arrangements that the potential customers made - ‘the highway’ - are. If a plant had to be moved or closed, or a trucking subsidiary set-up, or a pipeline built, etc. - then ‘Who are you, again [Q]’ might well be the response. But if the alternate was a temporary or transient arrangement - such as merely to pay more, or accept inconvenient schedules, or maybe use trucks on an ‘as-needed’ or ‘spot-market’ basis - which could be unwound fairly quickly and without a lot of lost investment, then the shipper might sit down with the railroad. But it would be a much different discussion now . . . [:-^]
The scheduled railway - as I understand the theory - should never have a day when there aren’t enough cars to build a train. Even if the traffic offered on that day is zero cars, the train needs to run anyway, if only to position and balance the power and crews for the next day or cycle of operation, when hopefully there would be some return traffic - as well as any intermediate pick-ups, drop-offs, connections, block-swapping, etc. Of course, long-term contract obligations
You can put out all the technology you want, but the best preventative measure against these types of washout/derailments is a track inspector running ahead of, not behind, a train. Funny thing about washouts is that the signals are still usually green because the rail has not separated.
One of the examples we use in our Railroad Bridge Scour Seminar is from Labor Day, 1981 near Needles. The roadmaster was patrolling during heavy rians. They had gone over a stretch of track and wanted to turn around and run back before releasing trains. The dispatcher wanted to run a train behind them. The roadmaster prevailed and was given track & time to run back. They found a bridge they had gone over only a couple hours before washed out. The rails were still in place and the signals were green.
These sensors, or other technology, can be beneficial in places, but you can never get enough of them out there and they can never take the place of an experienced set of eyes (or seat of the pants).
If I am correct another wrinkle in the who pays question is this. I think this may have been a BNSF haulage rights train. Does anybody know for sure? I saw an ethanol train on this route a couple of weeks earlier and it had BNSF power on it. According to the latest Trains in News & Photos in the story about ethanol the BNSF accepts these trains in East Dubuque from Iowa Northern and runs them via Haulage rights over the old Iowa Division to Chicago. On haulage rights trains would the crew operating the train be fron CN or BNSF? if it was a BNSF crew isn’t the BNSF also liable if the crew was negligent?
While I am still waiting for my copy to arrive in the mailbox, I will make a couple of comments.
Firstly, I understood the Ontario Northland Railway had some form of washout detector by the late 1980s. Possibly it was developed in-house by the railway - I have no details. Looking in the 1996 Canadian Trackside Guide I see “high water detectors” are listed at a number of locations on the railway. Perhaps a reader knows exactly what they are.
The sensor described in the article is a good idea, but the devil is in the installation details. Certainly the track forces are aware of potential problem areas, but Mother Nature has a way of throwing curves. Plant 17 sensors at 100 foot intervals across a vulnerable fill, and surprise, the washout occurs within one of the gaps! In other words, to protect even one subdivision fully is likely to require an awful lot of detectors.
Some of the areas at risk are also known for track settlement, and require fairly regular re-surfacing, perhaps once or twice a year. Each time the detector(s) will have to be adjusted, or maybe removed and re-installed.
As others noted, they still won’t help if a weakened grade collapses under the train, as some theories suggest may have occurred in this case. Eliminating rail joints reduces the pounding that can liquify a saturated subgrade.
A track patrol, by someone who knows the territory intimately, is still the most reliable method. Issuing speed restrictions when the grade is saturated (similar to heat slows) would also increase safety.
Speaking as a former dispatcher, you would want to check that your job insurance was paid up before you disregarded a roadmaster’s request to patrol track after a precipitation event.
It was a CN train with a CN crew dispatched by a CN dispatcher. Iowa Northern does not reach East Dubuque, Ill., and if it did, BNSF wouldn’t need CN trackage rights, as BNSF’s Aurora Sub passes through East Dubuque. The rights you’re referring to sit farther west, and extend to Waterloo, Iowa. Incidentally, they’re haulage rights, not trackage rights, meaning a BNSF train but a CN crew.