Finally…after 150 years. Thanks for restoring my faith in the human species…
A conductor I knew told me about a wreck he was in in the eighties. His caboose was flipped off the track by the impact with another train and completely rolled once. This was during the early days of US Space Shuttle flights and he and his son were watching it on the news. The conductor said he told his son that he floated inside the flipping caboose just like the astronauts floated in zero gravity before the caboose came to a stop. It went right around him once. Miraculously, he only suffered minor injuries and only missed a few days of work.
AgentKid
Aside from the “sudden stop at the bottom,” that had to be rather surreal…
When a caboose is used on NEC freight moves, does it have people in it or is it just there for visibility?
Depends on crew size, work to be done, where work is to be done, and why shack is there in the first place.
Tree hit upon a relevant point with 3" of slack. With modern “cushion frame” type cars, slack can be a real pain in the butt!
Had a cushion car give me a knuckle the other day. Big manifest train bunched up on a downhill grade, went to stretch it uphill so it wouldn’t run out while I built air and a knuckle busted when the first 30 cushioned boxes got pulled. Figures it’d be pouring rain [banghead]
Now here’s a hypothetical question borne out of the facts of the case (and I don’t expect everyone to read the Classic Trains article so I’ll try to relate the necessary information here):
The train was, as I indicated before, composed of empty coal hoppers. It was passing the yard at 10 MPH. The crew in the lead locomotive initiated the emergency stop because they saw the switch for the yard entrance was lined for the yard tracks, rather than being lined and locked for the main (as per B&O operating rules).
The yard itself in WV was where coal from 3 different branch lines was collected for transfer to the mainline. The branch lines to the mines reached the yard from the south, and this accident occurred while the train was approaching the south end (from the north). Since this was a marshalling yard for coal, there was probably no other cars nearby carrying hazardous cargo.
At 10 MPH, does anyone think it would’ve been better for the engineer to not go into emergency stop, but rather slow down as much as possible and let the train plow-through the mis-lined switch? Since the switch wasn’t normally locked (this was a rules violation that was, unfortunately, common practice in the yard), at that speed, could the train have possibly forced its way through the switch and not derailed? Had it derailed, the slack action would’ve probably done the same injuries to the caboose crew (or worse) anyway, and quite likely have blocked access to the yard. But is there a chance the train could’ve remained railed?
Lots of variables:
Was it a facing or trailing point switch?
If facing point, where was the track lined to?
a string of propane cars?
a string of loaded coal cars?
an empty track?
If trailing point,
was it the type made such that a one-time run-thru would not seriously damage it?
was the switch located where there was a strong likelyhood of the run-thru being observed?
How draconian is the railroad?
do they dismiss someone for a ‘minor’ infraction?
do they “look the other way” if no real damage was done?
do they consider the previous record of the employee when deciding on punishment?
How experienced was the engineer? When faced with a lose-lose situation, one must be able to quickly decide which action would cause the greatest/least harm/damage.
To answer your question, I would have run thru the switch without hesitation, rather than injuring a coworker (been there, done that).
[tup] Zardoz
Running through a switch in those circumstances really isn’t a big deal in the big scheme of things. Switch rods can be replaced, and other linkages fixed as necessary as well.
The decision to dump the train is a hard one to make in those circumstances. You’ve got thousands of forces pulling you every which way even as you simply apply the brakes. Those forces increase many many times when you swipe the brake into emergency, as well as losing the ability to control your brakes.
From the description above, it seems like it was a facing-point switch, so see the alternatives for that by zardoz above. If the track they were lined for had cars in it, then that impact might have been as bad or worse than the emergency stop. But if the track was empty, it’s hard for me to see what the panic was.
As far as negotiating the switch itself - likely it was not any sharper than a No. 6 frog angle (approx. 9-1/2 degrees - approx. 48 ft. from Point of Switch to Point of Frog), and those are all good for at least 10 MPH. More likely it was a No. 8 frog (approx.7-1/4 degrees - approx. 68 ft. from Point of Switch to Point of Frog), and those are good for 15 MPH, or maybe even a No. 10 (20 MPH).
If it was a trailing point switch - as zardoz says, go ahead and “run through” it rather than risk putting the train on the ground or injuring the crew as did happen. Some switchstands had and have a “breakable crank” underneath or similar in the switch rods someplace - kind of like a “mechanical fuse”, a deliberate weak point like a shear pin to make sure that’s what breaks first and not something else more valuable or important. This kind of thing isn’t rare, and can normally be fixed easily enough by the track maintenance guys by just replacing the broken crank and adjusting the switch again - maybe 15 to 30 minutes and $50 to $100 once they’re there, and the appropriate and requisite amount of complaining and cussing has been performed (and maybe a beer or two after work to settle up things). Even if the switchstand didn’t have a “run-through” crank, the worst that happens then is that the switch rods or the switch stand gets bent up or broken beyond repair and reuse. In such cases, it might take a couple hours and maybe $500 to repair it. I’ve never heard or seen that running through
I reactivated this thread just to let you know that I received a call from my Mother yesterday telling me that the conductor mentioned above passed away on Friday at the age of 77. I guess being a conductor/test pilot didn’t end up having too detrimental of an effect on him.
According to his obituary it sounded like he led a good and useful life.
It was while looking for his obituary that I came across the notice about the passing of Donald M. Bain I mentioned in the thread I started last night.
AgentKid
More than one EOT has bit the dust, literally, by falling off the train. Sometimes the EOT’s can be found (sometimes working and sometimes not), sometimes they can’t be located.
In view of this discussion of slack and its effects, some salient points:
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There are two feet of slack in each car of a train (1 foot at each end). It is there because in the days of friction bearings, a locomotive could not overcome the high breakout friction of all the bearings in the train at once. Slack permittted picking up one car at a time. Roller bearings don’t have anywhere near this level of breakout friction but slack has not changed to the best of my knowledge. Some roads have experimented with four or five tightly coupled cars with a draft gear at each end of the unit. This reduces slack significantly but still lets the locomotive pickup one unit at a time. Works best for single commodity trains.
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While the primary function of the air brake system is to stop the train, a critical secondary function is to control slack. This latter fuction comprises most of the complexity in the air brake control valve. As long as brake applications are contolled by brake pipe pressure reductions, this situation will remain. Transmission time of an incremental change of pressure in the brake pipe can not exceed the speed of sound (1100 ft/sec) but realistically doesn’t exceed 900 ft/sec in emergency applications. Simple math says that the caboose of a 150 car train doesn’t get the signal for a little more than 8 seconds and has moved 300 ft since the locomotive came to a dead stop.
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Electronic brake is the ideal method of controlling slack but reducing it would still be desirable. I have not kept up with electronic freight brake (although I defined a workable system prior to 1980) but in typical railroad fashion, the final default likely is dumping the brake pipe.
This may be more than you ever wanted to know.
Jerry Pier
Engineers are also not as air brake savvy these days as railroad management would rather have them use dynamic braking the majority of the time. “Power braking” is no longer the norm, which if you know what you are doing,can reduce slack quite a bit. I’ve stopped 100 car plus grain trains with just the air and put her right where I wanted her the majority of the time, with the train stretched out. when I got ready to roll,nice easy start with a minimum of slack. It takes time and practice and the “want to” of doing it right.