It shows the locomotive video from the grain train as it derails the grain car and goes into emergency with the oil train approaching and passing. Then it shows the locomotive video from the oil train as it encounters and collides with the grain car. Also included is the verbal communications between crews, etc.
Watched it twice. The grain train never so much as jiggles at the derailment. Looks like the only indication is the speed going down. Then the thrill of the inevitable hitting of the grain car.
I don’t know how injuries are avoided in something that heavy doing a flop like that!
That is quite a dramatic video with a lot of added information about the sequence of events as well as the actual audio. I find it quite interesting how events unfolded as the oil train was approaching the grain train after it was known that the grain train had experienced an undesired emergency application of brakes.
Apparently the grain train was blowing snow which obscured any visual indication of a dragging car to both its conductor and the crew of the oil train. But it seems that with this impending meet, a UDE would have been of great concern. Yet it seems to have taken 32 seconds before the grain train crew announced that they had gone into emergency.
The bigger part of that ‘delay’ is waiting for the emergency brake application to finish exhausting. Brake air exhaust, especially from an emergency application, is loud - so loud that it will interfere with the intelligibility of a person speaking over the radio. Remember the entire pressure of the trainline gets exhausted to atmosphere with an emergency application - that is a lot of air.
If you have an air tank at home that you use in maintaing your vehicles and have a ‘blow nozzle’ attachment - see how long it takes to ‘vent’ the tank to atmosphere - raise the sound and the volume of air several orders of magnitude and you begin to approach the volume and sound of the air being vented at the locomotive.
The exhaust from an emergency application is very short because every car opens a hole to atmosphere in the brake pipe. A service application vents just one opening in the brake pipe, and takes a lot more time.
Exhaust from brake valve is no longer vented into cab; there are pipes from the brake valves (both the regular engineer’s valve and the emergency brake valve on the conductor’s side) to the area under the cab floor where the air brake equipment sits.
On the newer locomotives with electronic air brakes I’m not sure if the air is even vented through the engineer’s brake valve or is instead vented by a magnet valve under the cab (controlled by air brake computer). There is little noise in the cab in any case as I recall. It’s been 12 years since I was running so some of the active engineers out there would have better information.
I’m sure the crew of the derailed train was trying to figure out what was going on, not realizing they had a car now fouling the other track.
As noted, cabs are a lot quieter than they used to be. The chief indication of the emergency application would have been the brake line guage and the PCS indicator coming on.
Even if they had declared an emergency the second the air started to drop, the end result was writ in stone. The key train was going to hit that derailed car.
From what I could see in the video, only one car fouled the other track. Had the car gone the other way, this incident would have been written off as a close call.
The point is for a first train to notify an opposing train on the other track as soon as possible after the first train goes into emergency just in case the first train has derailed and fouled the track of the opposing train. The un-commanded emergency application alone is a call to action to stop the opposing train even without knowing why the first train has gone into emergency. It is a matter of taking evasive action just because of the possibility of the first train derailing and fouling the track of the opposing train.
The oil train lost 32 seconds of warning about the emergency application of the grain train. After the warning came, the oil train consumed another 27 seconds prior to impact. So had they been warned as early as possible, the oil train had 59 seconds to stop before impact.
Granted, the oil train may have been traveling faster than the grain train, but the grain train was able to stop only 38 seconds after going into emergency. So an extra 32 seconds of lost warning for the oil train would have been of great help in reducing the collision impact.
I just watched the videos in the NTSB report the grain train could NOT broadcast he was in Emergency due to the Signal Maintainer being on the same channel telling him he saw a bunch of debris from his train on the ground. It is kinda hard to tell someone to look out when the radio is blocked from use by another person. The engineer wanted to tell his dispatcher he had an UDE however the Signalman blocked him from doing so.
Let’s analyze this from the point of view of the grain train Engineer and an objective observer: Train goes into emergency. The first logical reaction is to notify the dispatcher, which, I believe, is in compliance with the rules and best practices.
He keys up his mic and advises the dispatcher but his transmission is blocked by a signal maintainer’s transmission telling him there is debris from his train on the track. The engineer doesn’t know the dispatcher did not receive his message. Nor, unless the oil train is within visual range, does he know how long it will
You can play the what-if game until the cows come home. But we don’t live in a perfect world, so the endless word games we play on this forum aren’t going to mean jack. Best we can do is learn from it and move on.
Couple of notes - Trains are required to monitor the Road Radio Channel for the territory they are operating on. ie. Both the Grain train and the Oil train should have been monitoring the same channel - if they could hear each other from the first words of any converstation is unknown.
If the Oil train had begun stopping at the time the video identifies it (and I could not see it in the video at that point in time), it may have been able to stop prior to impacting the derailed car - or it may not have. The Oil train according to the video was ‘sighted’ 15 seconds before the derailment was indicated as having occured and it took another 17 seconds for the UDE to happen - by which time the Oil train was virtually ‘on top’ of the Grain train.
The point I was making was that the Oil train would have had to start stopping BEFORE the Grain train derailed, let alone before the Grain train crew could have ‘suspected’ they were derailed because of the UDE; and even then they may have struck the derailed grain car.
It’s a pity that there was no sound from the cab video itself. Some of those cameras do have sound (I never worked with them, but the oft-shared video of the UP train encountering a tornado had full sound from the unoccupied cab). We could have heard when the emergency application occurred (if no sound from the application itself the PC valve would have shut the throttle).
The engineer of the grain train did not comply with radio procedures in the event of an emergency application. He should have been saying “Emergency, emergency, emergency!” as soon as the train dynamited. He had the time to get that out before the maintainer called him…or, if he was still grasping the situation at that point, have said the “Emergency” code instead of acknowledging the mantainer (he knew he was in emergency by then). The engineer of the oil train said “Emergency, emergency, emergency”, in a tone that suggests that he was chiding the engineer of the grain train for not saying it. The quiet tone also suggests that he could not see the mayhem ahead of him at that point.
We don’t have any idea of the speed, or time of brake application of the oil train, at least not from the video. I’m with whoever said that prompt notification of the emergency might have allowed the oil train to slow down significantly, perhaps reducing the extent of the damage.
I’m sure that all of this information that we weren’t privy to was available to the NTSB in the course of their investigation.
This is why CN in Canada does it right. We tone and talk to the dispatcher on a serparate channel.
We would announce the emergency broadcast on the standby channel, go over to the RTC channel and do the emergency tone. If the RTC answers right away, the rtc will then protect other trains that may not have heard our initial call.
If the RTC doesn’t answer we have to repeat the emergency call on the standby until the RTC answers.
If for whatever reason the RTC doesn’t answer at all, you go flagging.
Our rules state that you must stop if you hear a train call emergency on a track beside yours. We also have to slow down and be prepared to stop when passing a train that tripped a dragging equipment alarm.
The oil train struck the grain car 59 seconds after the grain train went into emergency, giving the first indication of a possible fouling of the track the oil train was on. So, the earliest possible warning for the oil train was 59 seconds before impact.
However, 32 of those 59 seconds were lost by the delay in the oil train receiving the warning about the emergency application of the grain train. So the oil train was left with only a 27-second warning of those original 59 seconds starting with the emergency application of the grain train.
I don’t know how existing rules pertain to this kin