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CSX train fire forces 5,000 to evacuate in Tennessee
o boy
I will be interested to see what the cause of this is. Apparently no derailment, the roadbed and track look terrific. Could a stuck/overheated brake cause this? Hard to tell if this is on a downgrade or not.
It appears a broken axle is the Likely cause of this incident and an at a boy to the crew on bringing the train to a safe stop and not making a bad situation much worse by putting 20 or so cars in the ditch. Just wish fox and other news agency’s would get their facts straight before reporting a derailment had accured.
The first thing I thought was “Oh no, not another oil train wreck”. I’m glad it wasn’t that. If there was no derailment, then this was a really freak accident.
Mr. Patrick has additional pictures on the news paper’s web site that show a seriously damaged crossing. That there was no derailment is a major miracle; apparently the couplers and the EOT did their job. And to think there wasn’t even a caboose!
Could be a broken drawbar
Grammar alert, final paragraph: “setup” is a noun; the railroad “set up” a community outreach center. I know, picky, picky, but JEEZ!
And I agree, good job by the crew getting the train stopped without making a much bigger mess. It will be interesting to hear a definitive cause for the fire once investigations are completed.
Whats the EPA doing in here as a source?
Randall: A crew on the rear would have remedied the situation quicker. We would not be reading this had there been a caboose! 
@Jim Norton…in this instance you’re incorrect, a crew at the end of the train would not have remedied the situation any quicker, especially when the car is roughly mid-train. What ever caused the fire to start wouldn’t have been noticed any sooner than the electronics could.
Norton,
News reports indicate that a broken axle’s debris compromised the tank and the brake pipe.
The tank, leaking very dangerous stuff was likely ignited by debris sparks,
This happened after the broken brake pipe transmitted a near 1000 mph command to both ends of the train to initiate and apply an emergency brake . The FRED would replicate the message to the head-end, which would duplicate and would be displayed…
Visa Versa applies if the head end got the brake pipe command first…
Thus, Norton,
in the caboose,no visuals of the problem, because it’s just after midnight…there’s no derailment… OK, one axle…
A FRED received and transmitted the emergency application command at Mach speed. Likewise the head the head end would acknowledge.
Norton,
Could a crew in a caboose been prescient of the broken axle, or transmitted that emergency application command more quickly?.
,
At night a rear end crew would see sparks and by day smoke. Most broken axles, bad bearings, dragging equipment fail at slow enough rate that a rear end crew sees the early signs, sparks, smoke or dust in time to stop the train in time to prevent a major incident.
After saying that, now many trains are much longer than back in the 1970s and defects can be hidden from view longer. On the bigger railroads defect detectors are spaced out about 25 miles apart in order to detect the majority of in route defects.
J.M. Zweerts retired engineer BN, KJRY, PNWR
Mr Zweerts is quite right. These things typically don’t happen all of a sudden, but over time. The rear end crew can spot trouble earlier because they’re usually looking forward, and then you have smoke which naturally trails backward, not forward to the head end. While there is a rule to occasionally look back at your train, especially on curves where you can see more of it, in practice, most don’t do so regularly. Defect detectors are in place around every 25 miles, or even less, because, again, these issues don’t happen in a matter of minutes, but over time.
I have no idea what the comment about a 1000mph command is about. It sounds like the train line was damaged and the train simply lost it’s air going into emergency.
My grandfather rode in the cupola of a Tennessee Central caboose for most of his 52 years of railroading. The stories of the importance of eyes, ears and noses at the rear of a train can’t be underestimated nor replaced with electronics. My point is for safer operations…not nostalgia.
Mr Turpin,
35 years ago, as a colleague on SP’s Engine Service Training Center’s faculty scripted and made a training tape, a color video tape, so it was later than 35 years, anyway it was a marvel of plain talk that covered train air brake’s operation…
He, as we all were not able to to field strip an ABDW control valve but for what an engineer needed to know we were there, or could get an answer.
He was mentioned and named as an NTSB investigator in a Newswire RR accident story month’s ago.
His, and our knowledge of air brake systems is the polar opposite of your’s.
You do though share the surname.
I wish you’d corrected me to"about 1000 feet per second,". Cause that;s the speed the emergency rate of brake pipe reduction travels from where emergency app. is initiated; service travels at about 600 feet a second.
Justis, your 1000 mph question is proper, I was wrong and I apologize for misleading.
Justis ask about BP pressure reduction rates at Ted’s NTSB office.
Your surnames are the same…that really is not really important.
.
As bad as this was, and it was certainly bad enough, the news reports mentioned at least two cars of propane in the consist, although it isn’t clear exactly where they were. If one of those had been set off by the chemical fire they did have, oh, brother!! Also, apparently only one axle on one car went bad. Guess which car…
Mr Carlin,
I’m kinda simple, am comparatively plain spoken and couldn’t really follow what you were on about.
I’ve never been to engineer’s training school, I don’t know how fast an emergency or service brake application is propagated thru the train in miles per hour or feet per second…never measured it…never felt the need. I do know from enough first hand experience that when the train line is severed, the train goes into emergency, yes, the rear end and head end are going to go to zero, of course, and then I say, “Oh sh*t”, and have to go back and find out what’s wrong when the air doesn’t come back up. I hope it’s just two long draw bars having the glad hands come apart.
I don’t know how that knowledge is the polar opposite of yours. It’s the way it happened and I was there. I would assume you have real world experience if you were working in a training center? If so, I can’t predict where the confusion lies.
Justus,
To assuage your doubts about “real world experience” all 14, or so, staff of the SP ESTC were expert freight and passenger engineers.
Personally, 42 years in engine service on SP and subsidiaries T&NO, SSW, NWP, SD&AE, and Tijuana and Tecate. I held, owned the job assignment, Amtrak’s Coast Starllight between Oakland 16th St and Dunsmuir, Ca.
I found little affection for yard or industry switching jobs, but was a shark smelling blood in the water where “road work” freight or passenger was offered. And I bit at every scent…
Where?
Home was San Francisco and the SP Coast Div.
The world included SF to San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara, then Oakland to Fresno, 2 routes to Dunsmuir (short of there, Gerber)
and Sparks, Nevada. That was part of my passenger service.
Freight: from Pine Bluff; from Houston to Lufkin, Hearne, points west and south; Arizona; California: from Mexico to bordering on Oregon, from the station Surf to Nevada and in Nevada. almost every route mile of it.
And the Tijuana and Tecate in Baja California Del Norte.
Is that understandable?
Your writing identifies you as a bona fide “train” crew member, sort of. Not an engineer!
You wrote that you had to walk the length of the train to find the cause of the emergency application.
on my bit of Rail Road the engineer stayed in the cab to insure securement of the cars he controlled;
The “train” crew walked the train, looking for the cause.
Your statement did not mention or include that the inspector should be carrying a spare brake pipe air hose and wrench.
Bona fide…sorta?
Living 50 miles west from Maryville the times I go there I see very few trains.lots of curves due to hills,river airport etc. What few trains I have seen never going over 20 mph maybe less.If that was their speed then it may have minimized the amount of damage done. Unless there is a connector N.S. that line goes into Ga. and not into Chattanooga.