My co-worker was telling me that people in his neighborhood are often playing around on the tracks putting stuff like spikes, rocks, coins, tie plates etc on the tracks. There was even an old bicycle placed on the tracks that ended up being ran over by a passing train. I’m sure that this must go on in quite a few places, but how often does a derailment happen because of it? Perhaps some locomotive engineers can comment on what their experiences have been ? All of this must take a nasty toll on wheel flanges, running gear, etc…
Spikes and tie plates I would worry about.
Bicycles would just get trashed.
Worst thing (besides a car) that we have hit was an old icebox…kids placed it in a SDRC…sight restricted distance curve, and we were hauling a bunch of gondolas with pipe loaded way above the top.
The engineer chose not to go into emergency braking, and we just about folded that thing in half…took 30 minutes to pry it off the coupler.
For a freight locomotive, about the only thing you really worry about hitting is an automobile or a truck, and of course, another locomotive.
Some things, like spikes and tie plates, are hard enough to lift the wheels high enough to get the flange on top of the rail…that can cause a derailment.
But when you consider the weight of a locomotive, even our MK1500D road switcher weighs in at over 100 tons, not much can withstand being run over by it.
Passenger locomotives are a little lighter, and the brake system is somewhat different, so debris may cause more of a problem.
For the most part, junk on the rails causes little damage to the locomotive, but may, depending on how hard the debris is, make a divot or small flat spot on the wheel.
Depends on how you classify ‘debris.’
There was a thread recently about a derailment caused by somebody who’d placed a chunk of scrap rail on the track, most of which was concerned with the technologically challenged reporter who defined ‘rail’ as ‘railroad track.’
IMHO, anything softer than the rail and/or the steel in the wheels doesn’t stand a chance! As for larger items, the damage to the item is usually lots greater than the damage to the locomotive. (I’m thinking of those semitrailer boxes that just come apart like wet cardboard.)
Steel items, like spikes or tie plates, do constitute a danger. They are thick enough to negate the flange height.
My question is, where are the security people who are so busy harassing railfan-photographers when this far more serious vandalism is going on?
Chuck
In Scotland, on the line from Glasgow to Oban, there’s a stretch of line where landslides often happen. TO alert train crews to this danger, there’s a wire running above the line. IF it gets broken it sets a number of semaphore signals to the horizontal ie stop position (normally they are at the 45 degree go position). This system has worked well for many years though there was one occassion many years ago when a large rock bounced over the wire and landed on the track and caused a derailment.
Surely that can’t be the only slide fence or land slip detector in Great Britain and Ireland? Are they that rare there?
There are several thousand miles worth of slide fence in North America, every inch of it a contributor to the Signal Maintainers’ Overtime Fund [xx(]. Land slip detectors are much less common but not rare, either.
RWM
railroad police are like other ctops in that they cannot be everywhere at once and on the Union Pacific they only have so many to cover a vast area.We have had grocery carts dropped on the tracks just in front of our train while going thru Omaha I had a spike barrel on the tracks filled with track spikes that made a lot of racket and even hit a porta potty on the maiolline just outside of Ogden Iowa railroad porperty is a wide open area and protecting it with a fenced off right of way like they do in Britian and Europe wouldnt be pratical so like other thimgs we deal with on a daily basies out here it just comes with the territory CNW FOREVER Larry
Fifteen years ago or so my cousin who worked at the WC shops in Stevens Point, WI told me about how some individuals moved a discarded section of rail from the side into the middle of the tracks and lifted one end resting it on several cinder blocks. If you can picture it, the rail was pointed upward at an angle with the other end anchored against a tie. A train happened by, and the locomotive hit it, spearing the cab right in the middle like a torpedo. Luckily no one was hurt, as there was enough warning to dive out of the way. Sand was everywhere, and the locomotive suffered quite a bit of damage. Sick bastards, whoever they were. That amounts to attempted murder in my book.
I’ve ran over tie plates at 50 mph and watched out the window as they are spun through the air like a frisbee. Metal objects like that present a danger. I have witnessed kids run away from the right of way just before we run over the thirty foot long row of rocks they placed on the rails. This makes a big cloud of dust and from the noise you would swear the engine had derailed. Speaking of attempted murder, I know someone who witnessed in horror the sight of a cinder block coming through the windshield. Seems some pieces of trash thought it would be cool to tie cinder blocks to a rope and hang them from a bridge and have them hang low enough to smash through the windshield as the engine came by. They could have been killed, luckily they weren’t hurt.
Under what circumstances could a log/board/old tie cause a derailment?
For starters, dont let those things get lodged around switches, frogs, road crossing flangeways or bridge guardrails.
The Milwaukee Road used to run through South Minneapolis for several miles through a cut called “The Depression.” Tires, appliances, furniture, bicycles, junk cars, shopping cars and all manner of junk routinely tested trains in the depression. It seemed like half the shopping carts in the city ended up getting mangled in the depression. In 1967, someone placed a pole across the track and derailed passenger train No. 15. The engine skewed off and hit the line of concrete piers supporting the Harriet Av. bridge, which dropped down and rested on the engine.