if trains get hit by lighting what happens does it shut down. or do traction motors flash over…
It fries the points and condensor in the distributor. It also burns up the plug wires. It also makes the engineer and conductor mess their trousers.
Ken
I hope if I become an engineer that won’t happen to me, but it probably will considering the odds!
david3,
if you have chronically bad luck, that is a bummer…
if your luck is about the same as everybody else’s, it’s incredibly good… the odds of being struck by lightning are slight to the extreme… the odds of lightning striking a loco while you are in it are too extravagant to calculate…
in waiting for lightning to strike your loco, you would win the lottery dozens of times and marry every playmate of the month in a year of your choosing…
how long would you have to live for those things to happen?
the odds are the lottery and the playmates would happen long before the lightning would come anywhere near you…
Antbro,
have had lightning hit cars near me, and in my train, it can give you a real good tickle.
And a good excuse to quit switching that the trainmaster really cant argue with.
If it hits a locomotive, it will trip the ground fault relay, the alternator will be isloated from the rest of the wiring, and then the lightning will go to ground through the wheels and rail.
It will scare the crap out of whoever is inside the locomotive, but it will follow the path of least resistance down the metal body and into the wheels.
Liken it to a airplane being hit by lightning, which happens all the time, they are designed for that to occur, and so is a locomotive.
Stay Frosty,
Ed
Hey Kenny, Sounds like you are speaking from experience [:D][:D][:D][:D].
I’ve got you all beat…Back in the summer of 1998, I was working on the north end of Acca Yard in Richmond VA, when we had a tornado warning, and the tornado came right down the center of the yard, past AY, and tore up the signals at the end of the wye on the south side of the yard. I remember racing for the rear box car, getting up and telling my hogger to high ball it through the yard. I’ll never forget that wall of water that raced us. It almost caught up to me as we managed to keep the rear of our cut ahead of it by only a few car lengths. It was travelling fast! Talk about a wind storm…eeech…[:p] We made it from the North End to the South End in record speed. I’ve never seen cars rock back and forth as they did, but we made it down there just in time to get cover.
Who cares about a little cattle prodding, when the real stuff will simply blow you away! [;)]
MUD…
yes they do whether there was anyone in it at the time or not i dont know. however an old conrail unit SD70MAC Rn 779 came through the shop a few weeks ago it had taken a lightning strike. it did extensive damage to breakers, modules, emdec computer, current transformers, damaged both of the siemens traction control computers, and fried several of the cards in the new york air brake computer i dont know the costs of these repairs however i know they are nowhere nearly as expensive as when they run an SD 60 in the river i have seen that also.
Really! And just how do they do that? This sounds interesting. Give us some more details on this one!
Mookie
Mook-
They end up in the river if the engineer takes his/her hands off the steering wheel ! [;)]
Can’t speak for locomotives, but can about what does happen when lightning hits a torsion beam liner and the com/signal lines 50 Ft. away from the track. The track liner has every circuit fried and can barely move (towed it into the clear). The blue light is awesome except it is accompanied by a horrific noise. We all had "fro"s and the hair on our arms stood straight up. There was .s.r.o. at the section house for access to the potty and somewhere to change clothes.
CSX had an AC4400 hit by lightning in North Carolina a few weeks ago. I didn’t get to see it but the engineer said it melted most of the relays into a big blob, and fried every computer on board. It was the trailing unit in the consist so they weren’t hurt, just scared the crap out of 'em!
Derrick
[}:)] Gee Thanx Zardoz!
Mook
As much damage as lightning can do - why don’t the whiz kids that make the equipment figure out how to drain all that energy off so it won’t fry the electronics?
Lightning rods maybe?
Mookie
oh you had to tell me that DEKEMD where ever this AC 4400 is that got hit by lightning im sure it is DIT to huntington and I will probably become very well aquainted with it in the near future as for your question mookie i dont know the whole story on how the SD 60 ended up in the river however i know that the mud and ballasts were so thick in this unit they couldnt bar the engine over im guessing they are goign to mark it off as a loss the carbody is demolished and any of the electronics in this unit are in bad shape also.
MUDINURI,
Awesome story. That would have been something to see!
Mookie
There is really no protection for giant electromagnetic wave hits. The currents are just too big. So you try to have sacrificial (cheap) elements burn out to act like house fuses . For aircraft, the electrical sink is the sky around the plane and the currents are not like ground vehicles sitting on a wet earth. Lightning rods are hokum or useful for proviiding false confidence while … you know this line. You are more likely to be hit by lightning than to win the California Lottery so the risk exposure is small and the occasional rewiring of a locomotive is the best way to go ahead.
Lindsay
Jen, Lighting protection is only as good as the earth ground you send it to. Trains have very poor earth grounds so lighting rods will not help. Railroad tracks have very poor earth ground for they sit on several feet of gravel and rock. Out west in Mountain Home Idaho, I witnessed a strang phenomenon called Ball lighting. A Ball of lighting about the size of a golf ball, rode about 1 inch above the track rails seeking a path to earth ground.
TIM A
Lightning is the one thing that the Mook is afraid of. She lives with tornados, snakes (sorry Ed) and blizzards, but lightning is truly scary. I can’ imagine being that close to the lightning when it is all around you or right there in front of you - Makes you feel pretty insignificant!
Mookie
It was taken to Erwin TN after the strike. It was parked with AC4400 # 491 that had part of the cab destroyed by a tree. Not sure where it went after that.
Derrick
Everyone must Rememebr, Electricity follows the path of least resistance…
Thge human body is like a pack of Resisotrs… it offers A heck of a lot of ohms Resistance compared to a 5’ 11" copper wire wich offers 0.001 Ohms Resistance. Aluminum conducts Electricity at 60% of copper, but if your sitting in your chair The Lightning bolt will most likely not effect you, I have never been in this situation, but i can assure you minimal damage is done.
Water does not conduct Electricity. No it does not. It Requires an additive to do so. Like Pools… The H2O has Chlorine in it, the more the clorine, the faster Electricity flows throw it… the less resistance it has…
IF you cut a wire and remove a 1 inch section of it, then put one finger on one end and another finger, (it doesn’t matter what hand, you can use seperate ones if you like) you will get an electrical shock, because you leave the Electricity no other option but to flow through you. Howerever if you don’t Remove that Wire, and touch the wires an inch apart, you WONT get a shock because it’s easier to flow through copper, or aluminum then it is to go through your finger.
Face it Electricity is lazy, taking the easiest path possible.
Factor this in your on a train, going 50 MPH. Lightning usually strikes the highest point… is a common misconception… Lighning will strike Whatever gives of a better NEGATIVE magnetic FIELD. a tree, made of wood, does not give of a Strong negfative magnetic field, however a 25 foot MEtallic Aluminum rod sticking 20 feet in the ground gives of an Excellent negative magnetic field.
Remeebr another thing… Electricity will do anyhting to get through the ground. it would rather not travel through a lighbulb, it would rather go directly to the ground.
Ever notice That when you attach a Black (live wire) and white (common wire(using the 120 volt AC system)) directly sparks fly for about ~1 to 5 secoindes (based on the maker of youre