Train crossing the river at Harper’s Ferry derailed, several cars fell into the river. Was not the main line bridge, was the branch line bridge.
Grain empties headed from Winchester, VA to Brunswick, MD and then they would be taken back to their origin - most likely through Chicago.
A case of stringlining? Or rail defect?
My GUESS - broken rail - it was in the low 20’s to the teens when it happened.
There is a curve on that bridge. Broken rails on tangents are generally operated over without incident. Broken rails in curves CAN permit the rail ends to displace horizontally from each other.
Time will tell - and most likely we will never be advised of the official cause. No deaths, no Hazmat, no evacuations, no NTSB investigation.
From my experience - broken rails were highest in number on the first night or two of temperatures staying below freezing. Most were ‘discovered’ after a train moved out of a track occupancy circuit and the circuit stayed occupied on the Train Dispatchers model board. MofW and Signals would be dispatched to investigate. The track that this incident happened on is DARK. No track circuits.
View from Maryland Heights.
The video shows no failure of or damage to the track. Yes, it could be small enough that it doesn’t show.
The story says the cars were empty.
The curve radius is roughly 300 feet.
It looks like stringlining to me. I would surely like to hear details about the rest of the train.
Ed
If is is stringlining - that would mean the rear of the EMPTY train still had brakes applied when the head end started to move. The head end is facing a Absolute signal and the train may have been held for a higher priority movement on the main tracks.
How do you know all the cars in the train are empty? Was there a locomotive(s) further back in the train? If the train was held, how could there be a derailment caused by a rail failure? How do you know there was a rail failure?
For that matter, if a train of empties were long enough, it could still have enough friction to cause the stringlining.
I surely don’t KNOW it was stringlining. But it looks more like that than a track failure. To me.
Ed
[(-D][(-D][(-D] (Where’d you get that from? A 19+ degree main track curve?)
I scaled it from an overhead “satellite” view. Perhaps I mismeasured. What do you get?
I just did it again, from a different source, and got the same number. Actually, it was 333 feet; but I felt that my measurement methods didn’t deserve that kind of accuracy, so I rounded to 300 feet.
I DID say “roughly”.
Ed
Concerning ‘broken rail’ - what part of GUESS didn’t you comprehend. A guess I made BEFORE I came across the top down view from Maryland Heights.
Loaded grain trains come from the BNSF at Chicago with BNSF power to Brunswick. Upon arrival at Brunswick a crew with CSX power operates the train down to the customer at Winchester, VA. When the customer empties the train, a crew is called to bring the EMPTIES back to Brunswick for further movement back to the BNSF - most likely with the power that brought the train to Brunswick. The Shenandoah Sub west of Millville Quarry, doesn’t like today’s 6-axle locomotives.
Trains are normally on the order of 50 to 65 cars. The customer at Winchester can’t handle any more in a single train, they can’t handle multiple trains at the same time either.
It would be interesting if someone would give us the history of this bridge. It appears that originally there was a bridge to the north that may have only had a very gentle curve. A replacemnt bridge seems to have made this track a compound S curve ?
The line seems to have been a lot straighter in the past as those remnant supports across the water suggest, and if it was the railroad.
Is there more than one part?
Ed
That footbridge is quite popular; I have seen many people on it as I passed through Harpers Ferry by train.
Was the bridge that the engines are on then a replacement for the civil war destroyed bridge, which then was partially displaced by the double track bridge?
Leaving out the possibility of a cold weather rail failure (see Balt ACD), we can consider the possibility of:
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engineer can’t handle his train–he knew what he had, but he screwed up
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other opperators caused the failure–another locomotive in the train, as operated by another engineer, did not properly intereact with the engineer
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engineer was not correctly informed of the train he was to operate
other contributors gratefully accepted
Ed
The 30+ miles from Winchester to Harpers Ferry is a territory that does not require anything other than normal head end power - loaded or empty - this was a empty train.
The airiel view of the incident leads me to believe that the train had been stopped at the Absolute Signal at Sandy Hook (absolute signal at the East End of the bridge). The way the cars are arranged makes it look like a ‘string line’ type derailment. For this to happen, I suspect the engineer started pulling ‘hard’ before the brakes released on the rear of the train. Without having a ground level picture - it LOOKS like the rear truck on the trailing engine is also derailed to the ‘inside’ of the curve.
Despite the incident happening in the 2AM - 3AM area - vandalism of someone turning a anglecock somewhere back in the train is a possibility, though at that hour of the morning it is rather unlikely.
I am not able to see the numbers of the engines involved. Six axle engines WITHOUT steerable trucks are PROHIBITED from operating anywhere on the Shenandoah Sub.
CSX rules require crews to have proper train documentation for their train prior to departing the origin of the train. If the Engineer 'didn’t know&