In another tTHREAD running concurrently at this time; KP Harrier asked an interesting question. Referencing the safety of the SD 7 ACe’s cabs, in the event of a collision.
"…RE:Fatal Rear-end Collision Reported on BNSF
| K. P. Harrier replied on 04-19-2011 6:26 AM |
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The N & W use to buy their locomotives with a high short hood and run them long hood forward as well. Other than the crew standing on the ground and using remote control it would be harder to make it safer than that.
It’s pretty tough to protect the occupants of a locomotive with all that mass coming in behind them. It’s like riding in a trash compactor.
A lot of time and money are being spent on the problem, but it is not an easy task. Physical laws are difficult to work around. Perhaps something that would direct the force to the side or cause the occupants to be thrown to the side.
Am I wrong or do locomotive run as well backwards as forward, just tell the engineers to reverse their engines, it’s their prerogative, their job is just to get the goods to where they are going.
After all , steam locomotives ran with 60 feet of boiler in front of them for a thousand years.
I’ve told you a million times not to exaggerate.
There have always been "collision posts’ = heavy steel framing in the front of low-nose units for that purpose. A few years ago the FRA increased the requirements for that substantially. But it’s hard to get a photo of them from a locomotive without the sheet metal over top, or really banged-up from a collision.
See the following sections from the Table of Contents to Title 49–Transportation of the Code of Federal Regulations (“CFR”), CHAPTER II–FEDERAL RAILROAD ADMINISTRATION, DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION, PART 229–RAILROAD LOCOMOTIVE SAFETY STANDARDS, at: http://www.access.gpo.gov/nara/cfr/waisidx_10/49cfr229_10.html
229.141 Body Structure, MU Locomotives.
229.201 Purpose and Scope.
229.203 Applicability.
229.205 General Requirements.
229.206 Design Requirements.
229.207 New Locomotive Crashworthiness Design Standards and Changes to Existing FRA-Approved Locomotive Crashworthiness Design Standards.
229.209 Alternative Locomotive Crashworthiness Designs.
Appendix E to Part 229 - Performance Criteria for Locomotive Crashworthi
Paul;
Thanks, for providing the links and that info. Thumbnail #5was probably the closest descriptor to the incident in the Iowa crash.
Yhe MOW Train, if it was anything like the ones seen around these parts are similart to the TTX style flats as to length, and usually carry several MOW machines, dependng on the size of the machines loaded. Apparently, the last car did over-ride the OR protector and pierced the crew area of the cab(?). It would be a pretty hard situation to prevent, unless the corner-reinforcement post woud deflect the intrusion upward over the compartment.
Again, Thanks for the Linked site.
Besides the manufacturers smashing locomotives to test and improve cav safety, do they send some to the DOT test center near Pueblo, Colorado for their testing?
I believe - but can’t prove - that’s where the tests took place that are shown in the slides/ video clips on the FRA webspages linked above. It sure looks more like prairie Colorado than Masschusetts, Washington D.C., La Grange IL, London ON, or Erie PA !
Yep, during our tour in January were shown those clips and etc about what they were doing.
Ok dude…
If a heavy train (1000 tons) moving at only 15 mph rear ends another train, it is hard to imagine how the structural integrity of the cab could be maintained. Isn’t the issue really more about the signaling designed to prevent the collision in the first place rather than survivability? Did the signals work? If, so, why did the engineer fail to stop in time?
It would indeed be possible to prevent structural damage to the cab regardless of how much momentum from the trailing train weight is involved. The cab just has to be strong enough so that everything squeezing it compresses and deflects outward from the line of impact.
Consider a cab made as a steel sphere with six-inch thick walls. All of the locomotive and railcar structure would crush and deflect every which way, but it could not concentrate enough force on the sphere to dent it. Now a massive steel sphere may not be the answer for a practical crushproof cab, but there is nothing to prevent the development of a crushproof cab.
It would add weight to the locomotive, but locomotives of all
Why did the Edmund Fitzgerald sink?
Whatever man builds…the forces developed in nature under some set of specific circumstances can defeat man’s creation.
Look no further than the Japanese Nuke plant…all it took was natures 48 foot Tsunami to defeat all the safe guards that man had built into the plant.
The Iowa incident, regrettable though it is, was nothing more than a man failure incident. The train the fatalities occurred on was moving faster than the allowed ‘Restricted Speed’ and paid the ultimate price for the rules failure.
Without more extensive pictures than I have seen, I would conjecture that the car that rode up and through the locomotive cab was not the car that was struck by the locomotive but was the 2nd or 3rd car and it was launched over the originally impacted car, that was held down by the anti-climbers on the locomotive, and used the impacted car as a ramp to take aim at the locomotive cab. While the nose section of locomotives is designed to withstand impacts, the cab section itself has little more than glass standing between the occupants and a on coming car body.
You’re welcome, Sam - it’s something I’ve been meaning to look up for a while, and it seems to have done the job. The “Outcome” comments / ‘bullet points’ to "Locomotive Collision Test #5 - Inline Collision of a Freight Locomotive with an Unloaded Flat Car" on slide 6 of 6 at - http://www.fra.dot.gov/downloads/Research/Test5_Info.pdf (6 pages, approx. 593 KB in size) - noted that “The flat car did not buckle as anticipated”, but instead “The flat car overrode the hopper car”.
The rising oncoming end of a flat car is more ‘knife-like’ than the coil steel or intermodal container objects that are specified for determining the crashworthiness of a
I’m sure all will come out after the investigation…
I think had the two trains been reversed, the the MOW equipment train running into the coal train, the crew would have survived.
Some years back at Clinton, IA a UP haulage rights stack train on the IMRL (with an IMRL crew) rear-ended a BNSF local at 17 MPH within unsignalled yard limits. The rear car was an empty tank car and it, like the light weight flat cars, rode up over the nose into the cab of a wide nose GE, killing the crew.
A few years later, the UP had a rearender at Blairstown, IA. A manifest with a wide nose GE ran into the back of a coal train with a DP on the end at about 25 to 30 MPH. It made a big mess, shredded a couple of aluminum hoppers, but the crew survived.
Jeff
Looks like that’s been thought of already, and the FRA has done an actual ‘crash test’ of the design - an interior square tubular framing almost like a ‘roll cage’ - and it performed successfully. See “Locomotive Collision Test #9 - Freight Locomotive With a Strengthened Windshield Frame Impacting a High/Offset Intermodal Container” (8 pages, approx. 435 KB in size), esp. the “Outcome” on slide 8 of 8 and the “Comparison of Strengthened vs. Original Cab” in Test #6 on slide 7 of 8, at:
Maybe the answer would be to have a regular boxcar on the end of a flat car train??t