Locomotive or Passenger Car?

[CShaveRR]

Useful only for a passenger car or smallish truck. There was a whole lot bigger crumple zone at Chatsworth (a locomotive) and it wasn’t enough. Last year was a very good year on the highways “only” a bit over 33k people were killed in traffic accidents.

That may be all that they figure is necessary–by 2015 or thereabouts, PTC will, if we’re lucky, prevent accidents like Chatsworth. This is probably aimed more at people like the guy who left his Jeep on the Metrolink/UP tracks.

[CShaveRR]

Looks a heck of a lot safer than a Push-Pull train where a pure passenger car leads the train half the time. At least here the engineer has frontward visibility and there is a crushable zone before the passenger-occupied space.

Mark

Mark, I’m curious…where do you think the engineer is when the train is being operated in “push” mode? The car at the opposite end of a push-pull train is always a cab car, and the engineer is right there, with his control stand, horn, bell, and forward visibility. Back in that earlier incident that I mentioned in my preceding post, a few members of the local news media broadcast that myth about the train being backed by an engineer from the locomotive, and I had to assure my own uncle (OK, Pat’s uncle) that that wasn’t the case.

If you’re anywhere near a push-pull operation (Chicago, LA, San Francisco, Toronto, among others), take a good look at the coach on the end opposite the locomotive. It has a cab there, with windows that can open, rear-view mirrors, a horn, a bell, a forward-facing window or two, and all of the lights necessary. In a gallery car (such as used by Metra in Chicago and Caltrain in the Bay Area), this cab is on the upper level, above most vehicular collisions. In the other bi-level design, the cab is down lower, in what would be equivalent to the lower level. This new design raises the cab on this type of car out of harm’s way, relatively speaking. If you look at the ends of any modern gallery cars, especially the gallery cars, you can’t help but notice the collision posts, on either side of the end doors, and inboard of the cab windows at the end. Sure, these collision posts can’t stop anything, but again, PTC ought to help when the obstruction is another train. No amount of collision protection would have prevented that Jeep from wedging itself under the cab car on Metrolink (it might not have been so quick to go under had the train been made up of gallery cars).

[tatans]

Any photos of the other end? is there a small cab back there? why so few photos of this (thing) ?

[beaulieu]

The locomotive is on the other end of this train.It would look like This.

[Anonymous]

Back in that earlier incident that I mentioned in my preceding post, a few members of the local news media broadcast that myth about the train being backed by an engineer from the locomotive, and I had to assure my own uncle (OK, Pat’s uncle) that that wasn’t the case.

…wow…that’s all I can say. [D)]

If you’re anywhere near a push-pull operation (Chicago, LA, San Francisco, Toronto, among others), take a good look at the coach on the end opposite the locomotive. It has a cab there, with windows that can open, rear-view mirrors, a horn, a bell, a forward-facing window or two, and all of the lights necessary. In a gallery car (such as used by Metra in Chicago and Caltrain in the Bay Area), this cab is on the upper level, above most vehicular collisions. In the other bi-level design, the cab is down lower, in what would be equivalent to the lower level.

None of the bi-level cars have the engineer’s compartments at the lower level height because that would be below truck height. On the MBTA the bi-level cars have the engineer’s compartment at the same height as on single-level push-pull cars. Photo.