CSX had a major derailment, possibly the result of a runaway, very early Saturday morning or very late Friday night. EB coal train U883-03 derailed two locomotives and 113 of 131 cars between MP201 and MP203. This is around the Glencoe Rd. crossing. Some of the cars are in Wills Creek. The crew is shaken up, but ok. Both tracks are blocked and Sandpatch is expected to be closed for at least 48hrs.
Boy, that sounds like real trouble for CSX…Wonder if it was weather related…{frozen brake lines, limbs down on track or something brought on by the extreme weather that included that area too.
That will take some time and expense to clear that amount of derailed cars…That’s rugged country in that area.
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Any word on an official cause? And how’s the clean-up coming along?
Did that area see heavy snowfall recently, like Washington D.C. (and all the rest of us) ?
1.Hopefully everyone was awake. 2.Hopefully nobody was texting their girlfriend.
I did here there was a derailment, but I thought it was miner. The Capitol Limited was forced to stop on the line Friday, because of down trees.
Some photographs I saw from Cumberland suggest that they got quite a bit of snow in the area. I suspect that the weather was somehow a contributing factor.
I haven’t seen photographs of the actual wreck yet. That’s another suggestion that the weather’s none too good up there.
Today is at least two days after the wreck–restoration of the line ought to be well on the way, if it isn’t already open.
There is a rather poor picture of the derailment accompanying this local news story, but it should give you some idea of the amount of work that Hulcher and R.J. Corman are facing. Reportedly two response teams from each company were summoned because of the size of the derailment and the difficult conditions.
I have cash that is saying somewhere in that train was a frozen brake. That and extra weight from all the snow this stuff was basically Donner Cement that was falling. You take 14K tons of train add another 2K of snow and then make the rails slicker than snot with moisture no then only give them 2 units to get down the mountian in freezing temps are you nuts.
Thanks, John (and KC, for posting the same link earlier). It almost looks like they could use an archaeologist up there!
(Oh…thank you, too, Norris!)
Carl…I just sent you a Somerset DailyAmerican page of said CSX wreck. You can certainly tell from the included photo, there was plenty of snow…I’d say up to 2’ or more…100 plus cars included in the wreck will be major…
More information coming in that the derailed cars are scattered over a longer area suggesting that they didn’t all come off at once,. For Edbenton, likely you are correct about ice in the trainline, but almost certainly at more than one location. When the train brakes are put in emergency, the EOTD (End of Train Device) will also initiate an emergency application from the rear too. The locomotives reportedly came off the rails at 65 mph. in a curve.
Ice in the line even if the EOT was told to set the brakes FORGET IT will not happen. See the ice acts like someone turn the anglecock between the cars and your done. Now imagine that you have that in 4-5 spots your talking about no way in HELL would they have been able to stop or contrl this monster.
ROFLAC
![AFLAC!!! (Duck redux) by Nikographer [Jon].](http://farm1.static.flickr.com/55/127721686_e47cf2324e.jpg)
ROFLAC? Is that the same thing as AFLAC?
wabash1: Do I sense that you pehaps disagree with something written above?
Knowing about as much as anyone else does at this point (nothing really), I hate to go out on a limb. I couldn’t live with myself if I knew that I caused brother Wabash to pull a muscle while rolling around like that.[;)] So here goes.
Does anyone know what the temperature was? I’m thinking less along the lines of ice in the train line. More that maybe the temp caused the air hose gaskets to leak. I don’t know how they operate down the hill, but if they release the air they may not get a good recharge of the train line before the next set. If they had stopped to cut off helpers, they may not have had a good charge in the train line to begin with. In effect they piddled (PC version) away their air.
Will just have to wait and see.
Jeff
The January 30, 2000 runaway derailment of a CSX coal train on the same grade appears to be superficially similar - except that train was only 80 cars instead of the 131 or 64 % more here - and had 3 locomotives, albeit without dynamic brakes on 2 of them, as against only 2 here. Here’s the link to the NTSB’s report on that event:
http://www.ntsb.gov/publictn/2002/RAR0202.pdf
Title: Railroad Accident Report: Derailment of CSX Transportation Coal Train V986-26 at Bloomington, Maryland, January 30, 2000 |
|---|
NTSB Report Number: RAR-02-02, adopted on 2/5/2002 [Summary |
NTIS Report Number: PB2002-916302 |
From the top of page 13:
''The first unit, CSXT 806, was an SD80MAC; BNSF 9481 was an SD70MAC; and CSXT 8666 was an SD50. On these units, maximum dynamic braking is achieved when the locomotive is traveling between 4 and 24 mph. The maximum dynamic braking effort is 96,000 pounds for
Ten years and one week ago to the day, on the nearby Seventeen-mile grade they had a fatal runaway accident. In that case the Engineer let the speed build up a little too high (on the order of 5 mph IIRC) and the trains brakes burned out. An emergency application just speeded up the process. Mountain grades are very unforgiving. I think it unlikely that he wasted his air, since they are carefully warned about that little trap, but anything is possible. Do all locomotives now have the Dynamic Brake Hold feature on an Emergency Brake application?
[quote user=“Paul_D_North_Jr”]
The January 30, 2000 runaway derailment of a CSX coal train on the same grade appears to be superficially similar - except that train was only 80 cars instead of the 131 or 64 % more here - and had 3 locomotives, albeit without dynamic brakes on 2 of them, as against only 2 here. Here’s the link to the NTSB’s report on that event:
http://www.ntsb.gov/publictn/2002/RAR0202.pdf
Title: Railroad Accident Report: Derailment of CSX Transportation Coal Train V986-26 at Bloomington, Maryland, January 30, 2000 |
|---|
NTSB Report Number: RAR-02-02, adopted on 2/5/2002 [Summary |
NTIS Report Number: PB2002-916302 |
From the top of page 13:
''The first unit, CSXT 806, was an SD80MAC; BNSF 9481 was an SD70MAC; and CSXT 8666 was an SD50. On these units, maximum dynamic braking is achieved when the locomotive is traveling between 4 and 24 mph. The maximum dynamic braking effort is 96,000 pounds for an SD80MAC, 81,000 pounds for an SD70MAC, and 60,000 pou