If I’m right, modern locomotives’ (i.e. The ES44AC’s, and SD70ACe’s) noses also serve as one of the locomotives sand boxes. They also have large steel “posts” inside that sand box to improve crashworthiness. Do builders put that sandbox in the front to improve crashworthiness?
On the front and rear of the locomotives above the front, and rear coupler’s there are also “Lifter Plates” to prevent another locomotive/car from riding up that end of the locomotive right? This plate can withstand a huge amount of upward pressure correct?
Thanks for answering my questions, please correct me if I’m wrong.
It doesn’t hurt to have it there, but that’s mainly a ‘good space available’ location for the lines from the snadbox to still be able to get the sand down in front of the leading wheels mainly by gravity, and to be able to fill it easily. Most of the other nearby spaces to the rear are occupied by other uses with a higher priority - controls and supporting equipment, cab and crew amenities, batteries, electrical cabinet, etc. The amount of sand there - maybe a ton or two - might be of some value to attenuating the impact and debris from a smaller object - say, a car - but the collision posts will do that anyway. For bigger objects - like a railcar or another locomotive - a lot more sand would be needed to have a helpful effect like that. For example, the ‘buffer cars’ at the ends of haz-mat or rail trains will be an entire hopper car full of sand.
They’re correctly called ‘anti-climbers’, and they pretty often do just that and perform as you say - to prevent ‘telescoping’ or ‘overrunning’ in a collision. However, both locomotives need to have them - I’m not sure they’re effective at all against ordinary car ends. Also, there’s no impact attenuation as with automobile car bumpers occurring there when the anti-climbers are engaged - it’s all just steel hitting steel. There are also some instances where they have not performed well or at all - supposedly the Sept. 2008 Chatsworth, California collision between a Metra F59 and the UP SD-something is one like that. Earlier today I saw a thread on another website that discussed this kind of thing briefly - here’s the link to it:
They’re correctly called ‘anti-climbers’, and they pretty often do just that and perform as you say - to prevent ‘telescoping’ or ‘overrunning’ in a collision. However, both locomotives need to have them - I’m not sure they’re effective at all against ordinary car ends. Also, there’s no impact attenuation as with automobile car bumpers occurring there when the anti-climbers are engaged - it’s all just steel hitting steel. There are also some instances where they have not performed well or at all - supposedly the Sept. 2008 Chatsworth, California collision between a Metra F59 and the UP SD-something is one like that. Earlier today I saw a thread on another website that discussed this kind of thing briefly - here’s the link to it:
More notably, one of the posts there references this study, which apparently concludes that the anti-climbers are not strong or effective enough, as follows:
‘‘The preface to this DOT study suggests that, by and large, current locomotive anticlimbers aren’t strong enough to prevent override in locomotive-locomotive collisions. The Metrolink-UP collision at Chatsworth, CA occurred after this study, but would be another example - the SD70ACe overrode the F59PH’s frame, with results similar to Eola.’’
The problem with the current anti-climbers is that to work effectively the facing equipment must be lower then the device and have a drawbar/coupler in place. but in many many derailments this may not be the case.
Most of the 2008 or newer locomotives I have seen all have reinforced nose doors as well. My guess this is in response to the 2008 wreck where a train hit a propane truck in OK and the door was blown into ( yes this is correct) the cab.