On Thursday, May 9 a series of fires were reported along a 3 mile streach of the PanAM RR (former Guilford & MEC) main line in Old Orchard Beach, ME. The hardest hit was a campground & RV park in OOB where 10 seasonal trailers were destroyed, and 6 more damaged. A couple of propane tanks on the traliers exploded adding to the fire. The fire went to 5 alarms with 75 firefighters from 20 nearby communtites and a Maine Warden Service helecopter making water drops. The fires took about 6 hours to put out, but there were a couple of flare-ups during the night. There were no serious injuries due to the fires.
People at the RV park said the Amtrak Downeaster passed by, followed about 5 minutes later by the PanAm freight. Some folks reported seeing sparks coming from “under the train”. Amtrak reported inspecting the Downeaster, and found no problems. There is yet to be any report from PAnAm on inspections of their train.
Used to see that every May where I grew up near Boston. Typically caused by dry journals throwing sparks into dry grass that hadn’t ‘greened’ up yet. Never saw the kind of destruction you describe, though . . .
We have grass fires near the tracks here every spring. They usually aren’t caused by the “train”, but by cigarette butts thrown out the cab windows by the crew.
Ok, everybody get ready for the massive thread about someone’s new idea about anti-lock brakes for trains that include smoke detectors and fire suppression, with new and improved couplers included!
Isn’t this kind of like build snug up to an airport and then complain about the noise and air traffic? Or build really close to a wilderness and then complain about the wildlife? Side of a mountain? Center of a forest? Middle of manzanita and never cut it back?
Obviously they aren’t running steam, but that’s why New York State banned coal burners in the Adirondacks for some hundred years, beginning right after the turn of the century. They had a lot of forest fires attributed to trains.
But… hotboxes are pretty much a thing of the past (but they can still happen, even with roller bearings), and that was the reason for many of the ROW fires back in the day, especially in the period between steam and roller bearings.
That said - it’s not unheard of for Diesels to send sparks flying from their stacks, particularly if they’ve loaded up with carbon for whatever reason.
Or someone wanted to start a fire and figured the train would get the blame…
At one time Southern Pacific units without either spark arrestors or turbochargers (which essentially act as spark arrestors) were restricted from certain forested lines in CA and OR becasue non-turbocharged units such as GP9s/ SD9s etc. had a tendency to start fires. Units with turbochargers or spark arrestors had a white dot over the numbers on the side of the cab indicating that they were acceptable for the restricted lines. You can see an example here on a KM unit. I don’t know how many first generation units Pan Am still has among all their secondhand units, but even turbocharged units can start fires. I once saw a wide-open UP SD40-2 unit on the then SP Moffat Tunnel line with a strong foot-tall fire coming out of the stack once that was rather scary, but it was in the pre-cell phone days and so I couldn’t alert anyone.
Pan Am has plenty of people to handle a inspection up the line a bit that could have or did inspect it. Under train car sparks seems alot more plausible than Diesel stack exhaust sparks. It will be hard to get the details, Pan Am doesnt say much…Lets hope its an easy one… AFter the UP OIL mess in Colorado , the train industry doesnt need more bad news…
The Maine Warden Service has or will be inspecting the PanAm locomotive to see if it complies with safety regs including spark arrestors. The report is expected next week.
According to news reports, people saw sparks coming from underneath the train - not being RR oriented people, they did not give specific details to the reporters on what part of the train was “sparking”. Sounds like a dragging brake shoe or something similar to me; people smelled a burnt rubber smell after the train went by. Also, there were a number of spot fires along the ROW for about 3 miles, supporting the idea that a moving train caused the fires. Firefighters had to drive ATVs down the track to get to some of the fires becsuse there was no access otherwise - presumably, the tracks were shut down by dispatch during this time.
The bad part of this is the 10 trailers that were burnt in the campground fire. These were the summer homes of retirees who spend the winter in the South, and return to the Maine coast from Mothers day to Columbus Day. There have a similar setup in Florida or some other place. I hope they have insurance to help them replace their trailers, but I doubt many could afford a “replacement value” policy.