Coupler caused accidents seem quite rare.
dd
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Railroad says bad coupler caused accident
NEWS TRIBUNE
A bad coupler is believed to have been the cause of a train derailment that forced an evacuation in Solon Springs [MN] last month, according to Union Pacific Railroad officials.
A coupler malfunctioned, which forced 15 cars from the tracks April 14, said Gene Hinckler, a spokesman for Union Pacific Railroad.
Why not just say “train malfunctioned”. Jeeze, is that all the details they provided. Makes me wonder why they even bothered saying that much.
They are rather rare – but, depending on just what part of the whole coupler assembly lands where – can be quite catastrophic.
If the above is the full text of the article, it is so cryptic as to convey virtually no information at all.
Reading between the lines, and paragraphs for that matter, I would expect they are trying to say that the train had a drawbar failure, where the drawbar was pulled out of a car, either because of train handling or because of mechanical failure, and the drawbar dropped to the track structure where it was struck by the wheels or brake rigging of one or more cars initiating the derailment of the 15 cars. While drawbar failure and resulting derailments are not common, they are not a once in a lifetime occurence either. The non-railroading public has no real understanding of the variety of ‘coupler failures’…most of which do not cause derailments.
BAD coupler, go to the naughty coner…
Bad Coupler … No Donut
I’ve seen derailments caused by lungers. Strange strange occurrances.
Yea, if you yank out a drawbar, and it falls between the rails, it can cause all sorts of nasty events to happen.
Chad: How much of the problem is just plain old the reporter’s/media’s fault? How much is due to over- simplification because the omitted simplification by the media who wouldn’t know what a drawbar or draft gear is if it jumped up and bit them?
Surprised that UP did not have to resort to “train fall down,go boom” to get the point across to the media knucklehead and its sheltered readers who think of railroads as choo-choo’s. [V][V][V]
So true [(-D]
guess we will have to wait a year or two for the NTSB report
dd
“Train fall down, go boom”. What a hoot!! Although some of the media types would find even that too complicated.
Even the part of the general public that knows NOTHING at all about trains still they seem to know of the term “derailed”, and know nothing else. Of coarse many see it only as a catastofic event with loss of life, but that is the one only railroad term some people know.