I’m watching the “Crash Scene Investigation” programme on National Geographic channel about the San Bernadino crash in 1989. What I find amazing is that when they found that none of the break systems worked (about 8 mi away from San Bernadino and the sharp bend), that noone had the idea of throwing all the locos (head end + helper) into full throttle and reverse. SURELY this would have slowed the train down somewhat. I know this was common practice in the steam era in the UK with a runaway… Can anyone suggest any ideas as to why this (apparently - i don’t know how much of this show has drama-license) was not thought of/the effects of doing so?
All that would do is blow the traction motors (or some other componet of the electrical drivetrain) and would have little slowing effect at that speed. If I remember right, the brakes were not defective. The clerk in Mojave severely miscalculated the load weight of the trona loads and the train was given an insufficient dynamic brakes. On top of that one of the units dynamics were not working. The remaining dynamic brakes were working but there were simply not enough dynamics. By the time they realised they were in trouble they were probably way past the point of no recovery (speed wise) and it was only a matter of time before the operative brakes heated up and lost there friction.
To make matters worse, the higher the speed the less effect the dynamics have (beyond the peek around 26 mph or so)
From someone who was there:
(1) Independent brakes were set as were the dynamics. Wheels were so hot from the friction that they were all cobalt blue. IT WOULD NOT HAVE HELPED AND PROBABLY MADE IT WORSE. (Dispatcher called us at Summit and sent us down the hill to find the derailment scene to make sure ATSF & UP were clear. Only time I was told by a DS to find a derailment on the other guy’s railroad) “Duffy Street Instant Urban Renewal”.
(2) Runaway WB train in 1997 on Tennessee Pass did try to throw locomotives in reverse. Lost what little adhesion they had. (Improperly set -up new GE C-44s) Derailed sooner & people died. (Performed accident survey between the tunnel, and Pando/Camp Hale)
One additional detail - it was the engineer’s first solo run on that route, so he would not have been as aware of the best places to apply the brakes, when to run on dynamics while he recharged the air, and when to just pray like h***.
That’s not to say that would have totally prevented the wreck; the train was just too overloaded, and the non-working dynamics certainly didn’t help. But hopefully it wouldn’t have been as severe, and might have prevented the pipeline explosion that took place just a few days later.
The A & E channel has a 1 hour program on this incident that includes interviews with the NTSB that would answer your questions if you could secure a copy. [:)]
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Originally posted by addax61024
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