I have seen a lot of recent posts regarding the maximum speed of freight trains that have been radically inconsistent. Is there a speed (given straight, level, well-maintained track) that freight trains really shouldn’t exceed for derailment risks?
I have heard as low as 55 and has high as 80. I know I have seen freigts on the NS Decatur - St. Louis old Wabash main that I have clocked in my car as slightly above 60.
Very curious.
Gabe
It all depends on almost everything to do with grade, consist and tracks. Government regulations also play a part in it. For the most part, on the Dundas Subdivision, the speed limits are 50-60mph.
Looking on a CN work order, it says if the train is carrying vinyl chloride, max speed is 35 mph in Canada. Some of the boxcars have speed restrictions to 50 mph, dimensional loads also have special restrictions depending on the railcar and the weight of the load.
60 is max on NS.
Here on the southern part of the Chester Sub. it was 40, after the rehab project it jumped to 60. On the Desoto Sub. north of here it was 10-15 or 25 in some spots, pretty crappy for Amtrak to run over, they replaced ties and rail and soon had it up to…well, when we hit the detectors we were going 57, 66, 72, better than 15 let me tell ya, some of those sharp curves nearly threw me out of my upper birth…good thing there’s a safety net! LOL [:D]
Don,
Is it possible for NS trains to exceed 60, either with our without permission? Where I grew up, there was a section of NS’s old Wabash main roughly half way between Springfield IL, and St. Louis MO. Don’t get me wrong, they weren’t doing 70. But there has been more than one time I have clocked them approaching 65 mph.
Just curious, and thanks for the info.
Gabe
P.S. I assume that doesn’t include Tripple Crown? I will never forget once going to work, and doing my usual 65mph on a 14 mile stetch of road that is adjacent to the NS right of way, and looking over my shoulder and see an NS Tripple Crown pull up along side me and pass me up like I was standing still.
Max speed? All a matter of how fast they “can go” and how fast the RR is willing to pay for. BNSF in our area runs around 60-65, but I’ve seen them go faster.
Thank you everyone for max posted speeds for railroads. I am interested in that too, so don’t stop posting.
What I am more interested in knowing is whether there is a certain speed that cintrifical (sp?) forces, slack action, etc. become just so great that even on a flat, straight perfectly maintained main line that a freight train just has too great of chance of derailing to go that fast?
Thanks
Gabe
On the UP, the employee timetable will give you a maximum speed for each subdivision; usually 70 on a good, well-maintained, signalled main line. But the special instructions will chip away at that depending on the type of equipment your train is hauling. If you have intermodal cars, auto racks, mechanical reefers, and most box cars, and only those cars, you might be able to do 70. But there are other cars that are only allowed 60, 50, or even 40 mph. The 40-mph cars are rare, and usually consist of non-revenue equipment, possibly some friction-bearing cars (if they can still be found), and empty bulkhead flats (wind drag could set up some bad situations).
These equipment restrictions will vary from railroad to railroad–I was surprised that UP’s restrictions were more severe than CNW’s in some cases, since UP at one time had the reputation for really moving the freight, with 80-mph-geared SD40-2s, etc.
I hope I live to see electronic braking adopted universally–that could, and should, enable some of these limits to be increased by five or ten m.p.h. Of course, electronic braking will not lessen the wind drag on empty bulkhead flats, so you’d wind up with an even grater spread of speed restrictions anyway, and no reduction in bottlenecks.
Does anybody know the max speed of diamonds? As far as I know, it’s 40mph for freight. I don’t know if that applies for all freight trains though.
Gabe – in some ways it isn’t so much a maximum speed restriction (which is set, as Mark pointed out, by a whole host of factors) and is set out in the railroads rule book and employee timetable as it is certain critical speeds. There are certain types of cars (particularly covered hoppers and some types of tank cars) for which there are certain speeds at which the interaction between the track and the trucks and wheels and the car itself can reinforce the natural tendency for the car to rock laterally – technically termed resonance – with the result that the car rocks more and more violently. If you get things exactly right (wrong?!) it is possible for the car to lift a wheel or two with usually disastrous results. Freights try to avoid operating at these speeds, which tend to be rather low (say in the 15 to 30 mph range).
Well Gabe the way you can look at it is that a freight train hauls freight, right. Well then go take a French postal TGV wich is made up of vans instead of passenger cars and fill it with freight instead of mail and now you have a “freifght train” that can travel effeciently at 180mph.
My point though is that in the answer it would realy matter if you are running old crappy freight cars of cars of a newer improve designs. I don’t thnk ore jimmies work right at 65mph loaded or empty, all you need is one of these cars in a 100 car freight to affect it all.
The fastest frieght trains of the past, think Super-C, never seemed to last too long.
According to my Erie Employee’s Timetable (1959), freight trains of less than 6000 tons were allowed a maximum of 60 mph anywhere speed wasn’t otherwise restricted. Heavier trains were limited to 50 and passenger trains were allowed 70. I wonder if operations in those days were looser, less rule-bound than today. I would guess so if only because that was before the era of the trial lawyer.
I am not necessarily taking issue with your deeper contention that litigation alters the way railroads do things. The purpose litigation is just as concerned with shaping/altering society as it is with compensation–which is a disenfranchisement-of-the-voter issue I will leave to you to determine whether is good or bad.
However, your premise that the “age of the trial lawyer” is today as opposed to the 70s is not really accurate. Somehow there is a common perception that lawsuits were invented in the 90s. Statistically, there are more lawyers per capita today as opposed to the 70s, but that is a deceiving statistic, as lawyers are much more involved in areas of the law–and other fields–not involving litigation today.
Every indication that I have seen tends to indicate that lawsuits were just as much a problem for railroads in the 1930s as they are today. I think the difference is, railroads are not as powerful as they once were and now attempt to conform their practices to the law rather than attempting to get the law to conform to their practices.
Gabe
Through central MN here in Morris, maximum speed on the BNSF subdivision here is 40 mph. The line is signaled and is single welded rail track. It’s fairly flat, but doesn’t see a huge amount of traffic. Mainly coal, grain and mixed freight. Sometimes I wish I were near a faster stretch of rail, but I must confess, it does give me more time to get the camera and get a couple extra pictures of each train.
Can’t forget a major player in train speed - the track. I can’t speak to the exact FRA rating/speed relationships, but I definitely recall that they exist.
CSX Montreal secondary (Syracuse - Massena) is CWR, unsignaled, with a top speed of 40 (typical restrictions notwithstanding).
Mark,
Your observation is accurate. There are numerous law review articles written on your jury observation. To add to your point that there seems to be less lawsuits against railroads now days as compared to yesteryear:
(1) It is much more difficult to sue a railroad concerning a motor vehicle crossing accident as compared to 25 years ago. It is fairly complex to explain why, but that is a dying practice of the law.
(2) Anecdotally, in law school textbooks, there are “seminole cases.”–cases that basically forge a new area of law and set the playing field for future litigation. When you look at seminole cases circa 1850-1960 it seems like every other one is a railroad case. Now days, there are a few interesting Superfund/toxic torts cases that involve railroads, but the number of seminole railway cases now as compared to 55 years ago is drastically reduced.
I think all of your observations are the main reason for this, and I think railroads are starting to run their trains with the idea of minimizing litigation.
Gabe
Does the weight of the rail affect this at all.
I’m no lawyer, but don’t you mean seminal cases instead of “seminole cases”? The Seminoles were (are?) an American Indian tribe. I don’t like to pick on internet spelling, but this was too good to pass up. [:D] Sorry
I think there is also a point where the railroad can realize greater efficiencies by investing in other aspects of operations, not just track speed.
Assume a base speed of 30mph. For every 10mph faster, you are saving 20 seconds per mile. That means you save 1 minute for every 6 miles. So on a 120 mile subdivision, you save 20 minutes for every 10mph increase in speed. Not too bad, but how much has the railroad spent for the increased speed?
What if they were to put the money into CTC, longer and more sidings, switch tenders or remote-control switches in the yards, etc.
I remember taking over an hour (on a good day) to get my train through Proviso yard in Chicago. If you’re operating a 8000’ train of 9000 tons through a yard, and have to stop for every switch (remember: no getting on or off moving equipment), or follow the brakeman at walking speed through a 3-mile yard, that easily eats up all the savings in time gained by going 10 mph from Chicago to Milwaukee.
Years ago, when I started on the CNW, we had “Interdivisional” trains, that ran from Chicago to either Adams (212 miles), Green Bay (215 miles), or Madison (150 miles). And the crews would go on duty in Proviso and actually make the entire trip within their 12 hours. Of course, most every “main line” switch in Proviso had a switch tender, the crews did not have to ‘quadruple’ their train out of East 5 yard, and did not have to stop for work enroute. When I left the CNW, crews frequently died on their hours before even getting to Butler (96 miles). Even with the 50mph welded rail from Proviso to Milwaukee.