Union Pacific trains collide near Grand Junction
May 09, 2013 09:22 CDT
GRAND JUNCTION, Iowa (AP) – A Union Pacific Railroad coal train has collided with another train carrying cargo containers in central Iowa derailing 20 cars and shutting down a section of the company’s mainline track.
The collision is near Grand Junction about 60 miles northwest of Des Moines…
http://www.cbs2iowa.com/template/inews_wire/wires.regional.ia/21efa33b-www.kgan.com.shtml
Judging by the looks of the land around there, it was a bona fide “cornfield meet…”
Just north of Grand Junction, however, is a facility that would work very nicely on a 4’x8’ sheet of plywood. At first I thought it was a race track, but a closer look proved otherwise:
N 42.05536 W 94.23512
The sheriff says it happened on a double set of Union Pacific tracks.
…The initial investigation shows a westbound cargo train was sitting on the tracks when a train carrying coal passed by and had some sort of malfunction and derailed.
Cars from the eastbound train pushed into the westbound train, and that caused 35 cars to slide down an embankment on the south side of the tracks.
Union Pacific Railroad has taken over the investigation, and their crews will be working on the clean-up.
Greene County had to close down Road P-46 because the train is still sitting at the crossing.
Union Pacific crews will be on the scene all day Thursday and through the night. They hope to have the line reopen by Friday morning.
http://whotv.com/2013/05/09/trains-derail-coal-spills-near-grand-junction/
This report has what looks like a cell phone still photo. Perhaps the talking head with the train wreck in the back round video will appear on the evening local news.
Not a cornfield meet…
Looks like that bridge is here: N 42.03348 W 94.21120
(1) Hope our forum friend Jeff didn’t get his day loused-up here.
(2) Tree, I know more about that Louis Dryfus ethanol loop than I want to remember. (Just looked at it 10 days ago)
(there’s a 2nd order Benchmark in the NE corner of the bridge that better be left alone - Or Hulcher is gonna see the wrath of several of us mudchickens)
KCCI TV out of Des Moines at 5pm said both lanes of the Union Pacific are closed, but hope to be back open tomorrow. On their 6pm newscast they (different anchorman) said it was unclear why two trains were on the same track. Even after he had said a passing train had derailed into the side of the other one.
Preliminary, but not yet substantiated, thought is a rail broke under the coal train. It sounds like the stack train was stopped at the time. There are power crossovers at Grand Jct and the stack train might have been stopped where it was waiting for the coal train to clear them before proceeding.
Jeff
Thank goodness for PTC, which in this case could have prevented uh…nothing.
The technologically challenged media at work. I think I was about three when I learned that highways have lanes and railways have tracks. As for, “On the same track…”
Maybe somebody should have drawn him a diagram.
Chuck
I know, and how dare they advertise as PTC for preventing broken rails!
err…um… wait a minute.
LANES???
Hulcher people are notified about benchmarks are they not?
By the way, what is the distinction between a first order and a second order benchmark?
(3a) You can tell Hulcher where the BM is, but they don’t listen (or care). They only care about rerailing the car. Many a roadmaster has seen the amount of track damage double (or worse) after those reckless cowboys on bulldozers show up. They tear up everything indescriminately.
(3b)
(Using laymans’ terms here, talking about precision) A first order verical mark is generally within a level of precision of less than a sixteenth of an inch in a one mile level circuit. Second order is within a quarter to three-eighths of an inch, third order is about 5/8’s of an inch, fourth order (construction grade) about 1 1/8 inches …and so on. (zero order is less tha 1/64") The amount of work required to get a more precise level goes up drastically as you approach 1st order. The GPS level in your car or smartphone is worse than fourth order, hardly survey grade. Plus or minus feet, vertically. The benchmarks along most railroads were placed 1920-1940 are no longer being replaced. Those things are like gold to a surveyor or civil engineer. With GPS, they are a good way to check and verify your work. With older instruments, they are the best way to keep your work tied to a known datum.
Ah, that explains the line of tanks in many of the satellite shots. The facility was apparently in grading in 2008, so it’s fairly new. I wondered at the piping and such, as it sure didn’t look normal for just a grain loading facility.
The problem is that the coal was asleep in the hopper.
ROAR