This is from the omaha world herald paper,08-19-04.
Union Pacific Corp.the biggest railroad by sales,said an oregan tunnel fire will close its main route on the northern west coast for as long as 10 more days,adding to delays that have reduced profits.
The tracks between Eugene,Org., and northern California, a primary route for lumber shipments, may remain closed until Aug 29th,the railroad said on its web site. The fire began Sat. about 75 miles south of eugene and is still burning,spokesman john bromley said in an interview.
The fire “is going to be a signifcant service interruption,” bromley said.
Sparks from a locomotive may have ignited wood in the tunnel to start the blaze,he said.
The omaha base company doesn’t have an estimate of costs to repair the tunnel…
–BLOOMBERG NEWS.
I likely don’t know what I am talking about so I am assuming the tunnel is made of wood and should have heen made of concrete. I don’t know why anybody would use materials that could be fire fuel in a location that is a pain to try to extinquish.
I await correction if I am wrong.
…How did the Europeans afford to do the masonry up front and Uncle Sam’s citizens weren’t able to…Where did the money for the European projects come from…?
Thankyou for the information on the other threads; now I can add some logic 2 cents.
1/ When it is finnished they may want to install a sprinkler system;water or foam. Water can work if you build a cistern or water tower for water storage.
2/ Very destructive but they have to use explosives and than rebuild the tunnel. Personally I wouldn’t want to do it because the tunnel’s structural integrity would be compromised. I said explosives because they use that to put out oil well fires.
3/ They could rig up a kind or fire truck train consisting of a modified tanker with a hose, a remote control engine, an old 40 foot box car with a pump and a tank train with alot of water in it. I wonder even if they don’t do that, since they can afford it, they should keep a private fire department for tunnels. I know alot of big industries have their own emegency services including fire department or departments.
4/ If they plan to use wood again, they should insulated it with the same stuff that NASA uses to keep the shuttle from burning up in the atmosphere upon re-entre.
Today’s Trains News Wire has an update on the UP tunnel fire in Oregon:
http://www.trains.com/Content/Dynamic/Articles/000/000/005/373bsnsx.asp
Bergie
[quote]
QUOTE: Originally posted by M.W. Hemphill
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Sprinkler system would have to be heated to protect from freezing. I don’t know how you would design a system that can distinguish between the heat of a fire and the heat of a hot exhaust stack. Maintenance requirements would be high – and this is just one tunnel. There are 300 or so more on the UP system. Lowball cost estimate for initial installation, $100 million. Annual maintenance, probably $10 million. Actual effectivness: totally unknown, probably zero, even if you could figure out how to make it not leak, not go off on its own, not freeze and burst, not fall off the roof, not get hit by dragging equipment, not flood the tunnel, not short out the signaling system, not interfere with tight clearances, not be a target for thieves, and actualy put out a fire that’s probably behind the concrete or gunite and thus inaccessible to the water spray.
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No practical miner would buy into that idea. Explosives might temporarily snuff the flames, but they’ll just relight. All three sides of the “fire triangle” would still be present: oxygen, fuel, heat. It works on an oil well because there’s hardly any heat present except in the flame itself. Worse, the explosives might shatter the rock so badly the cost of recovering and relining the tunnel would escalate into the hundreds of millions of dollars.
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They have fire cars. Have for years. The cost-benefit analysis from having staffed and prepped fire equipment ready to go, to all the places you’re equally likely to need them, makes it cheaper to have the tunnel catch fire. Same problems with freezing, maintenance, people sitting around waiting for the call, and a big one called geography. It’s one thing to have a fire deparment at a refinery, an installation confined to a small area and subject to lots of fires. It’s another to have a fire department that covers thousands of miles of territory and might have a fire once every 20 years. The numbers are’t the
Thank you Bergie for the update.
It is not presumptious in wanting to help out by giving suggestions. Most people appreciate the suggestions even if it may be misguided.
What is wrong with a foam device. There are materials that are used to keep thease systems from freezing and are used in the aviation industry thanks to some advances from the space exploration industry (not just NASA). Also temperature control systems can run by electricity which is likely easy to come by. Just hook it up from the powerline powering the signals-surely signalling would be near by. It doesn’t need to be manned and it can be like a hot box detector.
Why cant they modify one of those airprot fire fighting apparattus? They have one with a boom that can extend into an inferno, pierce a hole in the plane and spray water or foam. Can they get the same rig but without the need for piercing hole in things? Mount it on a flatcar with the pump and all mounted on back of it with protection from the heat and a boom to spray the foam on the fire. do the remote control locomotive thing that somone mentioned in this or one of the other threads and follow it with a tank cars to carry the foam or water.
UP could have a hi-rail truck follow each train to search for smoldering timbers.
This can be done as they already precede trains through the Feather River Canyon to watch for landslides.
I have seen several forum entries which cite certain locomotives as having a well-known propensity to “flame” and speculating that this may have been the cause of the tunnel fire in question. (I certainly have no knowledge of the validity of such speculation.)
If accurate, it would seem an engineering solution for the suspect locomotives would be in order. Or, as an alternative, assign such locomotives to territories without tunnel fire risk.
Come on; we are human beings and hopefully thinking human beings. How are we supposed to learn if we don’t brainstorm and get things of our chest. Good communication isn’t just about asking questions because you can’t alway articulate a thought by a question alone. As long as you are not obnoxious about it, why would the experts feel they would be being disrespected.
I wouldn’t say I am the greatest musician in the world but I am expert enough and find that even the most ignorant person as long as they are trully trying to help, can be a breath of fresh air. I was having an orchestration problem with one of my symphonic poems and the person who gave me a great idea in solving the problem didn’t even take music since grade school.
What is wrong with giving your own opinion? If we are not alouded to give advise with our good intentions than when are we supposed to? Life is too short to waste time in trying to find the right words or wait for the right time to express feelings. I have tried that and find I have missed oppurtunaties to learn. I don’t know why you feel you can’t express your opinion. You maybe a journalist but you are also a human being who has every right to say what you think regardless of what other people think. There are many issues you and I disagree with as you know but I respect your opinion. Even though I rebut some of your answers it is because I am learning as well as expressing my thoughts and have no ill feelings toward you.
Respectfully
Andrew aka Junctionfan[:)]
The problem is people…This problem should have been looked over many years ago.
The railroads know the risks,thay just don’t take the time to study the problems of having the use of these tunnels.!!!
Here’s one to ponder?
When was the last time that this tunnel caught on fire? Ever? When was the last U.S. tunnel fire that closed a line? I don’t remember one in the last 20 years. Would it be worth the cost of preventative equipment if this is the first time since this tunnel was built 80 yrs ago?
Just wonderin’…
dblstack- Tunnel 13 on the Siskiyou line, now Central Oregon and Pacific last November. But, as you note, they are very rare.
Jay
Mr. Lewis, I used to work for the UP at the Roseville Ca. locomotive shop and have seen many a GE with a bad turbo blow about 8 to 10 feet of flame out the stack. The crew might not have been able to take that unit off line due to the grade so the theory is very probable.
Actually a local (Eugene, OR) newspaper article said there had been two previous fires in the same tunnel in the last few years.
Link http://www.registerguard.com/news/2004/08/20/a1.tunnelfire.0820.html
Junctionfan,
The “insulation” on the botton of the SST isn’t insulation, it is ablatement.
Insulation is designed to prevent heat transfer, by absorbing the heat, and dissapating it through the entire structure, or radiating it away over time.
The tiles on the leading edges and bottom of the SST are designed to burn away during re-entry.
By ablating, or burning away at a fixed rate, the tiles carry the heat created by the friction of the shuttle passing through the atmosphere away in the form of a super hot gas…the “plasma” seen through the shuttle windows.
They dont prevent the heat, they re-direct it.
At first, the tiles were replaced every trip, but better and more efficent designs allow them to be used for two or more re-entrys with proper inspection.
Fragile beyond your wildest imagination, some of them can crack if you set them down on edge, their own weight is beyond the ability of their structure to support.
To show you how fragile they are, the Colombia had a leading edge tile set destroyed by a simple piece of styrofoarm insulation that broke lose from the main LOX tank, and struck the edge of the wing during launch.
About the size of a standard Coleman cooler, so light my 5 year old could carry it around, yet it cracked and broke enough tiles on the wings edge so that, during re-entry, the ablatement failed, and the super hot gases from the surrounding ablatement areas entered the actual structure of the vehicle, with the result that it was destroyed.
You wouldnt want to line a crock pot with this stuff, the first time you set it down hard, the linning would break.
On the other hand, if you had one that was flat, you cou
…With all the variation of tunnel linnings we have heard of here on the forum regarding tunnel fires…one wonders if there is any solution that can be afforded. Hearing of wood cribbing up in high vertical voids [where unstable rock has fallen] and then wood supports sprayed with some kinds of concrete cover…[that sometimes fails] and exposes the wood…and some others that are less than fireproof, and permanent, what ,one wonders would really make it as permenant as possible.
Could a tunnel just over 3000 ft. be lined with supportive concrete in arch shape and where verticle voids exist, fill with some kind of expanding material sprayed in until void is filled and then takes a set…and end result would be a tunnel that has no exposed flamable material and a good structural linning support…I suppose if it was one of many miles in length one couldn’t even think of such linning because of cost and maybe it wouldn’t be necessary because of good solid rock seems it would pass through deep within the mountain, etc…But for 3000 ft., could the above be a possible almost permanent solution…
[quote]
QUOTE: Originally posted by edblysard
Junctionfan,
The “insulation” on the botton of the SST isn’t insulation, it is ablatement.
Insulation is designed to prevent heat transfer, by absorbing the heat, and dissapating it through the entire structure, or radiating it away over time.
The tiles on the leading edges and bottom of the SST are designed to burn away during re-entry.
By ablating, or burning away at a fixed rate, the tiles carry the heat created by the friction of the shuttle passing through the atmosphere away in the form of a super hot gas…the “plasma” seen through the shuttle windows.
They dont prevent the heat, they re-direct it.
At first, the tiles were replaced every trip, but better and more efficent designs allow them to be used for two or more re-entrys with proper inspection.
Fragile beyond your wildest imagination, some of them can crack if you set them down on edge, their own weight is beyond the ability of their structure to support.
To show you how fragile they are, the Colombia had a leading edge tile set destroyed by a simple piece of styrofoarm insulation that broke lose from the main LOX tank, and struck the edge of the wing during launch.
About the size of a standard Coleman cooler, so light my 5 year old could carry it around, yet it cracked and broke enough tiles on the wings edge so that, during re-entry, the ablatement failed, and the super hot gases from the surrounding ablatement areas entered the actual structure of the vehicle, with the result that it was destroyed.
You wouldnt want to line a crock pot with this stuff, the first time you set it down hard, the linning would break