Railway accidents happen since the beginning of the steam age, and head-on collisions are always the most serious and feared accidents. The traffic safety technology has evolved a lot since the first steam trains to modern trains controlled by computers, but still the same types of accident are repeated every year worldwide. Some people argue that the human factor is the cause of the most serious train accidents, but it was no time to have a technology or methodology able to avoid tragedies like what happened in Panhandle days ago?
I worked in the Brazilian Air Force for thirty years and participated in the prevention of aircraft accidents teams. In aviation, the primary goal of accident investigation is to learn from them to prevent further similar accidents. The punishment of the guilty is irrelevant in determining the causes. What matters is to find out the failures and how to avoid them. Thus, the global aviation share experiences and mutually to help in the prevention of aircraft accidents. And the railroad? What lessons we will have from Texas Panhandle collision? It is just a failure of technology? Or lack improve the methodology that makes the man interact in perfect safety with the movement of trains? This is not to blame men and machines, but to investigate where and why the interaction of both failure.
Pedro, Positive Train Control (PTC) has been mandated for most American railroad lines, including this one (it is high-density, and transports hazardous materials). It is supposed to be implemented by 2018. There are probably a number of discussions here that mention it, in glowing terms and not-so-glowing.
I haven’t been following this accident like I should, but if what I’ve heard is accurate (head-on, near a control point), it sounds like precisely the kind of accident PTC would have prevented.
The railroads should learn the lesson that random sleep and work times bring on fatugue. That collision was caused when one of the crews fell asleep. PTC would prevent it, but so would regularly scheduled work times. Once PTC is fully implemented, the need for a train crew is gone and all the unions will loose their members to a computer.
And just how do you create ‘regularly scheduled work times’ on lines with high volumes of traffic and erratic operations due to all the ‘routine’ operational impediments - impediments that can make a 3 hour run into a 15 hour ‘derailment in motion’ that affects not only the train with the individualized troubles - but every other train on the sub-division for various periods of delay. How many feet of train can a computer inspect personally on the ground at 0 dark 30 - and fix the problems that are found, or report the problems are beyond their technical or equipment abilities and ‘professional’ assistance is needed.
Agree. It’s going to be hard to do and you can’t think in the usual ways about this kind of stuff and get anywhere. It’s gonna take some inovative thinking and lots and lots of negotiation and compromise. Hard work, but to not tackle it is just laziness.
One answer to the fatigue factor is for the railroads to hire enough personnel, so that ALL crew members get enough sleep and time off. I know this WILL NEVER happen, but that and PTC should help cut down or eliminate these kinds of accidents.
This is a lesson the operating brotherhoods might also take to heart, since historically they have resisted almost all changes that would result in fewer trips and smaller paychecks.
You can have 1000% more T&E personnel - and there is NO GUARANTEE that they will have adequate rest when called to work in a 24 hour work enviornment. Rest is a personal responsibility. High volume lines do not operate the same numbers of trains from day to day and they do not necessarily operate the same number of trains in each direction on a line. Terminal facilities are not sized to hold traffic - they are sized to run traffic. Carriers have tried and continue to try virtually any and all operating strategies in order to have an orderly and sustained movement of traffic, but Murphy’s Law applies to railroading - in spades; and Murphy’s happenings fouls the best laid plans of the operating and engineering departments. Remember, there is only 24 hours of track time a day - and everyone wants more than their share.
If one wants to look beyond railroading, consider the chaos engendered by severe weather around any of the major airline hubs (and many times over for the NYC metroplex). The ripples move swiftly across the country.
One of the trains must have run at least one red signal and ignored one yellow and maybe a flashing yellow. It will be interesting to know what train was running the main as a reverse direction and why they ended up creating a head on disasterous wreck. The story reads a lot of box cars were derailed, but that is strange since there were no box cars on either train from the pictures on the story.
Shopping carts? That is, to me, in the same vein as calling each rail of the two rails that are part of one track a “track”–pure ignorance.
It is truly sad that the general public (news “reporters” included) knows very little of advances that have been made in railroading during the past fifty years. We can only grimace as we read and hear the reports of events that take place.
Mariah is cute as a button, and claims among other things to be ‘fluent in Spanglish’, but Lord help us, she doesn’t seem to know much about railroadin’. Perhaps Brother Euclid could take her under his wing and enlighten her?
In Centralized Traffc Control territory (which the Transcon certainly must be), there is no such thing as “reverse direction” or being on the wrong track. Again, I’ve not been paying attention to this, and don’t know at what speeds the trains were traveling. It was apparently daylight. Assuming that the signals were working properly (and that the sun’s angle didn’t inhibit the view of any signals), one train certainly didn’t stop where it should have. I don’t know whether that train was headed east or west, but I’d be looking at the train that finally got stopped with some of its cars fouling the nearby control point.
Pedro, you are on the right idea but asking the wrong question. What will be the lesson is unknown and there may not even be one.
The question is " what should be learned?". I work primarily in the nuclear power business and, like the aviation industry, one time is enough. Over the past several years we have had a number of fatal accidents blamed on crews being asleep or fatigue. Even the Amtrak 188 crash is possibly fatigue or lack of sleep. The “memory loss” may well be caused by dozing off.
In the nuclear field one incident such as this, would cause a wave, not a ripple throughout the industry. This is what we call “operating experience”. Each and every plant and worker, regardless of their level, is expected to learn from these experiences. We have not had accidents due to fatigue but other industries have and therefore we have rules on hours worked. Even though most of my work involves the turbo generator system rather than the RCA ( radiation controlled area), when working 12 hour shifts, I must take off at least every 13 days. Even working at night, I must do so, although a night off just screws up your sleep routine. In the nuclear field an ounce of prevention is worth all the cure in the world and I suspect that aviation is similar. There is no excuse for working employees to the point of dangerous fatigue year after year in the face of repetitive evidence of the consequences and blaming accidents on “sleep disorders” and lack of PTC.
Having worked shift work for a while, I concur. One problem is that you (that’s the “editorial” you, not anyone specifically) try to live a “normal” schedule on your days off, instead of keeping your “night” schedule.
Which makes me wonder - railroaders who have managed to pull a fairly regular local job notwithstanding - are there some railroaders who seem to adapt to the irregular schedules we’re discussing better than others? What’s their secret?
I would wonder if “going with the flow” is better that trying to live a “normal” life and making the railroad’s requirements fit in. Perhaps that’s a key to the problem?
Researchers have found that people who have all time cues removed from their lives tend to create their own schedules - eat when they’re hungry (instead of breakfast at 7, etc), sleep when they’re tired, etc. As I recall, some folks put themselves on a longer day - say, 28 hours instead of 24.
Bear in mind that I’m not defending irregular schedules - but as discussions have noted, putting a railroad on a truly regular schedule has some significant challenges.
And yes regular schedules would be a challenge, but I suspect that most trains could run on a fixed schedule (as do passenger and commuter trains). The exceptions would be a small percentage of trains. Right now crews get insufficient sleep between work. I just wonder why regular schedules haven’t been legislated after these accidents.
