The AAR has issued recommendations intended to address the problem without essentailly any new technoloogy or application of different technology. These recommendations, which are certain to be implemented by the seven Class I’s and probably by most regionals and those shortlines with massive oil traffic, include more detectors, more track inspection, and generally increased vigilence.
I wish to suggest one revival of an old practice, car knockers. Walking each side of a loaded oil train and tapping each wheel with a small hammer, and listening to the “bonk”. (it is not a clea-as-a-bell bong, but there is a tone along with the thud, thus bonk not bong.) Any wheel starting to develop a crack or fissure will sound different. In the days of iron wheels this was standard proceedure. I think it should be revived for oil trains and other hazmat trains.
I recall reading about the era of silk trains and how their extreme value necessitated the highest priority handling of all time. It was said that they would spike the switches ahead of silk trains. I have also heard of spiking the switches ahead of trains carrying exceptionally important people.
That always struck me as a surprising practice. I can understand how it would add safety, but it seems so extreme for the amount of safety it would add that I get the impression it was more symbolic than practical.
Not impractical if you cannot have each switch manned at the time of passage. Silk was a highly valued and time sensitive product, for instance, and had to be delivered so that at the precise time the silk was ready from the cocoons. Millions of dollars were at stake. Special volatile cargoes, dangerous materials like nuclear waste or weapons, special moves, all demand extra safety precautions. The only “important” people I recall getting this special safety protection are POTUS trains, Presidential candidates’ trains and the Royal Family of England’s trains.
Here is a link to a scholarly article (UIUC Rail Transportation and Engineering Center) that analyzes the causes of derailment in US over a 10-year period:
Use the electronic broken wheel detectors that test every wheel of every train automatically and don’t rely on human interpretation. They test 24x7 while the train is moving, no delay and provide a record of which wheels were tested when and any exceptions.
Why go back to 1800’s technology when there is better technology being used now (and has been in use for decades).
I believe you will find that the silk-train fol-de-rol was mostly theater.
Spiking switches, special crossing guards, incredible speed through the night with terribly perishable, terribly high-value cargo – the stuff of which public-relations bonanzas are built.
That stuff is indeed so extreme for the amount of added safety that it is more symbolic than practical. And much more geared toward romanticism than safety…
And no, none of that perception will apply to Bakken-crude trains: the stuff is little better than a commodity, devoid of any particular romance I can conceive of, being moved for the mere convenience of overcharging petroleum plutocrats, that might derail and explode readily (or so the media will say, in between gleefully reporting murders and making an inch and a half of snow into an icy Armageddon). Making a big thing out of how safe you HAVE to make your railroad in order to avoid flaming disasters seems … counterproductive, to me. Any attempt to call attention to heroic or ‘special’ oil-train safety measures might be counterproductive, certainly to the extent it opens up consideration of all those mystical tank cars of deathyl ethyl awful diisocyanate and such that currently roll by relatively innocently.
Silk was an extremely high value commodity as well as extremely perishable thus useless and without value if not delivered on time. Bakken crude, or any other crude, does not have the super high value nor is perishable.
While it is true that oil trains are not high value like silk trains were, they do share a mutual connection to the need for extra safety. For the silk trains, that need was based on the value of the load, and the speed and priority of the train. For oil trains the need for extra safety is based, not on the value of the load, but on their ability to destroy a town.
So I think both types of trains are related to that common feature of needing extra safety. Whether these concerns are based on reality or not seems to make no difference. Calling for spiking the switches for one train to pass does seem largely symbolic, as I mentioned. But then so too does the AAR call for oil carriers to include more detectors, more track inspection, and generally increased vigilance.
But if the exploding oil train problem itself is largely symbolic, then maybe fighting it symbolically is the strongest tactic. That is what I call the marketing aspect of the fireball solution. If the fireball problem is largely symbolic, the best remedy would be to let it dissipate over time. But the risk to that strategy is that one more high profile fireball, and the problem is back stronger than ever.
Well, what is the value of safety? We all talk about it, railroads talk about it and teach it and advertise it. But what is it, what does it do? And despite how much common sense there is to it, it actually took unions to make railroads apply it. Of course we all can raise our hands about injuries and death being preventable by safety. But also, as the railroads found out, it is cheaper than not being able to run trains, give service. And the costs repairing or losing equipment. It avoids litigation costs and payouts from accidents. It avoids poor public images. No matter how small a stumble or huge an explosion, there are so many avoidable costs if there is a strong and conscientious effort for safety.
I guess opinions are the stuff of these forums, some well-grounded, and others off the top of the head. Empirical studies are ignored because facts are inconvenient. The first study posted made it quite clear that the #1 & 2 causes of derailments are broken rail joints and poor track geometry, both correctable without reinventing equipment.
Car inspectors do walk each outbound train, but I don’t think they they ring the wheels these days. I suspect it has more to do with the nature of wheel defects. I don’t think current wheels fail the way the old wrought wheels used to.
The big hitter these days is handbrakes left on. Some places do outbound roll-bys as well as the regular car inspection to try to eliminate this.
You’re right, schlimm, this did start out about track problems being the cause. I wonder if railroads believe that if track is circuited for signals a broken rail or joint disrupts the signal and thus will automatically show stop or restrictions. However, that is not always the case as there may be a crack or fault which does not create a break or big enough break of the circuit. Thus, the old standby is what is lacking: a walking track inspector. Back when they walked five miles one way and five miles back in a given day. Today, even two men in a truck cannot spot the tiniest of problems. But is there a government agency or a ton of common sense anyplace that would bring back the track walker today?
Who is ignoring empirical studies or finding facts to be inconvenient?
Whether a derailment is caused by track problems or train problems, modifying the train to mitigate the derailment damage still makes sense. Safety needs all the backup and redundancy precautions that it can get. Broken rails or welds are indeed correctable or avoidable problems, but obviously, that is not being accomplished in many cases.
Probably not because unless your track walker is Superman and has X-ray vision, they won’t be able to see inside the rail to find the defects proactively. That’s why the agreement with the AAR includes additional frequency of detector car runs. The detector cars can see inside the rails and can detect many of the internal problems that will in the months ahead become critical service failures.
This is not to say that physical inspection of the track is not valuable, just it won’t find the majority of defects in rails that cause failures.
If you can see the crack you are too late. The goal is to find the defect before it becomes a visible crack and remove it before it catastrophically fails.
A lot of the HiRails have video cameras that record the track, and some have a sensor, not sure if it is electromagnetic or ultra-sonic to detect defects….add in a really experienced track inspector and you have great quality control.
BNSF HiRails the section of main line that runs by my house daily….from Pierce Yard(east Houston) to Tomball,(northwest Harris County) out and back in, around a 40 mile run both ways.
You are talking about bringing back some part of a section gang…and trust me, hiring a guy to walk an eight to ten mile section daily would mean hiring a few thousand guys per carrier.
Car knockers…read Carmen, and yes, they do inspect wheels, every car that enters a yard be it on a unit train or loose car gets looked over very closely, you would be startled at how many wheel sets get condemned daily, if I remember correctly, Baily Yard does 90 plus wheel set replacements a day.
I can’t think of a single day my little road doesn’t change wheel sets out, we have a whole parking lot full of new wheels just for that reason.
The probability of derailment for a single train is largely a
function of track class, distance traveled, and train length.
While a shorter train will have a lower probability of
derailment, shipments of longer trains will have a lower
probability that one or more trains will be derailed (for a
fixed quantity of cars shipped).
The probability that a particular car will be derailed in a
derailment is largely a function of train length, train speed,
and positioning within the consist. More cars can be
expected to derail with increases in train speed and
residual train length. Cars positioned near the front or rear
of a train have the lowest probability of being derailed in a
derailment. As train length is decreased or train speed is
increased, the conditional probability of derailment
increases for all cars within the train consist.