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Gary Charpentier Send message Joined: 25 Dec 00 Posts: 30593 Credit: 53,134,872 RAC: 32 |
As to alarms, well, after all US rail companies stopped running passenger trains, except for tourist runs, all track nationwide only had to meet freight safety standards. Congress created Amtrak to keep some passenger service going and forced the railroads to lease tracks to them. However in the wisdom of governments it did not require modern safety equipment to be installed. Instead as the Government was running the trains they put lawsuit liability limits in place so the taxpayers wouldn't be on the hook for damages when the inevitable crashes happened. Amtrak IIRC only operates 31 trains for the entire country. I wonder if that would be equivalent to even 1 train for all for England? The exposure is small. However as time has gone on in several major metropolitan areas regional commuter service has also been put on the rails. Again, just freight train safety standards. No automatic controls, unless the regional agency put them in, and then unless they buy it for the freight locomotives it is window dressing. Where the regional agency owns the track, light rail, they are up to full modern standards. Unfortunately we do not have a national standard so a Union Pacific system doesn't necessarily work on Norfolk and Southern rails. Yes, it needs to be fixed. |
Sirius B Send message Joined: 26 Dec 00 Posts: 24870 Credit: 3,081,182 RAC: 7 |
Didn't intend to sound sarcastic, just stating a fact. The history of rail worldwide shows that regardless of safety features, accidents will & do happen. What automation does is to reduce the amount of human errors that tend to creep in a la AVR 777 in Stanton Philadelphia several years ago. How on earth you allow trains to power up & left unattended without a deadman's handle/switch IMV is totally crazy! |
zoom3+1=4 Send message Joined: 30 Nov 03 Posts: 65690 Credit: 55,293,173 RAC: 49 |
As to alarms, well, after all US rail companies stopped running passenger trains, except for tourist runs, all track nationwide only had to meet freight safety standards. Congress created Amtrak to keep some passenger service going and forced the railroads to lease tracks to them. However in the wisdom of governments it did not require modern safety equipment to be installed. Instead as the Government was running the trains they put lawsuit liability limits in place so the taxpayers wouldn't be on the hook for damages when the inevitable crashes happened. I'm not about to hold My breath on that, and yes I agree, something does need to be done. The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's |
rob smith Send message Joined: 7 Mar 03 Posts: 22149 Credit: 416,307,556 RAC: 380 |
Europe has faced up to this problem in several ways. In years gone by, where there was little in the way of "automated" systems there wasn't a problem (with the signalling at least), a train reached a border and if the driver wasn't "licensed" to operate in the next country either he stood down and new driver took over, or a pilotman (a person who was licensed in the new country, but not to drive that particular type of train) joined the driver to interpret the signals and so on. Then along came the first level of "automation", each country did its own thing, and it became physically harder to install all the required equipment in an acceptable manner around the driver. For the last few years a new set of train control systems are being developed, called "ERTMS" and "ETCS" these are designed to be installed on every train in Europe. Let's just say that its a very good concept, but the committees specifying it are trying, very trying. There are many issues that need to be resolved, not the least of which are some of the basic operating philosophies between different countries (and to an extent even within operators within some countries) Bob Smith Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society) Somewhere in the (un)known Universe? |
Bernie Vine Send message Joined: 26 May 99 Posts: 9954 Credit: 103,452,613 RAC: 328 |
I subscribe to the Rail Accident Investigation Board RAIB bulletin and I as you can see ...Was he also deaf? On our trains (mainline as no need for audible alarms on the Underground as the tripcock enters play if one passes a red signal), an audible alarm is given if a train passes a red signal - as Metrolink didn't have their whole system on ATS, surely audible alarms were in place? Doesn't always apply. Description of the incident At about 07:45 hrs on Wednesday 16 January 2013, train 1A60, the 06:45 hrs Grand Central Railway service from Sunderland to London King’s Cross, passed signal NW36 at danger at Norton-on-Tees West and passed over a level crossing adjacent to Norton-on-Tees West signal box. The barriers were still raised and the crossing was open to road traffic. The Norton-on-Tees West signaller saw that two cars, one in each direction, had stopped at the level crossing as train 1A60 was passing over it. The train should have stopped at signal NW36. The driver of train 1A60 was unaware that he had passed the signal at danger and the train continued on its journey. It was not stopped until it reached Bowesfield,around 3.5 miles (5.6 km) beyond Norton-on-Tees West. There were no other trains in the area at the time of the incident, so there was no risk of a collision between trains. Why? Because this part of the line still has semaphore signalling, and will have for another two years, and. The driver of train 1A60 received a caution indication and an audible warning at the distant signal located just under ¾ mile (around 1.2 kilometres) from signal NW36. However, this signal was a ‘fixed distant’ signal, which meant that irrespective of whether signal NW36 was on or off, the driver would always receive a warning. Basically it was dark and as the signal was had a "fixed distant" signal on the same pole that could only show yellow or green, he saw red over yellow and instead of stopping continued, although he was trained on semaphore signals. So it's not always as straight forward as it appears. |
kittyman Send message Joined: 9 Jul 00 Posts: 51468 Credit: 1,018,363,574 RAC: 1,004 |
Where is the common sense...... Don't try to challenge something much bigger than you are? Unless you are a southern boy with twenty beers under his belt and another in his hand yelling......"Hey, watch this..........." No insult intended to any from my southern countrymen. It's just an old joke. "Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." Alan Dean Foster |
kittyman Send message Joined: 9 Jul 00 Posts: 51468 Credit: 1,018,363,574 RAC: 1,004 |
I don't know much about trains. The one bit I do remember about my high school years was this..... If, on a good day, and no cops were around, I could get my '69 GS400 Buick to jump a set of tracks at something around 95MPH. All wheels would come off the ground, and it would touch down so gracefully. "Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." Alan Dean Foster |
Gary Charpentier Send message Joined: 25 Dec 00 Posts: 30593 Credit: 53,134,872 RAC: 32 |
American freight trains triple headed with 200+ cars is a totally different matter. Try multi head with multi push, as operates on the lines in the Cajon Pass. The crest is wild, with the downhill head at near full dynamic breaking while tail on the uphill needs to be pushed. Coming down at times it is all they can do to prevent a runaway. Sometimes they can't. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Bernardino_train_disaster No rookies ever permitted to drive it. |
John Clark Send message Joined: 29 Sep 99 Posts: 16515 Credit: 4,418,829 RAC: 0 |
Back in the late 1970s, we had a test 4 wheeled flat wagon on a 1 mile straight railway line. This was going to no where and sited on the Pendine Sands. The fastest we drove that flat railway wagon, from the start buffers was 1,000 mph. Indeed the wagon went from 0 mph to 1,000 mph, then was braked back to 0 mph in less than a mile. The control system was an analogue computer, based on a Aim65, and the motors to accelerate the wagon were 10 x 10 foot solid rocket engines. The brakes were the same, another 10 x 10 foot brake motors. Each solid rocket motor, when tested as a free flying missile, was capable of reaching Mach 2 in 30 seconds. It's good to be back amongst friends and colleagues |
Bill Walker Send message Joined: 4 Sep 99 Posts: 3868 Credit: 2,697,267 RAC: 0 |
That would be fun, watching a train use those to stop at a level crossing to let a car go by. It would be really exciting at one of the dozen or so level crossings in the downtown where I live. (ps - I know of what you speak. Used to hang out with the test guys at Northrop.) |
David S Send message Joined: 4 Oct 99 Posts: 18352 Credit: 27,761,924 RAC: 12 |
Wow. So much activity while I wasn't paying attention. Re: the Chatworth collision, I forget if Metrolink operates on trackage rights on UP or if UP sold the line to Metrolink. Either way, I don't think there is any sort of cab signalling system in place there. In the Chicago area, Metra owns the former Rock Island commuter line from Chicago to Joliet, and it has cab signals. Freight trains operate over it without cab signals, but at a maximum of 30MPH, and they are granted an "absolute block" in advance of them by the dispatcher. Some railroads in the 1920s-50s installed various forms of cab signal or other types of warning systems on some of their highest density lines. (A notable example is the former Chicago & North Western; to this day Union Pacific trains operating from Chicago to Omaha, Janesville, WI, and on the shore line to Milwaukee must have a lead locomotive with the proper cab signal system installed.) Since that time, only lines owned by government agencies (Amtrak or commuter agencies) have installed new cab signal systems, and not many of those. A knee-jerk reaction to Chatworth, however, was a federal mandate to install Positive Train Control on all lines carrying passenger trains or hazardous freight. The railroads are working hard on this, but it's petty clear that they are not entirely going to make the January 1, 2015 deadline. Among the problems are designing a system that will work with all the different railroads' signal systems, which were designed and built by different vendors, and all their different operating rules. It's being done as an overlay of whatever the existing dispatching system is on each line, whether it be full CTC signals or Track Warrant Control with no signals at all. The railroads trade locomotives back and forth some much, it would be a logistical nightmare if one's PTC system didn't work on another's line (UP's problem on a national level). US signals are much more complex than red/yellow/green. There can be multiple heads displaying those colors at each location, and each signal can also be flashing or steady. Furthermore, there are two basic philosophies of CTC signalling, speed signalling or route signalling. Mostly, the eastern railroads have speed, where the combination of different colors over others, flashing or not, tells the engineer how fast he can go. Western railroads are mostly route signals, where the aspect tells the engineer which way the train will go through some switches; he should know from that how fast he can go. In either case, red is only an absolute stop if it's at an interlocking. At intermediate signals, red is permissive -- the train can stop and proceed (in some cases they can even pass it without stopping) at Restricted Speed (able to stop within half the distance of vision and no faster than 20MPH). David Sitting on my butt while others boldly go, Waiting for a message from a small furry creature from Alpha Centauri. |
zoom3+1=4 Send message Joined: 30 Nov 03 Posts: 65690 Credit: 55,293,173 RAC: 49 |
Wow. So much activity while I wasn't paying attention. Metrolink is implementing PTC. The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's |
Bill Walker Send message Joined: 4 Sep 99 Posts: 3868 Credit: 2,697,267 RAC: 0 |
North American railways are a mix of various companies and operating theories that eventually spread out and intersected with each other. Any system wide updates are just too expensive to be done quickly. The work around to this (at least in Canada) is to regularly assign operating crews to a fairly small section of track. A train may go from coast to coast, but it gets a new crew every few hundred miles. That crew only and always operates the same section of track. They know the local signals very well, and don't care if things are different in the next block over. There are a few exceptions to this, where a specific section of track has been built for a single purpose. The unit coal trains that operate between several mines in the BC interior and the west coast use dedicated tracks, with uniform signals all the way. Here a single crew will run 600 miles or more, from the mine to the port, without stopping. They then switch out engines as the train drives through the unloading section, without actually stopping the train (it is moving very slowly at this point). The engines stop for servicing and crew change, before hooking up to the next unit train. The freight cars regularly go from mine to port and back to the mine without stopping. |
David S Send message Joined: 4 Oct 99 Posts: 18352 Credit: 27,761,924 RAC: 12 |
That crew only and always operates the same section of track. They know the local signals very well, and don't care if things are different in the next block over. That's pretty standard. For example, BNSF crews out of Chicago are qualified to run on the ex-Santa Fe to Galesburg, the ex-BN to Galesburg, and ex-BN to LaCrosse, WI. I think they can also do LaCrosse directly to Galesburg. However, crews out of Northtown (Minneapolis) are only qualified as far as Cicero Yard in suburban Chicago, which until recently was as far as they needed to go. Lately, however, there has been a big increase in traffic being interchanged to Norfolk Southern (unit trains of tank cars carrying crude oil from North Dakota). NS crews are qualified from their property to BNSF's Western Ave. Yard. The problem is, the BNSF crews from Northtown aren't qualified to Western, so a new crew has to be called to take the train the last four miles from Cicero to Western. The different signal systems cause problems where crews travel from one pre-merger railroad onto another. They have to understand the signals of both predecessors. This is even worse for Amtrak crews, who may have to run on several different railroads and even more predecessors, with different signals. This caused a wreck in Chicago a few years ago when an engineer misinterpreted a signal that was telling him he could enter a block but there was a train ahead because the same signal aspect earlier in his trip had an entirely different meaning. (I forgot to mention earlier, an absolute Stop signal becomes Permissive if it's a flashing red.) Another example is the train called the Cardinal, Chicago to New York via Cincinnati and Washington, DC. Just to get out of Chicago, it runs on seven different railroads: Amtrak (owner of Chicago Union Station Company), Metra (ex-Chicago & Western Indiana), NS (ex-PRR), Metra again, about 1000 feet of Belt Railway of Chicago, UP (ex-CWI), CN (ex-Grand Trunk Western), and finally CSX (most of the run on CSX is ex-Seaboard System, exx-Louisville & Nashville, exxx-Monon, but there's also a chunk of New York Central and some Pennsylvania RR to get to Union Station. If it's one of the three days a week the Cardinal runs to New York, a new crew gets on to take it to Cincinnati and beyond, using ex-Central Indiana & Western and ex-Erie to get out of Indy; on the four days a week it's the Hoosier State, the Chicago crew has to take it a few miles out on ex-NYC to Amtrak's repair shops at Beech Grove. (The Hoosier State often has twice as many cars deadheading to the shops as it has revenue cars.) Another twist is that, due to the differing language in their labor contracts, conductors and engineers don't always have the same territories. Conductors work a standard 8-10 hour shift. Engineers, however, have a clause in their contract that says that if the scheduled running time of their train is over six hours, there have to be two of them in the cab. So, Amtrak tends to assign engineers to shorter runs, under six hours. If I remember correctly, this means that on, for example, the California Zephyr, engineers out of Chicago run to Creston, IA, Creston to Lincoln, NE, and Lincoln to Denver. The same ~1,000 mile run only has two conductors, changing at Omaha. David Sitting on my butt while others boldly go, Waiting for a message from a small furry creature from Alpha Centauri. |
David S Send message Joined: 4 Oct 99 Posts: 18352 Credit: 27,761,924 RAC: 12 |
I don't know if it is the same with the Eurostar crews from London St Pancras International to Paris and Brussels. They may change crews at Ashford, I'm not sure. What's the running time? Not over 8 hours, is it? I'd think it could be one crew all the way, but international regulations/politics may play into it. David Sitting on my butt while others boldly go, Waiting for a message from a small furry creature from Alpha Centauri. |
Sirius B Send message Joined: 26 Dec 00 Posts: 24870 Credit: 3,081,182 RAC: 7 |
The history of rail worldwide shows that regardless of safety features, accidents will & do happen. That's 3 nasty ones this year alone. Just proves my point. Galicia derailment |
Wiggo Send message Joined: 24 Jan 00 Posts: 34744 Credit: 261,360,520 RAC: 489 |
However I think it is time that principle was changed. With modern railway disk brakes trains can stop a lot quicker than 50 years ago. Then over here we have BHP's iron ore trains with a length of just over 3kms and weighing in at 44,500 tonnes (about 49,000 tons), you certainly don't want to mess with them. Cheers. |
tullio Send message Joined: 9 Apr 04 Posts: 8797 Credit: 2,930,782 RAC: 1 |
I've read of a train accident in Spain, near Santiago de Compostela in Galicia. More than 60 dead. Tullio |
Gary Charpentier Send message Joined: 25 Dec 00 Posts: 30593 Credit: 53,134,872 RAC: 32 |
I've read of a train accident in Spain, near Santiago de Compostela in Galicia. More than 60 dead. Terrible tragedy. One of the carriages isn't even on the railroad property it ended up in the middle of a street. Another is so badly mangled you can't tell what it is. From the photos I'm sure everyone on the train will have at least some injuries. Reports are it was high speed. Speeds of up to 310 km/h (193 mph). Don't know how fast it was going at the time. ke = 1/2 * m * v^2 How fast is too fast? Perhaps this will be the wake up call that the carriages need considerably more crash safety built into them as we have done with automobiles. Crumple and crush zones, energy absorption, seat belts, air bags, roll cages, whatever it takes. |
W-K 666 Send message Joined: 18 May 99 Posts: 18996 Credit: 40,757,560 RAC: 67 |
The latest report here says 247 passengers and crew, 60 dead, 131 injured, of which 20 are seriously injured and 5 are in a coma. Because mass transport systems are much safer than cars etc, the chances of extra safety devices being fitted are slim. The costs of fitting, checking and maintaining safety system. Plus they all add weight and could therefore reduce passenger carrying capacity and/or increase fuel costs. And would probably cost more than the costs associated with the relatively few accidents there are. That was the verdict after the Manchester aircraft fire when tests were done on fitting sprinklers to reduce smoke, not put out the fire. Most of those killed and injured there was because they were overcome with smoke whilst trying to find their way out. |
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