Large Scale Central

Runaway freight train explodes, levels center of Canada town

General Discussion
#41

Craig Townsend said:

Hopefully us ‘rails’ have successfully taught everyone how the brakes work, and what we mean by saying things like ‘pulling the pin’ and bottling the air. :wink:

Craig

Sure have. I’m filing that along with “shoving” and a few others that are currently failing to come up in my carbon retrieval system.

Some news agencies are reporting that the fire department, that responded to a call a few hours before on the same train, shut down a loco or locos that were idling to provide air to the brakes.

Will the car’s brake reservoir re-charge form the train line to maintain a set?

#42

Jon Radder said:

Some news agencies are reporting that the fire department, that responded to a call a few hours before on the same train, shut down a loco or locos that were idling to provide air to the brakes.

Will the car’s brake reservoir re-charge form the train line to maintain a set?

The brakes will remain set on the cars as long as there is an air source. The air source is maintaining the pressure in the line at 70-72 PSI (a 20lb set) and thus the brakes on the train are held on. Each car doesn’t get recharged until the brake line goes back up to 90 psi and kicks the brake off. Once the air is set it stays set as long as PSI is in the system. If the compressor (be it a locomotive or ‘yard’ air) drops below 70 psi it will continue to make a harder brake application until a full service set is made. When the PSI in the brake line is increased to 90 PSI the brakes will release. If the PSI in the brake line drops or increases suddenly then the emergency valve will open, causing a emergency set.
So if the Fire Dept shut down the locomotives, they shut down the source of air. Thus with no air coming into the system to maintain the pressure, the air will eventually bled off, thus causing the system to depressurize and release the brakes. This is a slow process over hours, not minutes, depending on how air tight the train line is, and all the appliances on the cars. Most modern locomotives have auto start/stops which enable them to shut down the locomotive, but they turn the locomotive back on when certain events happen; one being the pressure in the main res. drops below a certain threshold.

#43

This has just appeared on liveleak - ten minutes view into hell -

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=deb_1373383312

Poor town.

tac

#44

It’s pretty obvious from the pics and video that the whole train, engines first, ran away down the grade and into the town. The locomotives stayed upright and continued on when the rest of the train derailed and uncoupled. In the video you can see the FRED flashing on the last tank car and the string of tank cars that stopped before derailing. The locomotives eventually stopped because the hand brakes were set on them. But not enough were set on the train to prevent movement. Regardless of whether the firemen accidently released the brakes or the air leaked down because the locomotive was shut down or vandals messed with the brakes, the whole thing could have been prevented if ‘sufficient’ number of hand brakes had been set on the train. It’s a terrible disaster that should never have happened. And there is no way this little broke railroad will ever have the means to repair all that has been done much less compensate for the loss of life. No one should have ever left a 73 car loaded oil train unattended on a hill. It’s just unconsciousnable to do such a thing.

#45

Awful.

And the guys that did everything right will be second guessing themselves for the rest of their lives.

#46

John, the only problem with your entire post is that it blames the railroad.

As an example, what if the train had been secured with five handbrakes, and had successfully been tested and those handbrakes and been enough to hold the train secure? Now, what if a vandal or terrorist (having scouted the area and learned enough to cause damage) had come in and knocked one or two of those handbrakes off?

With the sheer vast tracts of land that are occupied by America’s rail network, I can see only one single way to ensure no one trespasses: 10ft tall; 100,000volt; concertina-wire topped; laser sensor equipped fences; randomly patrolled by former marine snipers (with marksmanship awards) with laser-sighted M-16’s equipped with subsonic hollow-point bullets with open-ended authorization for shoot-to-kill, and a $1,500 per-head bonus.

I added the marines because the electrification danger isn’t enough, especially after the lawsuit the railroad lost a few years ago.

I also propose that locomotive ditch lights be removed and replaced with weapons pods like those found on the winglets of the AH-64 Apache, arming the locomotives with surface-to-surface missiles for use when people drive around gates.

#47

J.D. Gallaway said:

John, the only problem with your entire post is that it blames the railroad.

As an example, what if the train had been secured with five handbrakes, and had successfully been tested and those handbrakes and been enough to hold the train secure? Now, what if a vandal or terrorist (having scouted the area and learned enough to cause damage) had come in and knocked one or two of those handbrakes off?

Yep the same thing happened to me… See my post on the first page. Tied down a train for 36 hours and a sufficient number of handbrakes were applied. But 36 hours later it moved. So 36 hours the brakes held, but hour 37 they failed… Conductor admitted to doing only 3 brakes which was ‘sufficient’ to hold but not enough according to the ABTH rules. 3 brakes held for 36 hours without air set so it was sufficient. Same thing could have happened.

#48

While I’m not saying train crews NEVER make mistakes/get lazy/try to get away with something…

(I’m sure Craig, being out on BNSF territory, has heard of Ricky Gates and the accident at Chase, MD. Look it up, he even has his own wikipedia entry. Heck, do a search for the episode of Rescue911 on the accident at Chase MD.)

It however is always the railroad’s first thing to blame the train crew. While I can’t be certain, my feeling is that if they can put the blame on a crewmember, they feel they can argue that it wasn’t really the company’s fault. Course, it never works out that way, but they still try and hang us, its just the nature of the industry I guess. (Wreck of the Red Arrow in 1947, contradictory statements from other people involved about the events as they came up over the top at Gallitzin, yet the ICC & PRR found the cause of the accident to be the lead engineer speeding over the top. Yet there were no speedometers on the engines involved, and of course no “black-box” event recorder.

And, for the record, the rules out here were known as NORAC, a creation of Amtrak & Conrail trying to create a unified rules system out of hundreds of different rules and signals implementations.

#49

J.D. Gallaway said:

John, the only problem with your entire post is that it blames the railroad.

JD from what I have read the railroad is entirely to blame for this mess. This is a small shortline that has been thrust into the business of hauling heavy loaded oil trains across their system to some refinery. They had treated this like any other train they run, only it isn’t. It’s a rolling bomb, 72 of them in this case. They handled it with a single crew member, parked it on a hill with the engine running and set insufficient hand brakes to keep it from rolling away, and then abandoned it to wait for the next crew the next morning. Where is some ‘common sense’ in this? I am not blaming the single crew member, as he probably just did what he always did according to the MMA rules. Like I said, this was a tragedy that didn’t have to happen and now over 60 people are burned to death and the whole downtown area is devastate. In addition now Canada and the US will be looking at their rules for oil trains and the rest of the industry has a huge black eye. And there is no way this little broke railroad will ever be able to compensate for the damage or loss of life. They will probably just declare bankruptcy. And the lawyers will be suing the oil companies, the tank car manufacturers, the railroads, the railroad management and the crews. If I were that single crew member that did this, I would be selling everything I have and packing my bags for the Bahamas or somewhere where they could never find me or get too me as his life is over. They will never let him rest.

As for the rest of your post. That is just fantasy land and has no relevance to this accident.

#50

“Burkhardt said that after the pressure leaked out of the airbrakes, the handbrakes would not have been strong enough to keep the train in place.”

" Burkhardt said the fire service should have also tried to contact the train’s operator, who was staying at a nearby hotel.

“If the engine was shut off, someone should have made a report to the local railroad about that,” he said.

As I read it, the RR is trying to blame the fireman who responded to the locomotive fire.
Meanwhile, the local fire service says the did contact the RR.
Ralph

The fire service said it contacted a local MMA dispatcher in Farnham, Quebec, after the blaze was out. “We told them what we did and how we did it,” Lambert said.

Asked whether there had been any discussion about the brakes, he replied: “There was no discussion of the brakes at that time. We were there for the train fire. As for the inspection of the train after the fact, that was up to them.”

#51

Ralph,

Per the rules train crews are not to rely on train air brakes to hold the train. The proper procedure is the following;

  1. Make 20 lb brake pipe reduction in train. Full independent set.

  2. Tie hand brakes that are sufficient in number.

  3. Release 20 lb set, and independent.

  4. If train does not move, enough hand brakes are set, if train moves, tie more brakes and repeat.

The reason you make a 20lb set initially is that it pushes the piston out on the cars and thus when you tie the brake, you get a tighter set. If you were to tie a hand brake without a 20lb set, you could get a tight chain initially. But when you make the 20lb set, the chain would loosen, and thus the brake wouldn’t be tight anymore.

This checks to ensure that the train is relying on the hand brakes to be held in place, not the air brakes.

Craig

#52

Over here in yUK the BBC CeeFax has posted a comment that having recovered twenty bodies, it must be assumed that the remaining missing thirty people are also dead.

A true national disaster for Canada and especailly for the people of Québec.

tac

#53

One death is a disaster for us all. The loss of even one individual diminishes the greatness of our species. There can be no denying the magnitude of the loss.

One a different note, I offer this up for consideration. WHY was the train not forwarded to the next location? As an engineer, as well as a former Ass’t GM in training, I am well away that a stopped train earns the railroad no money. There must be some reason why the train was not forwarded onto its destination. Is it possible that there was an expected delay for customs? (I believe I read somewhere that it was headed into the US eventually, yes?) Was this an attempt to match the arrival of the train to its appointed time at the customs location? Was there an intended arrival time at the unloading location which required a delay enroute? Any of these means that part of the blame must be laid on those who delayed the train.

One question I would like to ask, especially to our brethren above the border, what are your Hours of Service regulations? I know here in the US its now a unified max 12hrs of service, min 10 for 12 on the rest cycle. If I bring a train to a location and my hours expire before they can get a recrew out to us, and I am ordered to occupy the train to protect it, every minute past twelve must be matched on my rest. If I am on duty for 13 hours, my rest becomes 11 for 13. Since the Canadian Roads only come under the FRA’s umbrella the instant they roll onto American Rails, I am not versed in what your laws & rules are.

#54

JD,

I would guess the engineer ‘died’ on the law. Sounds plausible from what I’ve read.

I don’t know if your rules are different than the GCOR, but when I died on the law, we secured the train and deadheaded in a van. It wasn’t very often that we sat on a train dead waiting for a relief crew. It was sitting dead on the train waiting for a van to come pick us up. But the dispatcher would stop us before we died so we would have time to secure the train before our hours of service. There was lots of times I either left a train on a siding or main or picked up a train that was unoccupied. That’s why you tie hand brakes so you don’t have to baby sit the train.

*Died = Exceeded the hours of service law.

#55

Craig, out here securing the train is considered service. If you hit your 12, we have to wait on relief because the train is unsecured. They are now trying to get all crews back to the final terminal (be it home or away) so we can tie up before the expiration of the 12.

#56

J.D. Gallaway said:

Craig, out here securing the train is considered service. If you hit your 12, we have to wait on relief because the train is unsecured. They are now trying to get all crews back to the final terminal (be it home or away) so we can tie up before the expiration of the 12.

Interesting. The GCOR and FRA rules state that it is preforming service, but I recall reading either in the GCOR or in the special instructions that after your dead on the law you are still liable for securing the train. The dispatchers try to stop you before your 12, but I’ve tied down a many train after 12 hours on duty. It would be interesting to hear the FRA’s take…
That said when we tie up you have to note the time difference between preforming service and deadheading. Say I died at 12, and spent 30 minutes tieing the train down, and then spent 2 hours in a deadhead, I would tie up at 14:30 on duty but show that only 2 hours were deadhead time, the rest 12:30 was preforming service. Then we would have fill out a FRA report asking why we went over 12 hours preforming service. A simple explanation of “tieing train down” works.

I’ve also had times were we’ve died and the dispatcher told us a relief crew was coming so we didn’t secure the train, and then after we were dead the dispatcher called back and instructed us to secure the train as the relief crew wasn’t coming in the van.
Craig

#57

Although we’ve hijacked the thread, I’ve been on the other side, the dispatcher said we were getting recrewed, van gets there empty, and we are ordered to wait for the recrew, or they get a yard crew (inside a consolidated terminal) to secure the train for us. Heck, I actually had a passing train be stopped and ordered to secure the train for us.

#58

J.D. Gallaway said:

Although we’ve hijacked the thread, I’ve been on the other side, the dispatcher said we were getting recrewed, van gets there empty, and we are ordered to wait for the recrew, or they get a yard crew (inside a consolidated terminal) to secure the train for us. Heck, I actually had a passing train be stopped and ordered to secure the train for us.

Hum. If we helped another train en-route it would be a penalty claim. I’ll have to dig through my rule book to see where I found the rule. Or check the FRA website.

I should add if the crew member was dead and/or still on duty but left the train, its the responsibility of the crew member to secure the train without relying on handbrakes. Just because you’re dead doesn’t relieve you from protecting the train. Heck I found that out after 36 hours I was still ‘responsible’ for the train because I was the last crew to physically touch the train. I had already worked two other trains in the meantime!

#59

For those interested in following the investigation for this accident you might want to look at the investigation site.

http://www.tsb.gc.ca/eng/enquetes-investigations/rail/2013/R13D0054/R13D0054.asp

Stan