Video of derailment of train of Ethanol tank cars this a.m. in Fairmont MN....
Original Post
Replies sorted oldest to newest
Curious. The train was going slowly - bad order track? Broken rail? What railroad? How could the public have anything but a negative view of railroading with such events occurring? A product of downsized MOW employees?
Let’s hope none of those cars will leak their contents!! Ethanol in them !!
@mark s posted:Curious. The train was going slowly - bad order track? Broken rail? What railroad? How could the public have anything but a negative view of railroading with such events occurring? A product of downsized MOW employees?
Union Pacific.
Things happen. Something failed. That's what the NTSB is for. No sense Monday morning quarterbacking it.
Rusty
I just saw a news report that said, "Federal investigators and police have not determined the cause of the derailment."
Is it just me, or could the tie that flipped up under the tanker be the cause?
@CopperCountryJake posted:Is it just me, or could the tie that flipped up under the tanker be the cause?
Or could that be the effect?
Rusty
@RustyTraque It is possible. I guess I did kind of jump to a conclusion.
I feel for the person who filmed it. They'll be late to wherever they were going.
-Greg
The tie that flipped was on the roadway crossing - the cars were derailing, prior to striking it.
Thank You. I apologize for the mistake.
The public must view railroads as hopelessly antiquated.
CopperCountry - You must don a hair shirt and self flagellate yourself with a barbed whip. Just kidding - no sweat !!
I’d get the heck out of there. I’d be scared a tanker would explode.
The cars start derailing at the left side near the signal cabinet. It looks like the gauge spread on the rail. you can see the rail move and roll, if you full size the video. Just watch the trucks drop.
@romiller49 posted:I’d get the heck out of there. I’d be scared a tanker would explode.
Nice video but I don't know if I wanted to be that close to derailing tank cars.
@Henryjint posted:Nice video but I don't know if I wanted to be that close to derailing tank cars.
I agree, I would get the heck out of there! Great video though !
Well, my carpet railroad may not be prototypical, my three rails may not be prototypical either, but after watching this I at least know that when my tank cars derail, that's prototypical!
Of course, we don't know "the rest of the story", yet. And the train was traveling rather slow. And the adjacent field looks like a nice soft landing area. And it's adjacent to a road for relatively fast/easy response and recovery.
But, if those roly-poly tank cars maintained their tank-integrity and held their contents safely through it all, then kudos to their design/manufacturing.
Just looking for the positives.
OTOH, they might want to heed that flippin' tie at the crossing! It could've punched a hole in the passing car and created a much, much worse ending.
Kudos, also, to the vehicle driver/passenger/railfan? who happened to be recording the event. I hope he/she is rewarded handsomely for providing great documentation!
I think that tie was actually the precast concrete piece that goes in between the rails as part of the grade crossing. Since the wheels were off the rails bofore it, they just pushed it out. The wheels were off the rails before the electrical shack at the left.
Brendan
This is a good video of the derailment sequence. (The actual derailment occurred before the beginning of the video, as the cars appearing from behind the relay box were already derailed to the inside of the rail.)
Thanks for sharing this, Stix!
@dkdkrd posted:OTOH, they might want to heed that flippin' tie at the crossing! It could've punched a hole in the passing car and created a much, much worse ending.
That's what the NTSB is for. Bear in mind one cannot predict every possible action that takes place in a derailment. A few seconds either way and that tie may not have split. The age of the tie, ambient temperature, condition of the roadbed and the force and direction by which the tie is struck are all variables.
Rusty
Hard to tell what really happened from the video, but the chunk of stuff that flew out isn't a RR Tie, it looks like a much larger piece that was part of the crossing bed.
Attachments
About a week ago Virtual Railfan showed a crew installing a grade crossing like this one as part of their "grab bag", don't recall the exact date. I agree it most likely is a piece of that, and that it is either rubber or something with a rubber covering. The workers placed it where they wanted it and tapped it with I think a shovel to work it down into place. Something like this:
@mark s posted:Curious. The train was going slowly - bad order track? Broken rail? What railroad? How could the public have anything but a negative view of railroading with such events occurring? A product of downsized MOW employees?
Well, looks a lot better than that disaster on I35W SB managed lanes in Ft. Worth during Ice Storm Uri!
Nice video, kudos to the guy filming it. Anyone else notice the 70's era cabover semi on the other side of the tracks?
"Cabover Pete with a reefer on, and a Jimmy haulin' hogs"!
This is a 2 year old post, but the video is still working, and is an interesting thing to watch the derailment unfold. Some mentioned a tie at the crossing, but that looks more like a section of concrete pavement on the edge or in between the track. There is another interesting WW II training film you can view on Youtube that show how to sabotage rail lines, and it was found that simply blowing up the track did not work in some cases. The video shows a section blown up, and the train from loco to last car traverse the gap with hardly slowing down, much like these cars did in the spot the rail was obviously out of gauge, that is until they rolled over.
Yes, it's pretty clear it's not a tie, it's the leading edge of the pre-fab grade crossing. They're interlocking pieces of thick rubber. Pretty sure if it was just concrete, it would have broken apart rather than just popping up whole.
@CopperCountryJake posted:I just saw a news report that said, "Federal investigators and police have not determined the cause of the derailment."
Is it just me, or could the tie that flipped up under the tanker be the cause?
Derailment investigation is not as simple as it seems. It requires training and a lot of shoe leather. First, the actual point of derailment must be identified and clues searched for. This could be some distance previous to the secondary derailment, in which case you have to follow marks on ties and rails to find it. Then, the secondary derailment (typically, the place where the derailment produces a pileup or something going into the ditch) has to be investigated.
I filled out plenty of BNSF Accident/Derailment Forms. There were lots of questions and measurements had to be furnished. Many of the questions had to do with tie condition, rail condition, spike condition, wheel flange measurement, uneven loading of cars, speed, train handling, and all parts broken should be found and inspected for metal fatigue.
When I was a new official, I naively furnished a very simple 1-car, low speed, derailment closeout on a rickety industrial spur as "Spread Rail". My phone rang, and the Superintendent's first word was not "hello." The greeting, if you would call it that, began with, "Mister, I just got your closeout." And that was the nice part of the phone call.
@Number 90 posted:When I was a new official, I naively furnished a derailment closeout on a rickety industrial spur as "Spread Rail". My phone rang, and the Superintendent's first word was not "hello." The greeting, if you would call it that, began with, "Mister, I just got your closeout." And that was the nice part of the phone call.
I was involved one time in an aircraft crash investigation since it was a fuel system that I was the project engineer on. The resulting accident investigation took four years and resulted in tons of changes to aircraft fuel systems industry wide.
I have no doubt that a big train accident can have a similar lengthy process, lots of subtle factors can enter into an accident. There is almost never a single factor in an accident, it's almost always a chain of events that lead up to the incident.
…investigation is not as simple as it seems. It requires training and a lot of shoe leather. First, the actual point of derailment must be identified and clues searched for. This could be some distance previous to the secondary derailment, in which case you have to follow marks on ties and rails to find it.
To back up Tom’s point.
Sometime in 1981 there was a pileup at Tuttle, OK on the Frisco Chickasha sub. One wheelset of a car near the middle of the train came off the track and cut ties for dozens of miles until it came to a facing-point switch and “went flying”. The conductor on this job was not a very observant man nor a talented railroader. He should have seen the problem from the caboose.
