This was posted about 2 years ago unsure of the exact date of occurence...oh boy...what was this guy thinking?....
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Looked like a police car on the tracks too...
Who designs such an intersection anyway????
Putting a light in front of a triple track high speed
main - and putting the light ahead of the tracks.
Darwinism all around.
/Mitch
On the nightly nooze tonight, a man in his '70's was killed while calling 911, on the
phone, while his car was stopped on the tracks, with gates and flashing lights. They
had no clue why he didn't bail out of the car and run like .......! While this isn't funny,
the cop's comment cracked me up. He said, "The train took no evasive action". Now,
can you believe a train not dodging that car?
Oh that is sad...we'll never know, maybe he just froze.
Yeah Mitch the squad car backed up.....but that ladder truck....ouch.
Still more fun with trains.......on this morning's news, a car was destroyed by a train because a presumed drunk parked it late at night, on the tracks, and walked home. He told police he didn't remember where he parked it. With all this shrapnel
flying in front of their faces, you'd think enginemen would prefer running locos with
the cab at the back.
Originally Posted by coloradohirailer:
On the nightly nooze tonight, a man in his '70's was killed while calling 911, on the
phone, while his car was stopped on the tracks, with gates and flashing lights. They
had no clue why he didn't bail out of the car and run like .......! While this isn't funny,
the cop's comment cracked me up. He said, "The train took no evasive action". Now,
can you believe a train not dodging that car?
How does a train dodge a car? Impossible!!
A train can barely stop sometimes in just over a mile and a half, so how can a train avoid the loose nut behind the car's steering wheel?
I watched a train wreck video on the history channel a while back, the engineer in the rear engine threw the emergency brake on and caused the whole train to derail, as it went around a curve, rather then rely on the dynamic brakes of the five engines in the train. Almost wiped out a whole city out west in the US. Then to make things even more serious the gas pipe that the train hit, a safety flow valve didn't shut down and allowed a huge volume of gasoline to leak out causing an explosion.
With that accident there was a whole lot of blame to go around, even the local gas company got grilled by the government regulators.
Lee F.
{quote]With all this shrapnel flying in front of their faces, you'd think enginemen would prefer running locos with the cab at the back. [/quote]
It's my impression that in the early days of diesels, some railroads did run long hood forward to provide some protection for the engineer and fireman. On my railoroad, the Lionel Lines, we always run long hood forward.
this was in detroit.
Originally Posted by phillyreading:
Originally Posted by coloradohirailer:
On the nightly nooze tonight, a man in his '70's was killed while calling 911, on the
phone, while his car was stopped on the tracks, with gates and flashing lights. They
had no clue why he didn't bail out of the car and run like .......! While this isn't funny,
the cop's comment cracked me up. He said, "The train took no evasive action". Now,
can you believe a train not dodging that car?
How does a train dodge a car? Impossible!!
A train can barely stop sometimes in just over a mile and a half, so how can a train avoid the loose nut behind the car's steering wheel?
I watched a train wreck video on the history channel a while back, the engineer in the rear engine threw the emergency brake on and caused the whole train to derail, as it went around a curve, rather then rely on the dynamic brakes of the five engines in the train. Almost wiped out a whole city out west in the US. Then to make things even more serious the gas pipe that the train hit, a safety flow valve didn't shut down and allowed a huge volume of gasoline to leak out causing an explosion.
With that accident there was a whole lot of blame to go around, even the local gas company got grilled by the government regulators.
Lee F.
You're talking about the Duffy Street Incident on Cajon Pass. The way the SP claim Department screwed the residents over who lost their homes was disgusting. NO lawyer's slimier than a railroad lawyer.
From Wikipedia on the Duffy Street Incident: Cause of the derailment;
"On May 12, 1989, at 7:36 a.m. a 6-locomotive/69-car Southern Pacific freight train (SP 7551 East, computer symbol 1 MJLBP-11) carrying trona lost control while descending Cajon Pass, derailed on an elevated curve, and plowed into a residential area on Duffy Street.[1] The location is just Northeast of where the 210 Foothill Freeway crosses the Cajon creek wash.
The conductor, head-end brakeman, and two residents were killed in the crash.[2][3] Seven houses immediately next to the tracks were destroyed, as were the lead locomotives and all of the freight cars on the train.[4] Clerks in Mojave had miscalculated the weight of the train, while the engineer and crew at the head end were unaware that one of the rear helper engines had non-functional dynamic brakes, and there was not enough dynamic braking power to slow the train down the hill, causing the locomotives to lose control of the cars. While the helper engineer realized that the brakes were not slowing the train, in desperation he activated the emergency brakes, which actually sped the train up as the engineer did not realize that the emergency brakes automatically deactivated the dynamic brakes. The train reached speeds of about 110 mph before derailing on an elevated 35 mph curve next to Duffy Street, sending the head end locomotives and several cars off the high railroad bed and into houses on the street below, smashing them to pieces.
After retrieving the black boxes from the locomotives, it was discovered that third head end locomotive's dynamic brakes were not functioning at all, despite the fact that it was making the sound that dynamic brakes make. It was also discovered after the crash that the engineer running the helper engines knew of the faulty brakes on one of his locomotives and did not communicate the information to the head end. The combination of weight miscalculation, poor communication, and faulty brake equipment made the freight cargo heavier than the locomotives could slow, causing the freight cars to push the locomotives down the hill and rapidly gain speed, and the curve next to Duffy Street was simply too sharp for the extremely high speed of the train, catapulting it off the rails and straight forward rather than following the curve of the tracks.[5]"
Here is a link to the whole article, which also explains the gas pipeline rupture: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...rdino_train_disaster
I don't bother with History Channel as a correct source of information, especially as they are now more interested in "reality" programs rather than programs about history.
Stuart
