jimmyfloyd:
I’m interested to hear more about these comments and what source of information you have regarding the Rail industry?
From the Article, it does not sound like Worker Training was an issue, as the worker tied the engine down correctly. It was someone outside the railroad that turned the engine off without knowing the implications.
And the equipment failures, as the one that probably caused the fire, could easily happen to a new locomotive, and could have easily happened to the 5th locomotive instead of the first if it was being used.
My info is first hand based unfortunately
jimmyfloyd:
Doing a little reading about air brakes for trains, I’m going to guess that this happened due to a known limitation of the braking system, as well as a lack of Hand Brake applications.
The braking system has an emergency brake, that is initiated if a loss of main line pressure happen. You may have encountered this if you are stuck at a crossing with a train that doesn’t move for a long time. One brake hose ruptures, it automatically enables the emergency brake for the train and it automatically stops. The limitation is that this works on the principle that there is a RAPID change in pressure. If the system bleeds down, as it appears to have in this case, this would not have had the rapid loss of pressure necessary to initiate the Emergency brakes. This is where the Hand Brakes come in, as reported in some articles. There should be a sufficient number of Hand Brakes enabled on the train so that it will not move should the air brakes fail. The number used in this case is currently unknown, and is likely the cause of it not staying in place.
Reading:Railway air brake - Wikipedia http://www.railway-technical.com/brake2.shtml#BrakeApplication Home | Montreal Gazette | Montreal Gazette Home | Montreal Gazette | Montreal Gazette
your looking at a maximum of 4 hrs after the compressors shut off
and a few weeks ago would have made this look like a chocolate chip on a cookie pie if things didn’t go right
Beck
July 10, 2013, 6:10am
22
One freak accident that will probably never happen again and they think shipping oil in planes is going to be safer/less expensive?
lol, yeah I wouldn’t worry about that. They (Reuters) didn’t attribute that statement to anyone, let alone anyone with the authority and ability to “rethink” things. And even if they did there isn’t a safer way to transport oil at the moment… unless we build another pipeline and look how that’s going with Keystone.
But there will always be people who make dramatic decisions / conclusions about statistical outliers based on emotion instead of logic. I’m sure somewhere someone is blaming the deaths of all those people on oil consumption in general.