ping
She said speed-limit signs are posted two miles before the lowered speed zone and then just before the zone.
“Engineers are trained to slow trains according to posted speeds,” she said.
—
In this day and age of hi-tech isn’t there an onboard instrument that an engineer can refer to also? Or at least some place to post a post-it note: “slow down at curves”?
looks like all that self driving stuff is only as good as the Doofus that writes the code
I have been leaning toward this being operator error for a while now. The pictures say a lot.
Here’s a link to the Transit doc web site showing all trains
on their track and current data such as speed, time, etc. I’ve
never seen that info before and didn’t know it existed.
81mph on a 30mph curve. Not too smart.
There is math in there some where.
Photos can be deceiving, but that train hit the trestle pretty square with cars off the track on both sides of it.
If a train goes off the track around a curve due to excessive speed (only), the rail cars will generally be all on one side of the track, outside the curve.
As a layman outside the investigation, that one picture seemed to refute the idea this we solely excessive speed.
Perhaps others observed something I didn’t, and this would not make sense in light of that.
This is baffling.
Drugs? Texting? Suicide attempt?
I am not knowledgeable as to trains. I ride them, I like them, I fool around with models — but for the Real Big Ones, I’m not an expert at all.
Having said that...
From the TeeVee pictures, it looked like the engine was still on the tracks. EVERY car had derailed.
...and, it looks like they “got all ziggy-zaggy” and rear-ended each other, and fell off the rails.
That seems odd to me.
Somewhere in the rush of displays of ignorance and idiocy that is the rattle and blather of the news, someone said there were two engines — a fairly normal thing. But only one showed in the pictures. (Perhaps the leader had been disconnected and pulled away from the wreck...)
Even so, it still seems odd.
Now, you may recall The Bad Guys publish a magazine, “Rumiah.” Very slick and professional. In recent months they ran a nice how-to article about a home-made train de-railer, made with rebar and concrete.
To me, this event sounds exactly like what they were promoting in that article.
Maybe just a coincidence.
Nothing to see here. Move along, please...
Antifa!
>><<
Or Affirmative Action engineer.
Either this was engineer error, mechanical failure, or track failure. Right now, I lean toward engineer error.
Over 250 injured. The only reason it wasn’t more horrific is the locomotive on the commuter train parked in the station absorbed the bulk of the impact. If the train had hit the passenger cars dead on, it would have accordianed those cars. I saw the locomotive after the accident. There was little left other then the bottom of the frame and the trucks or wheels. The body was gone. Cab gone. I don’t remember if the prime mover was still attached.
http://www.nytimes.com/1990/12/13/us/at-least-264-are-hurt-in-train-collision-in-boston.html
Something could have been on the track but that doesn’t account for not showing down. I got a feeling it was being pushed and the engineer didn’t get slowed down in time. You’d think software would iver ride a human error. Or it could have over ridden human period.
I travel that corridor daily and my exit to home is the Mounts Road exit, right there off and on for the last 25 years.
Click on this map:
https://www.mytpu.org/tacomarail/general-information/tacoma-rail-system.htm
The rails from Lakewood to Dupont to Nisqually was owned by Burlington Northern for occasional use mainly by Ft. Lewis. Some years ago it was bought up by Tacoma Rail.
Big improvements all along the line. Ft. Lewis needed a better link to the docks at Port of Tacoma.
Mainly Amtrak wanted it because, looking at the map, the green-yellow striped rails to the west have a very slow bottleneck and frequent landslides running along the water by Pt. Defiance.
So this upgraded line offered a short cut and straight stretches of tracks, except for these curves.
Normal train traffic is 20-30 mph at the trestle. Many times I’ve seen heavy loads, like armor coming in, going 10-20 mph, and tilting through the curve.
Supposedly Amtrak did a full speed run last week. But cars loaded with people and baggage are much heavier.
Any competent transportation Engineer could easily compute the safest speed for that curve, with any loaded train.
The testing is quite simple, take a heavy train and make a number of passes at increasing speed and record the increased tilting.
It will likely be shown to be human error.
Autonomous cars? They can’t even get autonomous trains yet, and their paths are fixed by rails.
A new theory. https://pjmedia.com/trending/anarchists-bragged-april-sabotaging-railroad-tracks-block-fracking/?print=true&singlepage=true
(they might not be guilty on this case - but they are still guilty bastards)
