If an engine needs to remain ON then some train personell MUST remain behind?
The ignorance of the fire department was trumped by the lack of RR personell on hand.
Didn’t chock the wheels?
Seems to me the RR dispatcher that got the call from the fire dept. should have contacted the engineer and he should have gone out to check the train.
There was another eyewitness report consistent with the story above. Paraphrasing, a group of people were exiting the bar and saw the train barreling into town, several wheels glowing red and smoking. He yelled “run!” realizing the train would never make the curve at its rate of speed.
So the glowing wheels would be consistent with the statement that several manual brakes [sadly and obviously, not enough of them] were applied and those would be the likely source of ignition as the tank cars ruptured. One of the photos of the aftermath showed a tank car pierced with a piece of rail.
I’m still not clear on the timeline, though. What is the actual span of time between the fire service turning off the engine and the actual runaway?
The town is devastated, the engineer is staying at a hotel in town, and what seems to me to be missing is the fate of the engineer, possibly an ironic ending or a really bad wakeup or both.
In trucks with air brakes, when the air pressure goes down the brakes come on automatically.
Evidently Trains are different.
Leaving a train with no one around seems a stupid thing to do. Any child or vandal could go on board and release the brakes. I cannot imagine something as expensive as a train left running with no one on board.
bump
Question born of ignorance;
Don't the air brakes lock up when the air pressure in the system falls below a certain point?
In the early railroad days runaway trains were common.
George Westinghouse set to work and developed the air brake system. On loss of pressure, the brakes on all cars were released and stopped the train.
Something is not correct about the reporting
Air brakes reduced the need for brakemen that turned the wheels on each car to set the brakes. Even though mostly un needed, railway unions required brakemen decades after they were not needed.
Something doesn’t seem right with this explanation. In most air brake systems if there is no air pressure the brakes are ON or applied. It’s the air pressure from the compressor that releases the brakes. If the engine is off the air compressor isn’t generating air pressure which would mean the brakes are locked ON. In big trucks and even in my motor coach if the engine isn’t running to produce air pressure to release the brakes it won’t move.
This is like the movie Unstoppable.
That they went to print with the braking system explanation completely backward is a travesty of Journalism.
nice post...now “the rest of the story”
Westinghouse's 1869 version, the straight or direct air brake, used air hoses to connect the cars. When the engineer turned on the brakes, air pressure turned the brakes on in each car of the train. Of course, if the hoses leaked or disconnected, the train lost braking power.
With air brake 2.0, Westinghouse turned things around. Air pressure kept the brakes off. The engineer reduced pressure to put the brakes on. This built-in safeguard meant a loss of pressure would stop the train automatically. That applied to leakage and to the situation where cars came unhitched: Loose cars would brake to a stop. The system went into use in 1872 on the Pennsylvania Railroad.
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/03/dayintech_0305