Posted on 05/13/2015 10:51:08 AM PDT by Biggirl
An analysis by The Associated Press of surveillance video just before the deadly
crash of an Amtrak train in Philadelphia indicates it was traveling about 107 miles
per hour as it approached a curve where the speed limit was 50 miles per hour.
The video shows the train - which was roughly 662 feet long - passes the camera
in just over five seconds. But AP found that the surveillance video plays
back slightly slower than in real time.
So, adjusting for the slower playback puts the train’s estimated speed at
107 miles per hour. The surveillance camera was located at a site just before
the bend in the tracks.
I call; sex in the engine compartment...
Are there speed limit signs on railroad tracks?
Come right back at them with
“well, if you hadn’t squandered $22 trillion over the last 50 years on the failed war on poverty, we could have spent more on infrastructure!”
Yes. To the uninitiated they appear to be just numbers on signs, but the engineers know how to decode them.
WHAT??? I thought it was ISIS throwing rocks that caused this?? At least thats what I kept reading here.
What do you mean “how is this possible?” You don’t just get in the train and drive it full speed until you get where you’re going. You slow down around curves. Duh.
I mean that the engineer, provided he isn’t a trainee, has probably driven that route 100+ times if not 500+ times if not 1000+ plus times. And he no doubt has a manual, and there are speed markers along the track. It would not surprise me to have a “g force” accelerometer of some sort in the cab. It’s probably OK to exceed speed markings by 20% but it’s probably guaranteed fatal to exceed such marking by 100%. So the question is, how can a veteran be so blatantly ignorant.
How is this possible?
Physics... and Title 49 CFR Part 213.
Specifically, §213.329 Curves; elevation and speed limitations [for Class 6 Track and higher].
Fox Business is reporting that NTSB has stated that based on preliminary data, the train was going over 100 mph going into the term. That amounts to confirmation of the WSJ report. How could this happen? We all want to know, but if the answer is politically inconvenient, it might be sanitized.
The engineer had been the victim of GOP micro-aggressions and was hurrying to get to his safe space.
I’ve been worrying about terrorism and trains for a while now. Given the security at airports, they are a perfect target, and could make for a spectacular attack.
My father used to investigate train wrecks for the union back before terrorism was much of a concern. Yes, he was a union man, but it didn’t rub off on me permanently. He used to take my brother and me along since he’d be gone for several days sometimes, and there was nowhere else for us to go.
I saw the aftermath of several minor derailments. But the most spectacular happened on a curve at the bottom of a long hill. It was out by Dodge City, I think. The engineer had been drinking, speeding and engineering. Took over a hundred cars into a ravine at 80 or 90 mph. It was a freight train, so there were only two or three deaths, iirc, but the property damage was awesome. The ravine looked like a little hole in the ground that had had a hundred unbelievably mangled cars thrown into it. I couldn’t figure out how they were going to untangle them and get them out of there. I never got to see how it was done, either. The big bosses were pi$$ed that dad had brought along children with him and sent all three of us packing. They didn’t fire him, but he never worked another wreck.
Anyway, the right train, the right location, the right tankers, could be pretty grim.
There is a lot to know about running a choo choo train... old ways of training and mentoring are faded out to the typical humdrum of book learnin' administered by people that very often have no field expertise of their own (See Title 49 CFR part 243 for THAT). Safety is a culture... you don't learn that in some classroom... though some know-nothing at the FRA will regulate you otherwise (like with Part 243 coming out "soon").
Using a stopwatch and knowing the length of the train cars it should be possible to get a good fix on the train speed from that video. Doesn’t look like 100mph to me.
The time is in the right corner. It looks like 4 to 5 seconds pass. 7 cars at 85feet each passing in 4.5 seconds. Comes out to 90MPH.
Shouldn’t there be a governor to limit the speed?
Are there stretches of track that they are allowed to travel that speed?
ohhhh,
The Japanese learned the hard way why safety features like this are a good idea: in 2005, a commuter train crashed at Amagasaki (just west of Osaka) because an over-stressed train driver took a sharp curve too fast and there was insufficient Automatic Train Stop (ATS) warning sensors on the track to automatically trigger an emergency braking situation due to excessive speed. After that accident, the West Japan Railway Company (JR West) installed a lot more warning sensors on the track to prevent a repeat of that accident.
LOL!!
Texting. Tired. Who knows. Human error. It happens all the time.
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