Posted on 06/29/2016 1:04:28 PM PDT by TEXOKIE
Edited on 06/29/2016 1:27:50 PM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
Investigators said Wednesday they believed three missing crew members aboard two freight trains that collided head-on in the Texas Panhandle did not survive.
Emergency personnel have moved from a rescue effort to a recovery operation, Texas Department of Public Safety Sgt. Dan Buesing said.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Thank you for posting the pictures to this thread. Words are not available.
My heart goes out to the spouses and children.
So, how the hell could a dispatcher, or anybody else, arrange a head-on collision?
There are at least two crew people in the cab of each locomotive, the engineer and a Bateman. The engineer runs the locomotive and the brakeman gets off to throw any switches that need to be thrown to get the locomotive onto different tracks. The engineer has, on many locomotives,to hold a dead man switch down with his foot for the locomotive to move. Thus,for the collision to have happened without serious, intentional foul play, at least both crew members in one of the locomotives would have had to be asleep and the dead man switch not working. No engineer in his right mind runs a train through a red board.
Some people who are far more experienced railroaded than I are on this thread. Will any of you please comment on what I have said. My comments are all based on three summers of railroading I did about 50 years ago while in college.
Thanks for the extraordinary pictures. Looks like both trains were going at a very high speed.
“50 years ago while in college”
What an interesting time you must have had.
I would suppose that a crewman could spend years, or even an entire career without ever encountering an unexpected red signal, and if this is true, it would make anything approaching 100% vigilance virtually impossible, in human terms.
I have heard of a situation where a train was supposed to wait for another one to pass on a side track before entering a single track section, but didn’t, resulting in the two colliding.
But if it was all double tracked? Don’t know, unless one of the sides had been temporarily shut down, requiring one train to enter a siding to permit the other to pass.
It was a hell of a lot of fun, although the hours were odd, since I worked the extra board. That was where all the newbies were placed. Then, when an open slot came up I’d get a call and have to be anywhere in the division to pick up my train. Given the erratic schedule, one of my engineers said, “Sortt of f***s up your social life,doesn’t it?” I replied, “Doesn’t f***k it up at all, just eliminates it.” The “f” word was an indispensable conversational lubricant. Indeed, if the RR had prohibited profanity, just about everybody would have been fired in the first day.
The money was good too. I made enough each summer to pay for about sixty percent of the years’s college costs at a Big Ten university. Just try doing that today.
Well, the PTC ought to obviate situations like that, and probably will. Other malfunctions of the system could have interesting results, though.
The red signal is usually preceded by yellow or flashing yellow.
Well on top of that, is that a crewman could end up getting called at any hour of the day or night. They have regulations for rest time, but not for disruption of circadian rhythms, with which some people do better than others. The guy may be rested up to the extend required by law but due to circadian rhythm he may be up when his body is still saying “I should be sleeping.”
It's double-tracked from Clovis (NM) to Waynoka (OK).
So, presumably, one track was shut down for maintenance. But isn't that situation usually a reason for heightened awareness on the part of dispatcher and crew?
Moreover, the 60-mile stretch from Pampa to Amarillo (Panhandle is about midway) is straight as a string. And it's mostly flat as a pancake.
The only way they couldn't have seen each other coming is if they met at the top of a slight rise in elevation.
Somebody really had to work at making this one happen...
Well yes, I would have thought both would have been warned... but again there would have been a signal, too, well before they were to meet. Modern dispatching software enforces this rule; you have to have your signals set up right before you can tell the crew that they can move the train.
“... Jim you better jump, ‘cause there’re two locomotives that are going to bump!” — Casey Jones
“Joe, don’t worry, that other train is supposed to go to siding”
“Moe, don’t worry, that other train is supposed to go to siding”
“CRASH”
I was in college a little over fifty years ago. I never worked for the railroad, but had a good friend who did.
And damned if he didn't experience a head-on collision himself, out in Western Oklahoma. Got the thrill of hitting the silk at about 30 mph and came away with a dislocated hip.
I’m half kidding here because I am not all that familiar with it. I had a few weeks on a computer aided dispatching project before I got switched onto a PTC project. Just long enough to see how it behaved.
If one of the parallel tracks was under repair, there might have been confusion about whose turn it was to take the siding? We’ll have to see. I am not on BNSF but a different railroad.
Never had that happen, but I was in the cab when we hit a car while going about 5 mph. We were on one side of an overpass and the car’s driver came up and over from the other side without looking and we hit the vehicle. Vehicle was probably totaled, but driver wasn’t injured.
You are correct that no engineer in his right mind would knowingly run through a red board.
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