“...trains derail carrying grain...”
“...amazed at how often that happens...”
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First you have to define “what is a derail?”
My company defines it as any time a wheel leaves the track.
There does not have to be a spectacular event.
There does not have to be a railcar on it’s side.
We have safety devices in-place that intentionally derail cars.
My experience is that most “derails” happen at low speed
on non federally regulated industrial track “inside the fence-lines”
of various plants and factories and warehouses.
These events are neither sensational nor newsworthy.
They are just a royal pain in the ass.
My rough guess from my own experience is that
80% are related to issues with track infrastructure;
10% are related to faulty operations and procedures; and
10% are related to issues with railcar maintenance.
These events are neither sensational nor newsworthy.
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That has been my understanding as well.
It seems like the rail cars derail more frequently than the locomotives on a per train basis. The locomotives in Lac Magantic rolled just fine through town while the oil cars didn’t. Id guess that the CoG of the locos is lower than that of the loaded tank cars. Perhaps the tank cars need a total redesign with a loaded CoG as low as that of the locomotives as the objective.