Somebody posted that the engineer shouldn’t have pulled the brake before the curve. Does anyone know why?
The engine & cars up front tend to slow down first and cars in the back accordion into them.
Putting the brakes into emergency application will lock up all of the axles, like a car going into a skid. You basically lose all control of the forward momentum. This guy did everything you could possibly do wrong.
A caller on Mark Levin's show, who claimed to have been a former engineer, said that because of the way brakes are arranged on trains, hitting the emergency brakes at high speeds pretty much guarantees the following cars will hit the engine and cause a derailment... if I understood him correctly.
Maybe because sliding wheels will derail easier than rolling ones. Like a skidding car. Just saying.
When he pulls the brake, the front brakes before the back, sending the back slamming into the front and C R U N C H.
I heard it on the radio.
Inertia.
Try and stop a train in a curve, the train wants to continue in the straight line it was traveling before the curve but the track the train is on isn’t going in a straight line so the train now wants to go sideways.
The brakes get engaged front to back so the monentum from the back added to the force causing the cars to jump off the rails on the curve.
Same concept as with a car under lateral g-force in a turn - rolling wheels are more stable and likely to keep you upright and on track. Brake before you reach the hazard and let off just prior to entering it.