Cab Car operations on ABC Primetime live...

Note to mods: This has also been posted in the General Operations Forum of this site, but I'm posting it here for our local Metra fans here as well to ensure a broader exposure:

Tonight (12/1) on ABC's Primetime live, there will be a feature discussing push/pull cab car passenger operations. I believe the show will view this from a safety angle, and from what I hear, Metrolink (CA) personnel will be interviewed, among others, don't know if any Metra equipment or representatives will be shown. Telecast begins at 9pm locally tonight. Be there. Aloha.

I have a VCR tape produced in 1984 of a trip in the cab car of a push-pull NJT Raritan Valley Line train between Raritan and Penn Station, Newark and on to the Harrison yards, with the WTC towers in the distance. It's pretty cool watching through the camera what the engineer sees. There are grade crossings, station stops, chatter with dispatchers, MOW action, and one scene between Bound Brook and Dunellen stations where a dog runs onto the tracks out of some bushes followed by his master - right in front of the train! The engineer leans on the horn and the dog and man jump away in time, but you can hear the stress and strain in the engineer's voice as he describes his immediate feelings to the filmmaker.

You know, this will be interesting to watch, but I have a bad feeling that some bozo sensationalist journalist will paint the RR as an irresponsible bad guy that is too damn cheap just to double their locomotive fleet so there is a locomotive at each end. What they won't consider is that 50% of commuter trains are MU's, with cab cars at either end and no locomotive, and cab cars have historical and financial precedent, and motorists that don't heed crossing gates are just morons rather than victims of a greedy RR.

Exactly.

Just finished watching this. It was pretty slanted against Metrolink (and commuter railroads in general), and most anyone who posts on here could probably write off its anti-rail slant. Issues that weren't covered were the fact that locomotive-car/truck collisions have resulted in derailment, and that the Metrolink derailment may not have been too different had a locomotive been up front (the SUV was dragged by the train until it came across and fouled a switch, which caused the derailment) except rather than fatalities in the front cab car, there's the possibility of the locomotive's fuel tank being ruptured, bringing fire into the mix. Also (and this leans back to the stupidity of those not on the rails) the amount of blame placed on the railroad seemed in excess of the blame placed on the guy who parked his car on the tracks and set the whole thing off. Cab cars are just like many other things, they're perfectly safe until third-party stupidity gets in the way.

After watching that article, they made no mention of the SUV tripping that switch. There's also an online version of the article here.

When the term "coffin car" was used to describe that segment, my media bias alarm rang quite loudly. And after sitting through that very slanted and incomplete production, the overall vibe I got from it was that if I didn't know any better, railroads just throw cab cars on commuter trains with utterly no regard for safety. I suppose then, that all of the FRA safety requirements and inspections that these cars are routinely subjected to is irrelevant here, because this wasn't mentioned at all. It is also erroneous on ABC's part to insinuate that the tragedy could've been averted if the train had been operating in pull mode. There is no way to know for sure. No doubt, this was a horrible accident, and my heart goes out to the survivors, but once again, sensationalism triumphs over actual substance and facts. But then, given the world we live in today, shoud we really be suprised?

I concur with byte and doepack about the program's bias and I agree the term "coffin car" was used inappropriately. It seems to be common slang on Metrolink, but I haven't heard it used much elsewhere and ABC obviously used it repeatedly purely for sensationalism. Personally, the impression I got from the program (and from other sources) is that the safety issue is more with the design of the "cigar cars" than with push-pull operation in general. While ABC noted that all of Metrolink's passenger fatalities have been in cab cars, they could also have pointed out, for example, other systems such as Metra that have never had a single passenger fatality that could be directly linked to push-pull operation.

Did anybody else scratch their head when the Metrolink official and the ABC reporter were discussing safety while standing between the rails a few feet from the head end of a cab car?

MikeF wrote:Did anybody else scratch their head when the Metrolink official and the ABC reporter were discussing safety while standing between the rails a few feet from the head end of a cab car?

The irony of that scene wasn't lost on me either. You would've thought that at least the Metrolink spokesman who was interviewed (actually, baited is more appropriate) by the ABC reporter would've known better. A flawed production indeed...

i'm sitting there watching this report having to giggle to myself a little

i am halfway thinking of sending that reporter and the production crew at primetime the FRA testing regulations that show that the collision requirement for a cab car and a locomotive are the same

80,000 pound constant load on the anti-intrusion beam, the same 20g lateral force for undercar equipment etc etc etc

not to mention that cab cars are considered locomotives for all periodic testing and maintenance.


it would be interesting to see what their response to the federal register quotes are, they are public domain documents and should have been included in their research process if they wanted to appear to uphold their "journalistic integrity"

oh and on the comment made about the design of the "cigar cars" or as i prefer to call them "sausage cars" (thin metal skin with lots of squishy bits inside"

it appeared that they behaved as they were intended to in a wreck. They are designed with a shear plane just before the split stairway. Unlike a traditional single level or a gallery style car they do not have a solid center sill. there is actually a dip in the "belly" of the car

they ARE weaker in design than a car with a solid center sill but maybe they should interview sir isaac newton for a better understanding of physics.

and the fact that they showed the locomotive plowing into the consist in push mode only made them seem more desperate

were that set in pull mode it still would have been "f---ked up" that loco was a GP series 39 or 40 putting it between 298000# and 315000#. thats not gonna be comfortable to run into no matter WHATS at the head end of that train.

shoddy reporting and a media sensationalism for sweeps. bad for us, good for them.

MikeF wrote:While ABC noted that all of Metrolink's passenger fatalities have been in cab cars, they could also have pointed out, for example, other systems such as Metra that have never had a single passenger fatality that could be directly linked to push-pull operation.

I noticed this too, and neither has CalTrain, which up until VRE started buying used Metra cars, was the only other system running gallery cars for a while. I'm no FRA investigator but I wonder if it all might be affected by the fact that the Bombardier "cigar box" bilevels don't have a corrugated steel outer shell, whereas most gallery cars on Metra and CalTrain do. Even if the frames are marginally weaker, most of the damage (in the pictures shown on the special) was just the outer skin being peeled away, thus letting people fall out if the car is rolling on its side. Not that corrugated stainless steel is unbreakable, but it probably takes more energy in a wreck to peel it away than flat steel.

The bigger issue is the car derailled and flipped to begin with. The BBD capsule car has a great record at that, not to mention the Superliner, which flips on it's side if you lean against it... The Metra bilevels and the single levels seen in the northeast, don't. I can't think of many cases over here where a grade crossing got a train on it's side, and yes, the LIRR's run push pull for decades - those old Alco cab units weren't locos at all. Even on NJT, etc, I can't think of any derailments. Weight's not much of an issue here either - the Comet car is pretty darn light, but they don't derail that easily anyway.

Sure the BBD capsule car meets FRA regs. But IMHO, it's still a less safe design in an accident than a Metra or norteast style car. Why the FRA doesn't have a 'performance standard', i.e. a definition of how the car should behave in X type of accident, is beyond me. It's a lot more useful than an arbitrary buff requirement...

Nasadowsk wrote:Sure the BBD capsule car meets FRA regs. But IMHO, it's still a less safe design in an accident than a Metra or norteast style car. Why the FRA doesn't have a 'performance standard', i.e. a definition of how the car should behave in X type of accident, is beyond me. It's a lot more useful than an arbitrary buff requirement...

That sounds reasonable, but if the FRA did have a performance standard, then it's pretty clear that the BBD cars, as currently constructed, wouldn't be permitted on passenger trains, and Bombardier would then be forced to redesign the cars to meet tougher requirements. Not necessarily a bad thing, but since railroad accidents come in all shapes and sizes, it's almost impossible to expect Bombardier, Nippon-Sharyo, or any other builder to support their products with a 100% guarantee that it would survive ANY accident structurally intact, with few or no fatalities among passengers. You just never know...

<i>That sounds reasonable, but if the FRA did have a performance standard, then it's pretty clear that the BBD cars, as currently constructed, wouldn't be permitted on passenger trains, and Bombardier would then be forced to redesign the cars to meet tougher requirements.</i>

No, not tougher, *different*. Let's have a standardized 'grade crossing object' test series and a simple standard - the car stays upright, inline, and without objects entering the passenger area. An 89,000 lb Pioneer III from the 50's could be made to pass that.

<i>Not necessarily a bad thing, but since railroad accidents come in all shapes and sizes, it's almost impossible to expect Bombardier, Nippon-Sharyo, or any other builder to support their products with a 100% guarantee that it would survive ANY accident structurally intact, with few or no fatalities among passengers. You just never know...</i>

But that's basically where the FRA's heading now. The fact is, you can't make a railcar survive any impact, just like you can't do it for anything else. Far far better to look at what CAN happen, and HOW likely it is, and HOW to mitigate the effects. We can prevent train-train collisions at any speed better than 99%. Better than 99.9%. The technology's there.

Short of removing every grade crossing in the US, and even then, you'll always see train-car, train-truck accidents. Design for THOSE. And, that takes a considerably different approach than a train train collision.

That's the problem. Sure the BBD car design might do ok getting bumped by an errant freight. But, that's not a common occurrance, and it's darn near 100% preventable. Hitting cars? They flip, and they flip easy. And trains tend to hit cars a LOT.

I suppose then, it comes down to either planning for "worst type of collision possible" vs. "the most common type of accident likely", and I concur that the FRA needs to standardize a bit more on the latter, especially concerning the BBD equipment. Except for the Rock Island accidents, which weren't caused by a collision, I don't think any other Metra train/car accident in the last decade has resulted in a derailment. In any event, it's a shame that this sort of an informed discussion about railroad passenger cars was totally exempt from ABC's laughably misinformed program about "coffin cars", but I guess there's no room for real information when it comes to ratings. Thanks for the insight, Nasadowsk...