Cascades 501 Wreck 18 December 17

StLouSteve wrote:Here we go again . . . blame the crew. Engineer in Philly almost got prison time. No blame for the pols who fund passenger rail so anemically that we accept 30 mph curves in our higher speed lines. How often do you encounter 30 mph curves on the interstates? And where were the guide rails? A common safety measure since the 1800s to prevent derailed cars from leaving bridges or embankments.

As opposed to who? The invisible speed fairly that pushed the throttle instead? BS. The politicians didn't just drop that curve in front of the train out of thin air. It has been there forever. It is clearly marked. They're all trained on it. Every railroad everywhere has speed changes. Your anger is non-sense.

Continuing the earlier thoughts regarding assignment of an Assistant in non-PTC territory, safe assumption that even if three fatalities compares favorably with the Frankford Jct (version.2015) eight, the $300M liability cap noted at our Frankford Jct. discussion will likely get hit. That $300M would have gone a long way towards paying for "Firemen" on Amtrak and Sound Transit trains.

Simply because Amtrak doesn’t "own" this incident to the same extent as they do Frankford Jct. (as also noted by Mr. Halstead, the Civil Engineering firm and/or the party that decided the pre-existing bridge over I-5 will do can expect to be "on tap"), does not lessen the impact of three fatalities that will likely be attributed to negligence. I realize that when RSIA08 was enacted by a lame duck Administration, I questioned the need for PTC. Today, after so many incidents, freight and passenger, the quicker it comes, the happier I'll be for this industry within which I spent eleven years of my working life.

StLouSteve wrote:H... How often do you encounter 30 mph curves on the interstates? ....

Just about all rail lines, including high speed ones such as the north east corridor have slow spots due to curves, old bridges, ... Nothing new there. That's why trains crews have to qualify on the territory. And there are always local temporary restrictions, due to maintenance, storm damage...
That said, I'm glad I have a job such that when I have a brain fart (not implying I know that is what happened in this case), which does happen to all of us one time or another, no one is killed or injured. So I am all for PTC . If the RR execs and stockholders were held responsible for their senior moments, and/or had to live with being responsible for injuries or worse to others, or could be at risk of being put in jail, we would have had PTC a long time ago.

It's sad that people died shortly before Christmas. I wonder if Positive Train Control would prevented this derailment. They had installed it but not activated it. Positive Train Control would have slowed the train down as it approached the curve. Railroads across the USA are slow to implement Positive Train Control.

MCL1981 wrote:

StLouSteve wrote:Here we go again . . . blame the crew. Engineer in Philly almost got prison time. No blame for the pols who fund passenger rail so anemically that we accept 30 mph curves in our higher speed lines. How often do you encounter 30 mph curves on the interstates? And where were the guide rails? A common safety measure since the 1800s to prevent derailed cars from leaving bridges or embankments.

As opposed to who? The invisible speed fairly that pushed the throttle instead? BS. The politicians didn't just drop that curve in front of the train out of thin air. It has been there forever. It is clearly marked. They're all trained on it. Every railroad everywhere has speed changes. Your anger is non-sense.

Not sure how clearly marked it was... from earlier posts, there's a sign 2 miles before, and then at the curve. I could be mistaken. That doesn't change the fact that the engineer was qualified on the territory and should have known. And it's still very early in the investigation.

That said, take a look at that curve. Good God. Coming out of MAS79 territory into that? They couldn't mitigate that curve?

davinp wrote:It's sad that people died shortly before Christmas. I wonder if Positive Train Control would prevented this derailment. They had installed it but not activated it. Positive Train Control would have slowed the train down as it approached the curve. Railroads across the USA are slow to implement Positive Train Control.

That is a very simplistic assessment of a complex subject.

Mr Dunville and I talked on our respective drives to work today. Speaking of route qualification:

1) Had there been chances for crews to qualify this new trackage?

2) What does the route look like in terms of speeds and time to reduce speeds, going onto this curve and bridge?

3) And... all the usual questions we will have to wait for until the preliminary report, and susequently, the NTSB hearing and final report?

Jeff Smith wrote: That said, take a look at that curve. Good God. Coming out of MAS79 territory into that? They couldn't mitigate that curve?

Likely not without great expense, given that it was an upgrade of an existing minor branch. That overpass has probably been there since I-5 was built, and was more than adequate for what little traffic JBLM saw. It was probably deemed acceptable to retain the curve and give it a 30 mph speed restriction rather than spend at least tens of millions more dollars on building a new, longer overpass over I-5 at a more acute angle, especially given the existing curves just southwest of here on the old route.

Even in the aftermath of this incident, I still agree that this was likely a good decision. Wouldn't you rather have to live with one 30 mph speed restriction than have nothing get built at all? Because that's how projects like this usually work. You have to settle for building what you can afford to build, which often leads to an acceptable, if less than ideal, final product.

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John_Perkowski wrote: 1) Had there been chances for crews to qualify this new trackage?

Yes, they had been doing crew qualifying runs before revenue service started, like is standard practice everywhere.

2) What does the route look like in terms of speeds and time to reduce speeds, going onto this curve and bridge?

79 mph, mostly straight for several miles before this 30 mph curve.

Jeff Smith wrote:Coming out of MAS79 territory into that? They couldn't mitigate that curve?

Mitigate - well, I guess a bunch of trees could have been chopped and a new span slung across I-5 at an angle, but who knows how many million that have ripped out of the project budget.

It is easy to mitigate with OPM. Other People's Money! Doing it with your own limited funds is much different.

mmi16 wrote:It is easy to mitigate with OPM. Other People's Money! Doing it with your own limited funds is much different.

um - so who's money then, given this was a federal-state project? The magic money tree? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxM0swbuxQo" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Jeff Smith wrote:That said, take a look at that curve. Good God. Coming out of MAS79 territory into that? They couldn't mitigate that curve?

Mitigated how? It's not like you can put the track somewhere else, or just stretch it out. It is what it is unless they're going to rebuild a whole new right of way somewhere else. Also, and this is rather critical... Look what comes after that curve. There is an interlocking right past this crash site. So what if they stretched the curve out and the train didn't derail? It would have been even worse. It would have careened off at the interlocking striking multiple concrete bridge pillars, and collapsed the highway overpass onto the passenger cars. From the perspective of body count, they're probably lucky the curve was there...

In fact, that signal that the train mowed down when it derailed at the curve was probably displaying limited clear or medium clear signal for that interlocking coming up. That signal would require the train to slow down even if there was no curve!! And that signal has line of sight down that whole length of straight track leading up to it. That's yet another way the crew could have and should have seen and known something was very wrong with plenty of time to take action.

deathtopumpkins wrote:Yes, they had been doing crew qualifying runs before revenue service started, like is standard practice everywhere.

79 mph, mostly straight for several miles before this 30 mph curve.

Thank you for the info on qualifying the new route.

As I've said, I will wait for the NTSB On-Scene report, preliminary report, and final hearing. Patience is a virtue in accident investigation.

dowlingm wrote:

mmi16 wrote:It is easy to mitigate with OPM. Other People's Money! Doing it with your own limited funds is much different.

um - so who's money then, given this was a federal-state project? The magic money tree? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxM0swbuxQo" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Everything costs money; no one's arguing that. But they spend all that money rehabbing the branch, for an incremental gain of 10mph, and a curve that looks like it could rival the 9th Avenue elevated in Harlem back in the day.

As a data point,

The US Geological Survey, on its 1:24000 topographic maps of Washington State (1959 publication, 1966 printing) shows the railroad as the Northern Pacific-Union Pacific joint line (NP of course folded into BN, which folded into BNSF).

Here is the area from the current USGS National Map.