Major grade-crossing accident in Valhalla 2/3/15

litz wrote:To make a "stop before the crossing when it's obstructed" system work, you'd have to be able to trigger a stoppage another entire trainlength (and then some) further up the track.

Well, any obstruction detector would have to ignore an obstruction that recently occurred, because it's likely to self-clear. How long was this woman parked in the crossing? From the accounts I've read, she had time for the gates to come down, get out of her car, go inspect her car for damage, get back into the car, and move into (further into?) the path of the train. With all the crossings in the US, I'll bet you could get some pretty reliable statistics for how long a car will dwell on a crossing before moving. If the crossing is obstructed for an unusually long time, the system alerts the train operator / engineer, and tells them what speed they need to be going to stop before the crossing.

the NTSB has released the preliminary report on this accident ...

http://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/Acci ... inary.aspx" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

(PDF : http://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/Acci ... minary.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; )

Very short, but confirms a lot of the info already released.

not much of report , without cause!!
basically same as what was released early this month.

Have the gate send a text message to the person stopped in the crossing, "move your car NOW dummy!" You know they're going to pay more attention to the phone than any silly bells/horns/flashing lights.

Have the gate (or any red traffic light) send a signal to the car computer telling it to stop. Seriously, this would work, and the technology is there!

Apologies if the following observation has already been made but the NTSB prelim report says only 20 passengers were in the lead car of an 8 car MU train carrying approx. 650 passengers, or an average of 80+ passengers per car. It would seem if there had been 80 passengers in the lead car, the death toll and # of injured passengers would have been higher than 5. Do MN commuters consciously avoid riding in the lead MU car? Or is the lower lead car passenger count due to it requiring passengers to walk the farthest down the GCT platform to board? Maybe it's just rumor but I've heard that Washington Metro riders try to avoid riding in lead and rear cars due to a couple of rear end collisions that have occurred there.

For those that find the subject of crossing protection interesting, try googling lidar with regards to level crossings.

Everyone:

I took note to that mention about the small amount of passengers that were riding in lead car 4333 and I
will agree that if there were more riders in that car at the time of the accident there may have been more
casualties and injuries as a result...

There is something that I noticed about the third rail that was not mentioned in our conversation as far as
I know - At the crossing there looks to be a substation just across to the south of where this train had come
to a stop and there more then likely were tie lines into the third rail near the end section - could the power
had been cut very quickly when the third rail was torn away from the feeder cable attachments or was there
power being fed to that section of third rail from another substation that was ahead of the train to the north?

I agree that the fire was from a combination of the SUV's gasoline and the electric current arcing or could it
have been accelerated by the friction of the steel third rail sections being ingested into the car body if power
was cut off right after impact with the vehicle?

The release of the interim report is just a overview of we already do know about this tragedy as mentioned...
The investigation continues...

MACTRAXX

according NTSB the power shut off immediately , and according both passengers and Engineer the fire started at rear of car beyond rear vestibule.
please don't guess and speculate unless you read all and viewed all NTSB statements.

DutchRailnut wrote:according NTSB the power shut off immediately , and according both passengers and Engineer the fire started at rear of car beyond rear vestibule.
please don't guess and speculate unless you read all and viewed all NTSB statements.

Please don't guess and/or speculate even if you have read all and viewed all NTSB statements.

It was an M7a car, not an M7. I wonder if they'll change that on the final report or not

no but rivet counters can change it on their notes.

johnpbarlow wrote:Apologies if the following observation has already been made but the NTSB prelim report says only 20 passengers were in the lead car of an 8 car MU train carrying approx. 650 passengers, or an average of 80+ passengers per car. It would seem if there had been 80 passengers in the lead car, the death toll and # of injured passengers would have been higher than 5. Do MN commuters consciously avoid riding in the lead MU car? Or is the lower lead car passenger count due to it requiring passengers to walk the farthest down the GCT platform to board? Maybe it's just rumor but I've heard that Washington Metro riders try to avoid riding in lead and rear cars due to a couple of rear end collisions that have occurred there.

The head car of that train was the "Quiet" car. Conversation strictly discouraged. That could have something to do with it.

It's also likely a function of the layout of the stations farther up the line. All the stations on the electrified portion of the Upper Harlem, with the exception of the little-used Mt. Pleasant Cemetery, have center-island high-levels between the two main tracks. Exit from the platform is via stairs to an overhead bridge, but the stair placement on the platform varies from station to station. I think the only station whose platform stairs line up with the head car is Golden's Bridge.

The majority of commuters on the Upper Harlem drive to the train- sometimes from as far as 15 miles away. Parking lots fill up, and the exits get congested quickly. There's a real premium to being the first one up the stairs, over the bridge, and into your automobile. The cars closest to most of the staircases entrances are therefore likely to fill up sooner than the cars farthest away.

I'm dismayed that there seems to be so much emphasis on stopping the TRAIN. Let's dump hundreds of commuters around in a train---because the nitwit drivers will be saying "They make the trains stop at the crossings now, so I can do whatever I want."

And forget on-time performance!

(I'm not against making improvements. Let's just be real about it.)

talltim - if I may, what kind of engine is your avatar photo? Does a tapered nose like that on an engine do a better job at deflecting obstructions (like I envision cow-catchers used to), rather than the rather flat-faced cab cars do?

Morisot wrote:talltim - if I may, what kind of engine is your avatar photo? Does a tapered nose like that on an engine do a better job at deflecting obstructions (like I envision cow-catchers used to), rather than the rather flat-faced cab cars do?

Slanted ends for MUs wouldn't be practical anyway unless they were somehow retractable, remember the R40s?