MBTA commuter train accident at Canton 3/25/08

tom18287 wrote:can i ask a question.....why wouldnt the two hitches have just locked together?

Not with a 40 MPH collision, I believe.

Veristek wrote:
Will she be fixed at BET? Or will she have to be transported to god knows where for a repair job?

Who knows what will happen to the engine. More than likely it will be sent somewhere else to be repaired...

sery2831 wrote:More than likely it will be sent somewhere else to be repaired...

Either that, or they'll scrap it. BET is unable to handle any sort of body work.

Probably parts of the 1030 will be running around the system on other locomotives shortly.

From a communications standpoint listening to the various tapes released by MBTA, and reading some great first hand reports here, there are several communication breakdown questions.

1) If the lumberyard deals w/railroad activity frequently (as it seems), why did they call 9-1-1 first and not the railroad directly? I'd think that number would be handy for more mundane reasons.

2) Is the radio system as muffled (or worse) at the dispatchers end with other channels, several speakers/sites, people in the room, a phone ringing at same time, etc? The audio quality directly from the MBTA Radio doesn't sound too good. I can only imagine how it sounded at the desk itself.

3) What was the training of the MBTA dispatcher? The dispatcher did seem very confused and/or just absent for awhile. why?

4) How much authority (with training) does the individual Dispatcher "On the Air" have to make rapid risk-reward decisions? (Such as backing up a train). Or was he getting permission for the backward move? Once he did reply, it was a pretty confident answer.

5) What levels of interoperability exist between MBTA Communications and the local authorities? And how many "Local Authorities" are they saddled with knowing? How much time could have been saved had Canton called MBTA after the misguided 911 call and not the reverse as happened? Did Canton really know where the car was. Remember public safety responds (reacts) to the emergency. As they'd get info on a moving target, the intel is already bad.

6) What information prior to MBTA's call did Canton Emergency Service have? And did that information contradict what the MBTA dispatcher told them? If the Canton dispatcher got a call two miles up the line, getting a call w/different info will throw a wrench in any emergency response. Especially when MBTA just told them the stakes were raised from runaway to a crash.

Obviously we can Monday morning QB. Many here probably know as much about the MBTA ops as the MBTA. And in reality, ideas here will likely parallel or even find something the pros might miss. Hopefully, they'll learn a lot to prevent "next time".

John Marcel/K1FDD
Concord, NH Fire Communications

mxdata wrote:Probably parts of the 1030 will be running around the system on other locomotives shortly.

Heaven forbid. I hope that 1030 isn't scrapped. Call me sentimental, but 1030 is a heroic locomotive in my eyes, preventing more serious injuries on the #917. I could have been hurt worse if not for the 1030 taking the brunt of the impact from the rogue freight car. That, and the fact that the MBTA cannot afford to lose any more locos, being under-equipped as it already is.

Its not the damage you can see, as most of that can easely be repaired.
but the impact may have broken or sheared the engine and generator mounts, components may have ripped of their footings from the impact.

If anyone is interested, the coaches that were involved are at BET right along the Fitchburg route in the yard.

cars - 214, 603, 610, 622, 651, 1523

sery2831 wrote:If anyone is interested, the coaches that were involved are at BET right along the Fitchburg route in the yard.

cars - 214, 603, 610, 622, 651, 1523

Is the consist still intact? Meaning #1030 - 214 - 603 - 610 - 622 - 651 - 1523? If so, #622 was my car I was riding in.

Anything damaged in these cars, or are they there just as a precautionary measure?

I don't know how the cars got separated, but a yard crew gathered the cars and put them in consist order yesterday. I assume this is for further investigations. I understand there is some interior damage to the cars, but nothing I will say right now.

Bracing like you say is how you break wrists and other arm joints.

Oh, I didn't know that, I guess then duck under the seat then.

Also, I saw that front photo of 1030 on nerail.org last night, I was stunned how the front got damaged, hopefully it won't suffer the same fate as 1073 did 18 years ago.

Every bit of crumpled metal there represents force absorbed by the locomotive, and not the passengers. If they need to, the MBTA can always find a replacement locomotive somewhere. You can't replace human lives!

The National Transportation Safety Board has decided that this accident was not serious or significant enough for them to bother investigating it.

Boston Herald article
Boston Globe article
Quincy Patriot-Ledger article

The locomotive engineers' union is not happy.

Ron Newman wrote:The National Transportation Safety Board has decided that this accident was not serious or significant enough for them to bother investigating it.

Boston Herald article
Boston Globe article
Quincy Patriot-Ledger article

The locomotive engineers' union is not happy.

What the hell? Do we have to have more runaway freight trains slamming in more MBTA trains before the NTSB takes action? I could have been hurt worse in that accident, and to think that the NTSB doesn't care about railroad safety is (insert expletive of choice here).

As for damage to the coaches, is it the chairs, vestibules, lights, or messed up bogey springs or something like that?

There are a number of interesting scenarios possible:

1) If the switch connecting the Stoughton Branch to the NEC was set for NEC traffic, would the frieght car have been able to 'push' through the moveable frog? Would the moveable frog have been enough to derail the car?

Almost certainly. If a purpose built derail has trouble stopping a train, a MPF wouldn't provide too much trouble.

2) If the car derailed at that switch, then what? Would the track circuit probably get messed up enough by the damage that NEC signals would drop to restricting or stop? Even if the signals dropped, it is possible an approaching high speed train (any MBTA not stopping at Canton Junction or an Acela) on either track would have encountered the wreckage without enough time to stop......

As soon as the car passed the signal to Canton Junction it would (ideally) shunt the track circuit and drop the signals of all affected routes to STOP as well as the cab signals. There is a short window where any approaching train would be unable to stop and would result in a collision. That's called the luck of the draw.

3) If the freight car 'pushed' through the moveable frog, I agree that the freight car would have continued travelling north (track eastbound) on Track 2 towards Boston (until the freight car got rear-ended by a north / east bound train (imagine 130 mph Acela overtaking a 40 mph freight car)).

If the car entered the NEC outside of the "critical window", any approaching train would have its cab signals drop and would be able to come to a safe stop behind the freight car.

From a communications standpoint listening to the various tapes released by MBTA, and reading some great first hand reports here, there are several communication breakdown questions.

1) If the lumberyard deals w/railroad activity frequently (as it seems), why did they call 9-1-1 first and not the railroad directly? I'd think that number would be handy for more mundane reasons.

"That Guy" who deals with the freight cars probably wasn't there at the time. In a possible situation where the lumber yard employee was faced with trying to find the information or calling 911, he just called 911.

2) Is the radio system as muffled (or worse) at the dispatchers end with other channels, several speakers/sites, people in the room, a phone ringing at same time, etc? The audio quality directly from the MBTA Radio doesn't sound too good. I can only imagine how it sounded at the desk itself.

Railroad personnel seem to be able to develop a fairly trained ear for the radio communications. It's as good as ATC or Police communications.

3) What was the training of the MBTA dispatcher? The dispatcher did seem very confused and/or just absent for awhile. why?

That was an Amtrak dispatcher. Since the towers were all closed dispatchers are chronically overtasked. Amtrak is actually one of the better railroads for dispatch staffing, but you just can't get that old time personal service any more. The Corridor DS was probably busy dealing with other things at the time when the 817 engineer called. The DS would have to figure then process the call mentally, drop what he was doing, tell the chief dispatcher there was an emergency, get other trains stopped, etc.

4) How much authority (with training) does the individual Dispatcher "On the Air" have to make rapid risk-reward decisions? (Such as backing up a train). Or was he getting permission for the backward move? Once he did reply, it was a pretty confident answer.

Permission to back up is a standard practice that just requires the dispatcher to check if there is another train following in the same block. There would be nothing especially gutsy about giving such permission. Also, I need to check my rulebook, but I am not sure if trains even need permission to reverse within their own block in 251 and 261 territory. In this case the train would not have someone watching from the rear so the engineer wanted to make sure that there was nobody behind him.