Railroad Forums
Moderators: GirlOnTheTrain, mtuandrew, Tadman
Amtrak begins the new year by formally planning to request revisions to Federal Railroad Administration safety standards to facilitate lighter-weight high speed rail equipment, a move U.S. rail advocates have sought for at least two decades.From this blurb it seems to be tied in to replacing the Acela fleet, but I think the topic is worthy to stand on its own:
Amtrak seeks the adjustment to better plan for new HSR equipment to replace the heavier Acela Express gear now traversing the Northeast Corridor, according to Amtrak President and CEO Joseph Boardman.
U.S. crashworthiness standards currently include reliance on heavier rail equipment compared with European or Asian counterparts, which lower top speed potential and energy efficiency. The U.S. approach is weighted toward crash survivability, as opposed to simply crash avoidance, as in other locales.
Amtrak Seeks Safety Changes to Allow U.S. Bullet Trains
...
Existing standards apply to trains traveling as much as 150 miles per hour (241 kilometers per hour). Writing new rules that relax railcar structural-strength requirements for faster trains “would allow for less use of fuel, quicker acceleration, a different performance profile,” Boardman, 64, said. “What we’re really looking for is a performance specification here.”
...
Safety standards for passenger trains operating at more than 150 mph are being developed, Kevin Thompson, a spokesman for the Federal Railroad Administration, said in an e-mail. Amtrak is “working with FRA and other members of the Railroad Safety Advisory Council to better define the car strength criteria for higher-speed passenger equipment,” he said.
Amtrak’s long-term plan for high-speed service in the Northeast envisions those trains running on dedicated tracks.
...
orulz wrote:An analogy:You analogy is entirely incorrect. The reality is that there wasn't any systematic or scientific crash testing of automobiles before Mercedes-Benz started the practice in 1959, and it wasn't until 1967 that there were meaningful passenger car safety standards in North America.
Accident survivability in cars from the 1950s basically consisted of making the cars as heavy and stiff as possible so that in the event of a wreck the car would not deform and would basically plow through whatever it ran into. This approach is not really that effective.
orulz wrote:In modern days, things like crumple zones and air bags slow down the impact so that the car is slowed down more gradually and the full force of the impact is not absorbed by all passengers all at once.Actually, airbags exist to make sure that the occupants don't suffer fatal injuries from coming into contact with the various parts of the interior of the car, such as the steering column, roof pillars and dash. Crumple zones do mitigate the sudden impact forces, but interior airbags aren't that simple.
orulz wrote:Likewise, my rudimentary understanding of current "buff strength" requirements are that they stipulate that the lead car must weigh at least a certain amount, and that it must be able to withstand a certain severity of impact without deforming at all. Under a modern "crash energy management" regime, trains would be designed to include crumple zones to turn a severe impact into a more gradual one.The notion of a "crumple zone" already exists in FRA standards to the extent that you find unoccupied vestibules on either end of the Acela and are likely to see unoccupied end on all future rolling stock.
goodnightjohnwayne wrote: You analogy is entirely incorrect. The reality is that there wasn't any systematic or scientific crash testing of automobiles before Mercedes-Benz started the practice in 1959...If you're going to quote 'reality', at least do a five minute fact check on Google beforehand.
During the 1950s the Daimler-Benz engineers watched closely to see how crash testing established itself as a new instrument of research and development in the United States. Visits to American universities and car manufacturers provided the experts from Stuttgart with inspiration and ideas for their own component testing and crash tests.Crash testing was well on it's way to being an established science by the end of the 50's. The value of even crude seat belts was known by then - the now universal 3 point seatbelt was developed in the late 50's. That didn't happen by guessing, it was the result of crash testing.
One such visit was made by Karl Wilfert, Rudolf Uhlenhaut and Fritz Nallinger to Ford’s crash testing facility in Dearborn in 1955. The men from Stuttgart were surprised to discover that Ford was already using accident research for aggressive marketing purposes at that time. This would soon influence the way Mercedes-Benz dealt with the sensitive issue of vehicle safety.
korax wrote:http://www.railwayage.com/index.php/pas ... channel=41FRA to Amtrak: Ha, ha, ha.
goodnightjohnwayne wrote:You analogy is entirely incorrect. The reality is that there wasn't any systematic or scientific crash testing of automobiles before Mercedes-Benz started the practice in 1959, and it wasn't until 1967 that there were meaningful passenger car safety standards in North America.Point taken, but I wasn't necessarily talking about a scientific approach to safety. Even if there was nothing scientific behind it, manufacturers built vehicles like tanks in order to create an image of safety and to use it in promoting their vehicles.
The reality was that before Mercedes in 1959, no manufacturer really knew how a car would perform "in the event of wreck," and Mercedes engineers were so astonished by their own first crash test that they cancelled a car that was nearly ready for production.
So, there was no presumption that a "car would not deform and would basically plow through whatever it ran into." That was never a design objective. Safety wasn't a major design objective, hence the unpredictable result of the first North American crash tests in the 1960s.
quoted by Jeff Smith wrote:.... The U.S. [crashworthiness] approach is weighted toward crash survivability, as opposed to simply crash avoidance, as in other locales.(I'm assuming "other locales" means basically "Western Europe", and not places like India.)
Jersey_Mike wrote:To be fair a high speed trainset captive to the NEC would eliminate most of the problems with grade crossing accidents, ...You'd have to define the NEC to not include NYP to BOS, or anything south/west of Washington. I'm not sure what grade crossings there are between PHL and Washington.
Jersey_Mike wrote:I can't even remember the last time Amtrak had a major wreck on the NEC.You don't remember the wreck of the Colonial? I'm sure that neither the Amtrak brass nor the FRA will forget it any time soon.