Major derailment @ Spuyten Duyvil

Condolences to all involved and their families.

I started reading the comments below the NY Times coverage of this story, and soon wished I hadn't. Mandate seat belts, ban all push-pull trains, automate the trains and fire the engineers, throw out the freight railroads who have no right to operate, blame politicians, etc. etc. etc. There are those who know about railroads that are trying to speak up but I think they're getting drowned out by armchair speculation.

And this is the New York Times I'm referring to... (supposedly) with a more educated readership. The unintended consequences of the 24/7 news cycle...

I did not know that there was still freight service around that curve, apparently there are trash trains at least based on comments here and there. I've never been familiar with the operations on the Hudson Line. If New Yorkers don't want trash trains they could consider generating less trash.

The media has become way too airline oriented in their reporting. The so-called '"black boxes" are really called event recorders. And there seems to be some confusion between 'conductor' and 'engineer'. I've seen some reports that seem to indicate that the conductor was operating the train, which I'm sure was not the case. No matter how badly the media screws up the terminology, though, this is still a tragedy.

Tommy Meehan wrote:The NTSB has reportedly got the black box from both the cab car and the locomotive. This will tell them when braking was initiated and when the locomotive's traction motors disengaged.

What I will be interested in seeing is, did the train go into emergency and where? Because of the braking distances involved, once the engineer realized the brakes weren't working normally he should've put the train into emergency immediately. Where exactly the emergency braking was started will tell us a lot about what happened.

The other thing I'd be interested in learning is how fast the train was actually moving when it derailed.

Of course this is unofficial but, yes from what I've heard the train was put into emergency by the engineer before derailing.

This is something the NTSB will investigate. Even when equipment failures of this nature are investigated by MNR(if not fatalities or derailing occurs), the mechanical department will piece together everything to try and recreate the incident. Depending on the events this can be meticulous, all kinds of things will be done to test critical systems: brakes applied, brakes released headlights on high, dim or off, key left panel, key in right panel, key in both panels cars on third rail, cars going through gap.

In this case if the brakes failed as media outlets say the engineer has claimed all aspects of that system will be tested and the conditions recreated. While the air brake system is rather simple when you think about the physics, the many different systems all running together on the locomotive, cab car, coaches, brakes, power systems and wayside signaling sometimes act strangely when you have multiple things going on at the same time. Even recently MNR has issued notices to train crews regarding anomalies with equipment and how to avoid them. Think of automobile recalls because of faulty gas pedals or heated mirrors causing fires when in shifter in reverse with high-beams on. It is certainly not impossible for something like this to happen.

Even if the NTSB initially finds that the brakes were not applied before the curve, the real question would be why were they not applied? Operator error or equipment failure. Giving the benefit of the doubt here: I have seen weird things with train equipment, when you turn something on it turns off and vice-versa. The event recorder might show that the brakes were not applied but that might not mean that the engineer did not move the brake handle to apply the brakes.

In any event, whatever the cause of this incident, because of the publicity of this tragedy and MNR's history of accidents this year, you can be sure a full investigation will take place.

ebtmikado wrote:Not as banged up as some of the humans who lost their lives, or are paralyzed.

Thumbs-Up!

Charlie

Historians in the group may be interested in this link to a website report of a previous railroad accident near Spuyten Duyvil:

"The Spuyten Duyvil Railroad Disaster of 1882"
By Cole Thompson
http://myinwood.net/the-spuyten-duyvil- ... r-of-1882/

The posting includes a very interesting image of the area near the old Spuyten Duyvil station from 1907. Needless to say, a lot has changed since then,

DO NOT get into a back and forth on the merits of seat belts in trains - this is NOT what the thread is about. To everyone else - nice comments - carry on.

Does this curve have its speed restriction enforced by a code in the rails?

rohr turbo wrote:Is there mandatory drug/alcohol testing of the engineer immediately after an accident like this?

Yes, and there is full time random drug testing for all train crew members and dispatchers.

tobeornot2be wrote:Does this curve have its speed restriction enforced by a code in the rails?

Only if a southbound train is switching tracks at either CP 12 or CP 11, or is approaching a stop signal at CP 10. Otherwise there is no cab signal downgrade approaching the curve in question when operating on track #2.

BenH, thanks for the link to that very interesting article!

Do the event recorders record the positions of the controls or just their effects? In other words, does brake application just show up as a pressure change, or is the handle position also detected?

Here's a newspaper article from the derailment, looking at it from a CT perspective:

http://www.newstimes.com/news/article/C ... 026363.php" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I like how that report says

"The locomotive and several of the cars involved are diesel equipment owned by the Connecticut Department of Transportation, Anders said. Connecticut and New York share cars on occasion when needed, she said. The diesel fleets of Metro-North's lines are interchangeable she said, and Connecticut-owned diesel equipment serviced in the Croton Harmon yard is sometimes used to furnish Hudson line service."

Am I correct in assuming that the cab cars on these trains have a brake stand with the ability to dump the air - the same as in the locomotive?

<Edit> I just re-read Chicagorail1's post describing the setup. It sounds like there is a brake stand in the cab car, and the engineer has the ability to big-hole it right from there.

MN-P32AC-DM-201-227 wrote:I like how that report says

"The locomotive and several of the cars involved are diesel equipment owned by the Connecticut Department of Transportation, Anders said. Connecticut and New York share cars on occasion when needed, she said. The diesel fleets of Metro-North's lines are interchangeable she said, and Connecticut-owned diesel equipment serviced in the Croton Harmon yard is sometimes used to furnish Hudson line service."

The 225 is an MTA owned engine. Someone goofed.