Northeast Regional 188 - Accident In Philadelphia

Bramdeisroberts wrote:
Furthermore, seeing how the Amfleet crumpled up like a tin can should be the final nail in the coffin for the FRA's idiotic and outmoded passenger car "safety" regulations. Just compare the post-crash deformities of the most mangled amfleets to the "unsafe" and "not FRA-compliant" Talgos in the Santiago de Campostela derailment, and you'll see just how poorly our "safe" FRA-compliant stock did.

Speak nothing of the idiocy of fitting those tiny gunslits that they call windows on huge American-size coaches. I'm a first responder IRL, and the Amfleets look like a nightmare from a technical rescue prospective. Windows the size of portholes, and if you need to cut into the damn things to get people out, you have to deal with hard stainless steel and ridiculously-oversized structural members that are murder on the cutting surfaces of the Jaws of life, compared to the soft and compliant Aluminum construction of most modern European trains that the Jaws will cut through like butter. It's the same problem that FD crews have getting people out of modern cars, with their high beltlines, tiny side windows, and tool-destroying high strength alloy steel A/B/C-pillars. They both destroy tools, prolong extrications, and kill people as a result.

And it's absolutely an apples-to-apples comparison, as the Santiago crash was the result of a HST hitting a 50mph speed restricted curve at 100mph, just as this derailment is looking like it was. Furthermore, the Talgo had the misfortune of slamming into a reinforced concrete embankment with an inclined grade to pull the train apart, and its coaches STILL held together. In light of this disaster, the Talgo engineers should look at how their stock fared and feel very, very proud.

The Spanish Rail disaster you mention claimed 79 lives and injured 140, this apparently very similar derailment, seven people died (with possibility of some unaccounted yet to be recovered) and fifty injured with 243 aboard on a train using forty year old Budd stock...seems to me the FRA standards did pretty well when basic math is taken into account. I will give you though the Amfleet windows are too small, they learned that in the MARC vs. Capital Limited derailment.

Nick

It's a "global announcement" so everyone in every forum will see it ...
I flagged the original post for merging into the main post already.

USRailFan wrote:

Bramdeisroberts wrote:Furthermore, seeing how the Amfleet crumpled up like a tin can should be the final nail in the coffin for the FRA's idiotic and outmoded passenger car "safety" regulations.

If the car hit a catenary pole at 100 mph, I think it'd crumple regardless...

I'd rather hit a rusty old catenary pole than a concrete wall. The fact is that in very similar crashes, the Amfleet fared much, much worse than any of the more recent non-FRA compliant european trainsets have in collisions.

The last time I can think of when a passenger car came out looking so mangled was when the ICE hit the, again reinforced concrete bridge pier at Eschede. And that was a lightweight 1st-gen HST coach that was traveling 25mph faster than 188 apparently was. Remember that KE= 1/2MV^2, so that 25 extra MPH means that a given mass would would have 50% more kinetic energy compared to a train traveling at 100mph.

ngotwalt wrote:The Spanish Rail disaster you mention claimed 79 lives and injured 140, this apparently very similar derailment, seven people died (with possibility of some unaccounted yet to be recovered) and fifty injured with 243 aboard on a train using forty year old Budd stock...seems to me the FRA standards did pretty well when basic math is taken into account. I will give you though the Amfleet windows are too small, they learned that in the MARC vs. Capital Limited derailment.

Nick

When a car runs off the road at 100 mph and ends up in the median (or, say rolls into an empty railyard), half the time you end up with nothing more than a carful of shaken up people standing around and calling their families. When that same car runs off the road and into a concrete embankment or bridge abutment, half the time you end up calling the medical examiner and the state police accident reconstruction team because you have a carful of DOA's. The saying goes that it's not the speed that kills you, it's how quickly you stop.

And also, don't discount the locations of these respective accidents in terms of the death toll. The Frankfort curve is in the middle of a city of 2+ million people with the EMS responses to match, and is within 2 miles of no less than 4 Level 1 trauma centers. Santiago de Compostela is a city of 90k that likely has a couple community hospital-level facilities that would struggle to manage a handful of traumas, much less hundreds of them.

The US tends to do much better than Europe at managing multiple traumas and MCI's in general, at least in big cities. That's why the Madrid bombings killed ~200 people with 10 explosive devices, while the Marathon bombings killed 3 people with 2 similar-sized devices in even more crowded areas. All those amputees you see throwing first pitches, giving speeches, etc, would have been listed as "dead" had the attacks not happened in a US city with 5 Level 1 trauma centers within a 2-mile radius.

My point is to ignore the absolute death tolls because the emergency management resources of the two accidents were absolutely apples to oranges, even though the circumstances of the derailment weren't. The fact then remains that the Amfleets that hit anything other than empty railyard did absolutely abysmally in the wreck.

Do the ACS-64's accelerate faster than the AEM-7's?

"Amtrak crews have been installing "Advanced Civil Speed Enforcement" on the Northeast Corridor and other Amtrak rail routes, and were to install the system this year in the Philadelphia area." I sure don't think Congress is going to give Amtrak much of an extension on PTC.
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20150 ... at_we_know" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;.
If a speed issue with 100 mph+ turns out to be the truth, the problem may have begun well before the curve - the max speed between 30th st and the accident site is 80/70 mph (inner/outer tracks), with several other slower spots in there as well (except for ~0.3 mile, or about 13 seconds at track speed, just before the accident). JS

Bramdeisroberts wrote:

USRailFan wrote:

Bramdeisroberts wrote:Furthermore, seeing how the Amfleet crumpled up like a tin can should be the final nail in the coffin for the FRA's idiotic and outmoded passenger car "safety" regulations.

If the car hit a catenary pole at 100 mph, I think it'd crumple regardless...

I'd rather hit a rusty old catenary pole than a concrete wall. The fact is that in very similar crashes, the Amfleet fared much, much worse than any of the more recent non-FRA compliant european trainsets have in collisions.

The last time I can think of when a passenger car came out looking so mangled was when the ICE hit the, again reinforced concrete bridge pier at Eschede. And that was a lightweight 1st-gen HST coach that was traveling 25mph faster than 188 apparently was. Remember that KE= 1/2MV^2, so that 25 extra MPH means that a given mass would would have 50% more kinetic energy compared to a train traveling at 100mph.

I take it the CitySprinters are built to the same demands?
Judging by this picture, the locomotive seems to have held up remarkably well, it looks structurally pretty much intact, and I wouldn't be surprised if it is salvageable - I am far from convinced that a Taurus (the CitySprinter's closest European relative) would have fared this good in a 160 km/h derailment...

jbvb wrote:Small windows are a safety plus if the car's structure remains relatively intact. The large windows of the Budd RDCs were blamed for many of the casualties in the ATSF Redondo Jct. rollover of 1956.

Remember: Back in the 70s, smaller windows meant smaller targets. Heaving rocks at trains was a popular teen pastime back then.

Gerry6309 wrote:An Amfleet car is sort of like a tin can, quite strong longitudinally and fairly good in a sideswipe. However the semi-tubular design is susceptible to point impacts on a side, and to the twisting forces which can result. The six cars which did not strike the catenary tower survived the impacts they suffered pretty well. All in all, these cars have served us for almost 40 years, and have carried millions of passengers safely. They deserve replacement soon, but must last until those replacements are in service. Condemning them would do irreparable damage to Amtrak's corridor services.

Well said...

First and foremost my thoughts are with the injured, and the family's of those lost.

It is a horrific crash, and based on the fact that a SEPTA train was struck with something shortly before the Amtrak crash, and the
world that we live in now, I can't help but think it's the result of a sabotage.

Yes, the site is on a curve, but this section of the NEC is well maintained, with the most advanced safety systems that Amtrak has in place.

As a regular NEC rider, it is impossible not to think how it could have been you.

Ken

http://www.railroad.net/forums/viewtopi ... 6&t=159538" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Let's keep discussion in one thread.

If it hasn't been mentioned, toll is now seven.

Excerpt from Wall Street Journal

An Amtrak train involved in a fatal crash here appears to have been traveling at more than 100 miles an hour as it entered a sharp curve where it derailed Tuesday night, killing at least seven people, according to two people with knowledge of the investigation.

https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=Ex ... iladelphia

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nav ... -1.2220619

...

Dr. Derrick Griffith, a 42-year-old father and CUNY doctoral student, was set to graduate at the end of the month.

...

A Navy midshipman from Queens who survived Hurricane Sandy, an Associated Press staffer, and a hard-charging young businesswoman, were among the seven New York City-bound travelers whose lives were lost in a flash of crushed steel and chaos when their train derailed.

Justin Zemser, 20, was heading home from the Naval Academy to Rockaway Beach when he was killed.

...

Also among the dead: Jim Gaines, 49, of Plainsboro, N.J., an Associated Press video software architect; Abid Gilani, 55, of Walnut Creek, Calif., a Wells Fargo senior vice president; Rachel Jacobs, 39, of Stuyvesant Town, N.Y., CEO of a technology education company called ApprenNet.


And the death toll could jump. About 12 passengers are still unaccounted for, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported.

...

pumpers wrote:

MCL1981 wrote:I just did the math watching the video. Obviously this isn't precise down to the perfect MPH. But it was 4 seconds worth of amfleet on the right edge of the surveillance video as the train passed by. 510 feet of cars in 4 seconds is 128 feet per second. Which is 87mph into in 50mph curve. Of course this isn't precise. But there is no margin of error that makes that 50mph or even close to it. Sadly this looks like an oops, too fast.

Even worse. 7 Amfleet cars at 85 feet each + Sprinter locomotive at 67 ft = 661 feet. 4 seconds gives 112 mph, 4.5 seconds gives 100 mph. Oh my.

Yes, that looks like that was the speed it was travelling at, but before we blame the engineer (not that you were), we need to find out WHY it was going that fast (system malfunction, etc...).

Gerry6309 wrote:

jbvb wrote:Small windows are a safety plus if the car's structure remains relatively intact. The large windows of the Budd RDCs were blamed for many of the casualties in the ATSF Redondo Jct. rollover of 1956.

Remember: Back in the 70s, smaller windows meant smaller targets. Heaving rocks at trains was a popular teen pastime back then.

As it remains today!