All Things Empire Builder

Empire Builder photos at dusk on July 4 at Glacier National Park
http://chuchubob.rrpicturearchives.net/ ... id=6069224
http://chuchubob.rrpicturearchives.net/ ... id=6069225

https://apnews.com/article/amtrak-derai ... 5c2664aeb1

Investigators say poor track conditions caused a 2021 Amtrak derailment in Montana that killed three


HELENA, Mont. (AP) — Poor track conditions that should have been flagged by a freight railroad company’s inspectors caused the derailment of an Amtrak train in Montana that killed three people and injured 49 others in 2021, federal investigators said Thursday in a final report.

The combination of wear and damage to the railroad track, had it been noticed by BNSF Railway inspectors, should have led to the track being replaced before the derailment occurred, the National Transportation Safety Board found. Investigators also found that a train inspector’s workload likely prevented him from doing a walking inspection of the area before the derailment.

The poor track conditions included a worn rail, vertical track deflection, misalignment and instability in the rail bed, the report found. The track is owned by BNSF railroad.
…

Just curious, would rail geometry cars typically been able to spot this?

Et Tu, Uncle Warren???

photobug56 wrote: ↑Thu Jul 27, 2023 2:43 pm Just curious, would rail geometry cars typically been able to spot this?

Sperry inspection equipment? Maybe, if the equipment is right to calculate the real-world geometry with the expected range.

We see such equipment at times on LIRR, which sort of amazes me because of the constant breakdowns on it.

STrRedWolf wrote: ↑Thu Jul 27, 2023 4:46 pm

photobug56 wrote: ↑Thu Jul 27, 2023 2:43 pm Just curious, would rail geometry cars typically been able to spot this?

Sperry inspection equipment? Maybe, if the equipment is right to calculate the real-world geometry with the expected range.

When a Sperry car goes out it inspects for a lot of different things if it was out there chances are it would have found something. The car gives a ton of information back. Think reams of paper. It is what the railroad chooses to do with the inspection results or how fast they choose to react. The NTSB said the failure of a track inspector to walk the area. To me as a professional railroader it means that section was a known issue not only to the railroad but to the crews who ran trains over that division. Just my $.02 worth.

eventually there is going to have to be a reckoning over what are the parameters for viable truly safe track going to be and who is going to pay for it..

the fra safety standards are merely the minimum safety standards. a railroad track inspector is caught between a rock and a hard place. the tracks need to be inspected at set intervals. as long as you ride over the track that counts as an inspection. whether it's raining cats and dogs, snowing, 128 degrees and travelling directly into the sun.
as far as the railroad is concerned the track is safe as long as it meets all the minimum safety standards spelled out for the class based on track speed in the fra track safety standards booklet.

if you as a track inspector determine that although the track meets all the standards, other extenuating circumstances lead you to require that we should lower the track speed from 80 to maybe 30. Very quickly, your superiors are not going to be very pleased. Amtrak is not going to be very pleased. Very shortly, you may find yourself pounding spikes again.

so the problem is that maintaining the track to the safety standards which are the minimum standards is a very tough game. the reality is that as track speeds go higher and higher the best plan is to have near perfect track far exceeding the minimum standards. But just about nobody wants to pay for that FRA standards plus quality on a 7/24 basis.

But it is a discussion worth thinking about.

Full report here. It doesn't look good for BNSF.

https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/Acc ... IR2308.pdf

Has BNSF turned to the evil of PSR?

As Mr. Photobug notes on the previous page, on one PSR point over the Chicago Sub, they have.

Say there is a manifest train that has a "fresh" (fully rested under The Law) and all they need to get to is Galesburg 162 miles (from CUS) away. That train will go by my house (in winter, good view from my front yard) at, maybe, 25 mph on FRA Class 4 track (60mph).

The PSR teaching will go as "hey, we got a fresh crew and we don't need 'em again until they have full rest, so why burn up Uncle Warren's gas when anything on that train is the customer gets it when he gets it".

Instead of the derail being Amtrak @7 it could have been the next train an oil or haz mat train. The next train IMO would have derailed.

Continuous welded rail is subject to the forces of thermal expansion, for which sufficient restraining force is provided by rail anchoring against the crossties, which in turn are restrained by a robust ballast section - including the shoulders. The "adjusted temperature" of the rail at the time it is laid is a critical measure; it is also a required matter of record. Typical track geometry readouts will detect variations only after displacement has begun. A buckled track failure often appears as a sudden event, triggered by ordinary traffic at the instant the built-up strain is released.

The lessons of maintaining temperature-adjusted CWR within acceptable limits has been learned at a price.

In the earliest years of Conrail, the massive backlog of rail replacement was urgently addressed with year-round rail replacement. The rail on the Youngstown Line was replaced in the dead of winter, with multiple buckled track events detected (without derailment) and adjusted over the course of the next few summers.

"Patch" rail replacement, by its nature, was a year-round necessity and the rail was heated when necessary prior to anchoring.

From the Youngstown experience and for other good reasons, the decision was made to otherwise suspend rail replacement as a matter of productioin (such as dual-rail) in the winter season.

The BN derailment was sadly preventable as the conditions at this site were plain to see on the basis of BN's own inspection records.

The combination of wear and damage to the railroad track, had it been noticed by BNSF Railway inspectors, should have led to the track being replaced before the derailment occurred, the National Transportation Safety Board found. Investigators also found that a train inspector’s workload likely prevented him from doing a walking inspection of the area before the derailment.

How many railroads do a walking inspection of tracks? I see a lot of hi-rail inspections and Sperry work, but actual walking of every mile of track?

Gilbert B Norman wrote: ↑Fri Jul 28, 2023 7:21 pm On one PSR point over the Chicago Sub, they have.

Say there is a manifest train that has a "fresh" (fully rested under The Law) and all they need to get to is Galesburg 162 miles (from CUS) away. That train will go by my house (in winter, good view from my front yard) at, maybe, 25 mph on FRA Class 4 track (60mph).

The PSR teaching will go as "hey, we got a fresh crew and we don't need 'em again until they have full rest, so why burn up Uncle Warren's gas when anything on that train is the customer gets it when he gets it".

That teaching is flawed Mr. Norman engineers are taught to run their trains at the maximum speed permitted. Perhaps its getting screwed by poor signal indication, slow orders, or they have an issue within the train. The only time they really burn Uncle Warren's fuel is during the the process of speeding up. While we are at it, the matter of slowing down wastes fuel too because well you have to speed back up. If Uncle Warren wants to save fuel and most railroads do this. Put just enough H.P. on the train to get to where you want it to go. Problem solved.
Remember I work on territories where St. Elwood first brought his theories to the states. I have never heard my freight brothers say they have a 60mph train but they were restricted to 30mph to save on fuel or crew costs. I heard a lot of other words about PSR but this is a family show...