Cascades 501 Wreck 18 December 17

[mtuandrew]

And I believe you will also see data showing highways cause far more injuries than railways. As long as we have a Congress that passes laws based on "feelings", on what is technically possible instead of what is practical, we'll continue to see over-stepping laws and regulations. Welcome to the club!

Exactly, that’s why I think there will eventually be an automotive Positive Traffic Control requirement in some municipalities and states, and then in Federal funding legislation. It may not be right now and it may not be mandatory for all roads, but it’ll happen.

Of course the opposite may happen depending on who is in charge, and portions of railroad PTC may be allowed to go dark or shifted to a less-failsafe mode that’s more effective at traffic dispatch. We shall see.

[Tadman]

PTC was implemented on freight lines too, where there are no fare paying passengers. Why? There is more to PTC than just saving the lives of passengers and crews on the trains. There could be thousands of citizens in the nearby neighborhood that could be injured by two freight trains crashing head on into each other - depending upon the freight being carried on the train. It's more than just about deaths, it is also about injuries.

Right but that hasn't happened, either. At least not with any frequency. Sherbrooke was a bad thing, but how often does that happen? Once every 20 years?

And I believe you will also see data showing highways cause far more injuries than railways. As long as we have a Congress that passes laws based on "feelings", on what is technically possible instead of what is practical, we'll continue to see over-stepping laws and regulations. Welcome to the club!

Agreed. What's worse is the regulators that don't have to be reelected.

[Gilbert B Norman]

Sherbrooke was a bad thing, but how often does that happen? Once every 20 years?

Mr. Dunville, I presume we are addressing Megantic vice Sherbrooke?

[ApproachMedium]

While airbags seatbelts and other car safety improvements have for sure saved lives, they have added complacency among drivers coupled with newer cars being better handling, more responsive etc. ABS, stability control, there are a lot less consequences for driving a car wrecklessly these days than there used to be. You can easily wreck a car and survive it. You can easily do some wild maneuvers and not wreck the car. Just ask one of your grandparents or your parents how cars from the 50s, 60s and 70s handled and responded. Drivers today are so used to a car being able to stop on a dime from disc brake, when those disc brakes or ABS fails they are lost, they wreck. But thanks to energy absorbing zones, air bags, better seat support and seatbelts they can walk away unscratched.

Similar things will fall into the rail industry with these electronic systems in the same manner thru different channels. But my point is here, no matter how safe or how great you make something accident proof or preventative, there will still be accidents. Car accidents havent ended, neither will rail accidents or flight accidents. If there is a margin for error it will be met at some point. Air travel was doing great until the 737 MAX. Rail travel was doing great until Chatsworth and 188. Seems like after 188 we suddenly had a spike in passenger rail accidents.

[mtuandrew]

The overarching issue is that drivers and engineers are being asked to do more with less - gradually of course. Drivers have much more congestion than (say) the 1949s at higher speeds, with more distractions. Some help would be welcome; some regulation may be imposed. For railroads, tonnage is pretty far above anything the old days saw, and there’s far less double and triple track per ton-mile with fewer crew than ever.

[dowlingm]

Aircraft have INS, GPWS, TCAS, ILS. Their pilots can operate one off charters with charts loaded on an iPad and without familiarization flights except for the trickier spots. They can be located in three dimensions anywhere in the world if equipped with ADS-B and have subscription to the satellite services. But install speed control on a locomotive and suddenly you're letting the human off the hook?

Trains should be smarter, able to survive most things a dumb operator does and virtually everything a competent one does, and if the worst happens, Company should know what and where seconds after those on board do.

[Gilbert B Norman]

Pre-Chatsworth, I held that "you're paying a guy $125K a year to be your PTC". The subsequent incidents in both classes of service showed that is no longer enough. With all the distractions we have brought on ourselves, it is no wonder that more of us have attention, or "focus", disorders.

[ApproachMedium]

Aircraft have INS, GPWS, TCAS, ILS. Their pilots can operate one off charters with charts loaded on an iPad and without familiarization flights except for the trickier spots. They can be located in three dimensions anywhere in the world if equipped with ADS-B and have subscription to the satellite services. But install speed control on a locomotive and suddenly you're letting the human off the hook?

Trains should be smarter, able to survive most things a dumb operator does and virtually everything a competent one does, and if the worst happens, Company should know what and where seconds after those on board do.

But ask any pilot whos become an engineer what is harder to learn and operate planes or trains. They will all hands down tell you trains. I have never had a pilot tell me that a becoming an engineer was cake.

[Roscoe P. Coaltrain]

17 million awarded to the first 3 plaintiffs

https://komonews.com/news/local/three-p ... ry-decides

The lead plaintiffs name sounded familiar. He has an account at Railpictures.

[justalurker66]

Aircraft have INS, GPWS, TCAS, ILS. Their pilots can operate one off charters with charts loaded on an iPad ...

iPad training didn't work too well for the 737 Max. (Training for flying the new version of the plane, not the route, but still expecting pilots to pick up intricate details that could save their flights from an iPad app.)

Trains should be smarter, able to survive most things a dumb operator does and virtually everything a competent one does, and if the worst happens, Company should know what and where seconds after those on board do.

When PTC is fully operative they will be a step closer. But when (not if) PTC fails the operators (engineers, conductors) will need to be smarter than the technology that can never replace them. As crews rely more on PTC the door opens for them to become "dumb". If the computer runs the train and the engineer becomes a system monitor ("safety driver" in autonomous car terms) they will lose the experience to operate without the computers.

Technology has its limits ... There are people in the chair, whether it be in a pilot's seat or the engineer's chair, who need to be properly trained and supported for those times where the technology lets them down. When a system decides a course of action that will crash a plane or wreck a train. In the Cascade wreck the engineer did not receive proper training on the equipment nor the route and didn't have PTC to watch his back. He was set up to fail.

(And yes, I understand that the role of PTC is more of an electronic conductor, receiving and keeping track of dispatcher instructions, special instructions, physical characteristics, etc. not as an electronic engineer operating the train. But the usage can grow. Even at the electronic conductor level, it leaves the door open for a failure where a lightly "qualified" engineer is expected to operate hoping that PTC protects them and not in a good position if PTC fails.)

[Tadman]

Aircraft have INS, GPWS, TCAS, ILS. Their pilots can operate one off charters with charts loaded on an iPad ...

iPad training didn't work too well for the 737 Max. (Training for flying the new version of the plane, not the route, but still expecting pilots to pick up intricate details that could save their flights from an iPad app.)

There is a big difference between familiarization training on equipment and using an electronic chart.

[farecard]

The NTSB has been successful at reducing aviation fatalities because they grasp several truths.

One of those is "people make inexplicable mistakes." We've been talking about some of those in this thread.
Thanks to their work for decades they can say every accident takes multiple factors.

PTC will reduce the number of those factors.

[David Benton]

The NTSB has been successful at reducing aviation fatalities because they grasp several truths.

One of those is "people make inexplicable mistakes." We've been talking about some of those in this thread.
Thanks to their work for decades they can say every accident takes multiple factors.

PTC will reduce the number of those factors.

Exactly rught . And my contention is more highly trained operators( of any transport/ equipment ) will have "brain farts", simply because our brains are more overloaded with information than they have ever been . ditto the rise in early Dementia etc .
A turning point was the Airbus crash in Indonesia . An engine caught fire and the pilot moved to shut it down quickly . He turned the wrong engine off. Now there is a procedure where the pilot points to the engine he will turn off , confirms with the copilot he is going to turn it off and it is the correct one , before turning it off.

[justalurker66]

There is a big difference between familiarization training on equipment and using an electronic chart.

In the railroad world, handing the crew an electronic chart isn't enough to qualify them for that journey. Maybe it will be in the future when PTC is in place and trusted. But for now there are rules in place for familiarizing crew to their equipment and their territories. The railroads just have to learn to follow their rules.

[Tadman]

Here's some interesting reading from people that are shockingly out of touch.

https://www.railwayage.com/safety/ntsb- ... tatements/

https://www.railwayage.com/safety/wsdot ... trainsets/

Some great material from the articles:

"WSDOT (Washington State DOT) said it “will work with Amtrak to follow the NTSB recommendation to remove the [Cascades service] Talgo Series 6 trainsets from service as soon as possible.”

Despite the fact that:

“the NTSB had never, until now, recommended removal of an entire class of equipment"

and

"the Talgo Series VI was in compliance with all FRA regulations. While compliance with one of them was ‘grandfathered,’ that particular requirement had no relevance in this accident. FRA Administrator Ron Batory’s letter ... confirms that point."

And here's the real stroke of genius. Read this very carefully:

"The requirement for which FRA provided ‘grandfathering’ for the Talgo Series VI was for 49 CFR 238.203, Static End Strength. This requirement for the car to support an 800,000-pound buff load on the ‘line of draft without permanent deformation’ originated from a ca. 1912 U.S. Post Office regulation requiring Railway Post Office cars to be designed for ‘400,000 pounds of buff on line of draft at half yield.’ The later change to 800,000 pounds without yield, which is essentially the same requirement, made it testable. That the application was to be ‘on line of draft’ was because the wooden cars of the day(3) may (or may not) have had a steel center sill, but certainly had no other structure to support the load"

Take a minute to digest that. What you're reading is the the FRA collision requirement was based on a USPS rule for wooden RPO's. It does not take into account the fact that a 1912 RPO does not carry passengers, was made of wood, moves at about 40mph, was operated for a now-irrelevant agency over jointed rail with little ballast by railroads that are no longer with us pulled by steam engines and coupled with link-pins.

I mean can you make this up??? This was bad law in 1940 let alone 2020.

This might qualify as the utterly stupidest thing out of Washington since the $400 toilet seats.