Southwest Chief on the Ground in MO

A photo of the dump truck’s frame. That was no run of the mill truck, my guess is it was at least 10 tons capacity.

Are they routing 3 and 4 through St Louis during the clean up? Would that add about 4 hours?

Just kind of weird that the locomotives stayed upright but all of the cars toppled over. Wonder if the lighter baggage car being up front had any effect? Unfortunate horrible event for Amtrak.

Patch Hog wrote: ↑Tue Jun 28, 2022 12:06 pm Are they routing 3 and 4 through St Louis during the clean up? Would that add about 4 hours?

Today the 28th, 3 originates in Kansas City. That means an extra move to either St Louis or Lincoln, thence to KC, OR, 4(26) terminated in KC and is being turned for the backhaul.

bostontrainguy wrote: ↑Tue Jun 28, 2022 12:10 pm Just kind of weird that the locomotives stayed upright but all of the cars toppled over. Wonder if the lighter baggage car being up front had any effect? Unfortunate horrible event for Amtrak.

Until the last few years, head end cars were always on the head end. You can bet your bottom dollar NTSB will be looking into why the entire consist fell over.

Patch Hog wrote: ↑Tue Jun 28, 2022 12:06 pm Are they routing 3 and 4 through St Louis during the clean up? Would that add about 4 hours?

They'd have to do a quick negotiation to get the slots needed to do it, but they also have existing trains (Missouri River Runner, Lincoln Services, and Texas Eagle) that can do the routing.

For the first time I saw the statement "The train didn't hit the truck . . . the truck hit the train". Looking at the pictures in this Yahoo news report, that may be why things ended up the way they did.

https://news.yahoo.com/ntsb-investigato ... 20118.html

X-ing protected only with X-bucks, driver with ear pods, listening to "something you'd never catch me listening to", and "whammo" into the trailing unit.

Whoops, I just broke Colonel's directive; understand if this is killed.

John_Perkowski wrote:A photo of the dump truck’s frame. That was no run of the mill truck, my guess is it was at least 10 tons capacity.

Careful! That's speculating!

bostontrainguy wrote: ↑Tue Jun 28, 2022 12:10 pm Just kind of weird that the locomotives stayed upright but all of the cars toppled over. Wonder if the lighter baggage car being up front had any effect? Unfortunate horrible event for Amtrak.

Maybe not weird. Perhaps because the center of gravity of Superliner cars is considerably higher than that of a single level baggage car and the locomotives, and all three types are essentially the same width? Laws of physics would tend to result in the higher center of gravity cars being more prone to toppling onto their sides in an event such as this.

Actually I believe the Superliners have a lower center of gravity than single-level cars due to all of the equipment being mounted lower, between the trucks.

Just saw a clip aired on NBC Local News of a WB (I think) Container train operating by the derailment scene - albeit at very restricted speed.

Death toll is now 4; NTSB is now at the scene.

bostontrainguy wrote:Just kind of weird that the locomotives stayed upright but all of the cars toppled over.

In some cases like this, the impact derails the locomotive. As the derailed equipment moves along, it damages the track, causing additional equipment to hit the ground. Each successive wheelset causes more damage allowing the cars to deviate more and more from the original line of travel. So while the locomotive may still be bumping along on ties more or less kept in line by the rails, trailing equipment may have nothing to restrain it, and thus topple. The tightlock couplers may come into play in some cases as well. Each case is different but generally speaking it's not unusual for trailing equipment to be more drastically derailed than the first thing to leave the rail.

bostontrainguy wrote: ↑Tue Jun 28, 2022 3:51 pm For the first time I saw the statement "The train didn't hit the truck . . . the truck hit the train". Looking at the pictures in this Yahoo news report, that may be why things ended up the way they did.

https://news.yahoo.com/ntsb-investigato ... 20118.html

Yikes, 4 dead 150 injured, 15 still in the hospital.

Amtrak press release to round things out:
https://media.amtrak.com/2022/06/amtrak ... mendon-mo/

NBC Today show report from this morning:
https://www.today.com/video/amtrak-trai ... 2978117846

bostontrainguy wrote: ↑Tue Jun 28, 2022 12:10 pm Just kind of weird that the locomotives stayed upright but all of the cars toppled over. Wonder if the lighter baggage car being up front had any effect? Unfortunate horrible event for Amtrak.

With no rails to guide them the car follow the terrain and laid on their sides. There are many derailments with single level equipment that did the same. I remember the STL-CHI State House in the 80s derailed hitting a dump truck at 79 mph. The F40 stayed upright and followed the tracks while three out of the four Amfleet laid on their sides.