Metrolink 681 Incident 22-Nov-2019

[nomis]

Metrolink train strikes RV in Santa Fe Springs, shutting down several trains to Los Angeles
https://www.latimes.com/california/stor ... iery-crash

The crash occurred just before 6 a.m. near Rosecrans and Marquardt avenues, said Eric Ortiz, a spokesman for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. The commuter train, RV and an adjacent freight train all caught fire.

Metrolink spokesman Scott Johnson said 120 passengers were on the Orange County 681 Line train headed toward Los Angeles at the time of the crash. No passengers were injured and everyone was evacuated safely, Johnson said. The train operator, who was closest to the collision, is also safe, he said. It was not immediately clear whether anyone in the RV was injured.

[lensovet]

I will never understand why LA has such a high incidence of at-grade accidents and collisions, but glad to hear that everyone is safe and that the new design cab cars held up well.

[ExCon90]

That intersection rates some kind of prize even in Southern California. Rosecrans runs E/W and Marquardt N/S, both are at least four lanes, and the three-track (ex-ATSF) railroad crosses through the middle of the intersection at a 45-degree angle NW/SE. I assume it was dark there just before 6 am, and a slow-moving headlight on one of the tracks may have led to the classic assumption that nothing was approaching on another track at passenger-train speed.

[lensovet]

I feel like too much benefit of the doubt is being given here — aren't there crossing arms?

FWIW sunrise in LA is at 6.30 am and civil twilight starts at 6.07, so i'm not sure that holds anyway.

[ExCon90]

Oh yes--very long crossing gates; but not likely to stop someone who was late for work and saw a slow train approaching.
I was just guessing about sunrise--people do things like that in broad daylight. (I haven't seen that reported on, but surely they had to have driven around a lowered gate.)

[lensovet]

Oh yes--very long crossing gates; but not likely to stop someone who was late for work and saw a slow train approaching.
I was just guessing about sunrise--people do things like that in broad daylight. (I haven't seen that reported on, but surely they had to have driven around a lowered gate.)

Judging from Look Around on Apple Maps, going around the gates here would be a challenge as there are raised islands separating the directions of traffic and gates that go all the way down to said islands:

IMG_8681.jpg (614.36 KiB) Viewed 3266 times

IMG_8682.jpg (464.06 KiB) Viewed 3266 times

[ExCon90]

Unfortunately I'm paywalled from the link to the LA Times, but apparently the RV managed it somehow. The top photo is looking eastward on Rosecrans but doesn't show whether Marquardt has the same raised dividers. (Maybe some subscriber to the Times can determine whether the story mentioned which street the RV was on?--or would somebody have deliberately driven over a divider to get around a lowered crossing gate?) It seems anything's possible nowadays.

[andrewjw]

The LA Times article linked above does not mention this.

[lensovet]

The dividers are the same on all four sides, I just posted only two screenshots to get the general sense of it. If you use iOS/iPad, you can see for yourself using Lookaround on the latest OS.

The LA Times article mentioned nothing about how the vehicle ended up on the tracks. Could have gotten stuck too. Here's a picture of the aftermath: https://california-times-brightspot.s3. ... 02-als.JPG

[ExCon90]

That's an impressively designed cab car; looks like the crush zone took it all and the cab itself held up, since the engineer got out ok (the story said the engineer was "safe," which I hope means without injury). We may never know how the RV got into that situation.

[lensovet]

That's an impressively designed cab car; looks like the crush zone took it all and the cab itself held up, since the engineer got out ok (the story said the engineer was "safe," which I hope means without injury). We may never know how the RV got into that situation.

You can find more details about the cars at https://www.metrolinktrains.com/globala ... _fleet.pdf.

The order was placed as a result of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_Glendale_train_crash. After https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Oxna ... derailment, deficiencies were found in the cab cars and Metrolink leased BNSF locomotives to eliminate the use of cab cars until those deficiencies were addressed. Guess this accident (albeit with a much lighter vehicle) shows that perhaps they have finally arrived at a design that keeps everyone safe.

Btw, my comment earlier about LA and grade crossing incidents was not misplaced: the 2015 derailment article even says: "Firefighters had previously pulled vehicles off the tracks at this at-grade crossing about 18 times."

[ExCon90]

Thanks for the links; I thought the design might have something to do with the Oxnard collision but didn't know it went back to the Glendale one. I remember the period when they roped off the front part of the cab car and thought at the time that it didn't do much for the engineer. (I was told that the original CP METRO (between Glendale and the shops) was renamed CP ORMISTON after Tom Ormiston, the conductor who was killed in the Glendale crash. A sad memorial.)

[Tadman]

I hope the crews and passengers are okay.

But here's a sad fact on the side. 120 passengers is barely near the capacity of a bilevel car. How many cars in the train? On a rush hour morning workday? No thanks to LA traffic.

[ExCon90]

Oxnard is the outermost station on the route. Between there and LAUS there are Camarillo, Moorpark, Simi Valley, Chatsworth, Van Nuys, Burbank Airport, Downtown Burbank, and Glendale (and I may have missed a few)--all big traffic generators. I've often stayed in Burbank on visits to LA, and the trains were pretty full by the time they got there, with Glendale still to come.

[lensovet]

Keep in mind the travel time on the train alone is also 1h40m minimum.