Locomotive Cabs, and Crew Safety in Collisions

The N & W use to buy their locomotives with a high short hood and run them long hood forward as well. Other than the crew standing on the ground and using remote control it would be harder to make it safer than that.

It's pretty tough to protect the occupants of a locomotive with all that mass coming in behind them.  It's like riding in a trash compactor.

A lot of time and money are being spent on the problem, but it is not an easy task.  Physical laws are difficult to work around.  Perhaps something that would direct the force to the side or cause the occupants to be thrown to the side.

Am I wrong or do locomotive run as well backwards as forward,  just tell the engineers to reverse their engines, it's their prerogative, their job is just to get the goods to where they are going.

After all , steam locomotives ran with 60 feet of boiler in front of them for a thousand years.

tatans

After all , steam locomotives ran with 60 feet of boiler in front of them for a thousand years.

I've told you a million times not to exaggerate.

There have always been "collision posts' = heavy steel framing in the front of low-nose units for that purpose.  A few years ago the FRA increased the requirements for that substantially.  But it's hard to get a photo of them from a locomotive without the sheet metal over top, or really banged-up from a collision. 

See the following sections from the Table of Contents to Title 49--Transportation of the Code of Federal Regulations ("CFR"), CHAPTER II--FEDERAL RAILROAD ADMINISTRATION, DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION, PART 229--RAILROAD LOCOMOTIVE SAFETY STANDARDS, at:  http://www.access.gpo.gov/nara/cfr/waisidx_10/49cfr229_10.html 

229.141  Body Structure, MU Locomotives.

229.201  Purpose and Scope. 

229.203  Applicability.

229.205  General Requirements. 

229.206  Design Requirements.

229.207  New Locomotive Crashworthiness Design Standards and Changes to Existing FRA-Approved Locomotive Crashworthiness Design Standards.  

229.209  Alternative Locomotive Crashworthiness Designs.

Appendix E to Part 229 - Performance Criteria for Locomotive Crashworthiness.

In brief, since 1980 most locomotives have to comply with the following:

• 800,000 static end load without deformation per Sec. 229.141(a)(1);
• Anti-climber with a vertical resistance of at least 100,000 lbs. per Sec. 229.141(a)(2);
• Couplers with a downward resistance of at least 100,000 lbs. per Sec. 229.141(a)(3);
• 2 collision posts, each capable of resisting 300,000 lbs. of shear force at their connection to the underframe connection, with any reinforcement tapering from 18" to 30" above the underframe per Sec. 229.141(a)(4);
• Wide-nose locomotives built since 2009 must also meet the performance requirements of Appendix E per Sec. 229.205 General Requirements. (adopted 2006); 'narrow-nose' locomotives must meet the requirements of AAR S-580 Locomotive Crashworthiness Requirements (revised July 2005). 
• Appendix E requires that the locomotive acceptably withstand collisions with 65,000 lb. objects essentially simulating a steel coil and an intermodal container at 30" above the underframe, etc., as more fully set forth therein.   

Notably, the UP crew in the SD70 at the infamous Chatsworth, Calif. head-on collision with the Metrolink commuter train all survived - apparently all these features worked as intended.  Also, one of the computer 'models' used by the FRA and manufacturers for simulation testing to comply with these regulations is an SD70 - see the illustration of it on the following webpage:

See the FRA's webpage on Locomotive Occupant Safety and a short history of same at: 

http://www.fra.dot.gov/rpd/policy/640.shtml 

See also the 10 tests shown in the following at:  http://www.fra.dot.gov/rpd/policy/2004.shtml 

LOCOMOTIVE OCCUPANT PROTECTION CRASH TEST MEDIA

Click on the blue thumbnail images for full test description slide shows prior to viewing their associated videos. 

A year or two ago a distant in-law type relative (x 2 - he married my wife's cousin) was designing and analyzing a rebuild of an older road-switcher type unit, and he said that retrofitting it to accomodate these FRA requirements was very difficult.

- Paul North. 

Paul;

    Thanks, for providing the links and that info. Thumbnail #5was probably the closest descriptor to the incident in the Iowa crash.

     Yhe MOW Train, if it was anything like the ones seen around these parts are similart to the TTX style flats as to length, and usually carry several MOW machines, dependng on the size of the machines loaded.  Apparently, the last car did over-ride the OR protector and pierced the crew area of the cab(?).  It would be a pretty hard situation to prevent, unless the corner-reinforcement post woud deflect the intrusion upward over the compartment.

Again, Thanks for the Linked site.

 

Besides the manufacturers smashing locomotives to test and improve cav safety, do they send some to the DOT test center near Pueblo, Colorado for their testing?

I believe - but can't prove - that's where the tests took place that are shown in the slides/ video clips on the FRA webspages linked above.  It sure looks more like prairie Colorado than Masschusetts, Washington D.C., La Grange IL, London ON, or Erie PA !

- Paul North.   

Paul_D_North_Jr

I believe - but can't prove - that's where the tests took place that are shown in the slides/ video clips on the FRA webspages linked above.  It sure looks more like prairie Colorado than Masschusetts, Washington D.C., La Grange IL, London ON, or Erie PA !

- Paul North.   

Yep, during our tour in January were shown those clips and etc about what they were doing. 

tatans

Am I wrong or do locomotive run as well backwards as forward,  just tell the engineers to reverse their engines, it's their prerogative, their job is just to get the goods to where they are going.

Ok dude...

If a heavy train (1000 tons) moving at only 15 mph rear ends another train, it is hard to imagine how the structural integrity of the cab could be maintained.  Isn't the issue really more about the signaling designed to prevent the collision in the first place rather than survivability?  Did the signals work?  If, so, why did the engineer fail to stop in time?

schlimm

If a heavy train (1000 tons) moving at only 15 mph rear ends another train, it is hard to imagine how the structural integrity of the cab could be maintained. 

It would indeed be possible to prevent structural damage to the cab regardless of how much momentum from the trailing train weight is involved.  The cab just has to be strong enough so that everything squeezing it compresses and deflects outward from the line of impact. 

 

Consider a cab made as a steel sphere with six-inch thick walls.  All of the locomotive and railcar structure would crush and deflect every which way, but it could not concentrate enough force on the sphere to dent it.  Now a massive steel sphere may not be the answer for a practical crushproof cab, but there is nothing to prevent the development of a crushproof cab. 

 

It would add weight to the locomotive, but locomotives of all vehicles are the most able to carry extra weight.  It would add cost, but it would save lives.  So it is only a cost/benefit issue.  There is no insurmountable practical problem that prevents the development of a true safety cab.    

schlimm

If a heavy train (1000 tons) moving at only 15 mph rear ends another train, it is hard to imagine how the structural integrity of the cab could be maintained.  Isn't the issue really more about the signaling designed to prevent the collision in the first place rather than survivability?  Did the signals work?  If, so, why did the engineer fail to stop in time?

Why did the Edmund Fitzgerald sink?

Whatever man builds....the forces developed in nature under some set of specific circumstances can defeat man's creation.

Look no further than the Japanese Nuke plant....all it took was natures 48 foot Tsunami to defeat all the safe guards that man had built into the plant.

The Iowa incident, regrettable though it is, was nothing more than a man failure incident.  The train the fatalities occurred on was moving faster than the allowed 'Restricted Speed' and paid the ultimate price for the rules failure. 

Without more extensive pictures than I have seen, I would conjecture that the car that rode up and through the locomotive cab was not the car that was struck by the locomotive but was the 2nd or 3rd car and it was launched over the originally impacted car, that was held down by the anti-climbers on the locomotive,  and used the impacted car as a ramp to take aim at the locomotive cab.  While the nose section of locomotives is designed to withstand impacts, the cab section itself has little more than glass standing between the occupants and a on coming car body.

samfp1943

  [snipped] . . . Apparently, the last car [TTX style flat] did over-ride the OR protector and pierced the crew area of the cab(?).  It would be a pretty hard situation to prevent, unless the corner-reinforcement post woud deflect the intrusion upward over the compartment.

Again, Thanks for the Linked site. 

 You're welcome, Sam - it's something I've been meaning to look up for a while, and it seems to have done the job.  The "Outcome" comments / 'bullet points' to "Locomotive Collision Test #5 - Inline Collision of a Freight Locomotive with an Unloaded Flat Car" on slide 6 of 6 at - http://www.fra.dot.gov/downloads/Research/Test5_Info.pdf  (6 pages, approx. 593 KB in size) - noted that "The flat car did not buckle as anticipated", but instead "The flat car overrode the hopper car". 

BaltACD

  [snipped] . . . While the nose section of locomotives is designed to withstand impacts, the cab section itself has little more than glass standing between the occupants and a on coming car body. 

The rising oncoming end of a flat car is more 'knife-like' than the coil steel or intermodal container objects that are specified for determining the crashworthiness of a cab.  Also, the flatcar end is in a fairly thin horizontal plane, and fairly light, which makes it more susceptible to being deflected up rather than to the sides, as also occurred in Test #5 as noted above.  Accordingly, the crashworthiness standards may need to be revised to provide more protection in the windshield area, i.e., across the vertical zone that extends from the top of the nose section to the cab roof.  I suggest adding another heavy post - such as in the center so as to work with 2-piece windshields - and with a moderate slant or 'rake' up and backwards so as to deflect such an object up and over the cab, instead of allowing it to crash directly into the windshield area.

Bucyrus

  [snipped] . . . [A crushproof cab] would add weight to the locomotive, but locomotives of all vehicles are the most able to carry extra weight. . . .

  Exactly - locomotives are now mostly ballasted with extra weight already for better adhesion and traction force, so such added protection wouldn't impose a tare weight burden.  

  - Paul North. 

schlimm

If a heavy train (1000 tons) moving at only 15 mph rear ends another train, it is hard to imagine how the structural integrity of the cab could be maintained.  Isn't the issue really more about the signaling designed to prevent the collision in the first place rather than survivability?  Did the signals work?  If, so, why did the engineer fail to stop in time?

 

I'm sure all will come out after the investigation...

I think had the two trains been reversed, the the MOW equipment train running into the coal train, the crew would have survived. 

Some years back at Clinton, IA a UP haulage rights stack train on the IMRL (with an IMRL crew) rear-ended a BNSF local at 17 MPH within unsignalled yard limits.  The rear car was an empty tank car and it, like the light weight flat cars, rode up over the nose into the cab of a wide nose GE, killing the crew.

A few years later, the UP had a rearender at Blairstown, IA.  A manifest with a wide nose GE ran into the back of a coal train with a DP on the end at about 25 to 30 MPH.  It made a big mess, shredded a couple of aluminum hoppers, but the crew survived.   

Jeff 

Paul_D_North_Jr

[snipped] 

  BaltACD:   [snipped] . . . While the nose section of locomotives is designed to withstand impacts, the cab section itself has little more than glass standing between the occupants and a on coming car body. 

. . .  Accordingly, the crashworthiness standards may need to be revised to provide more protection in the windshield area, i.e., across the vertical zone that extends from the top of the nose section to the cab roof.  I suggest adding another heavy post - such as in the center so as to work with 2-piece windshields - and with a moderate slant or 'rake' up and backwards so as to deflect such an object up and over the cab, instead of allowing it to crash directly into the windshield area. 

  Looks like that's been thought of already, and the FRA has done an actual 'crash test' of the design - an interior square tubular framing almost like a 'roll cage' - and it performed successfully.  See "Locomotive Collision Test #9 - Freight Locomotive With a Strengthened Windshield Frame Impacting a High/Offset Intermodal Container" (8 pages, approx. 435 KB in size), esp. the "Outcome" on slide 8 of 8 and the "Comparison of Strengthened vs. Original Cab" in Test #6 on slide 7 of 8, at:

http://www.fra.dot.gov/downloads/Research/Test9_Info.pdf 

jeffhergert

  I think had the two trains been reversed, the the MOW equipment train running into the coal train, the crew would have survived. 

[snipped]

A few years later, the UP had a rearender at Blairstown, IA.  A manifest with a wide nose GE ran into the back of a coal train with a DP on the end at about 25 to 30 MPH.  It made a big mess, shredded a couple of aluminum hoppers, but the crew survived.   

Jeff 

  Jeff's mention of the results of the collision with the coal train caused me to look at 2 other tests, as below.  Notably, in both instances the locomotive rode up onto the hopper car, and the damage to the cab seemed survivable to me.  For the details and photos, see: 

"Locomotive Collision Test #1 - Inline Collision of a Freight Locomotive with a Stationary Hopper Consist" (SD-70, 30 MPH) (6 pages, approx. 632 KB in size) at:  http://www.fra.dot.gov/downloads/Research/Test1_Info.pdf 

"Locomotive Collision Test #7 - Freight Locomotive (DASH8-C39) Colliding with a Stationary Hopper Car" (30 MPH) (6 pages, approx. 531 KB in size) at: http://www.fra.dot.gov/downloads/Research/Test7_Info.pdf

 - Paul North. 

Maybe the answer would be to have a regular boxcar on the end of a flat car train??t

jeffhergert

  [snipped]  A few years later, the UP had a rearender at Blairstown, IA.  A manifest with a wide nose GE ran into the back of a coal train with a DP on the end at about 25 to 30 MPH.  It made a big mess, shredded a couple of aluminum hoppers, but the crew survived. 

  Jeff - So it was really a locomotive - locomotive collision, with the wide nose GE impacting the DP unit ?  About what year was it ? (so I can look to see if it is in either the NTSB or FRA accident reports)

The 'unworthy' thought occurred to me that if a union representative proposed to a railroad management that the next order of locomotives have cabs with enhanced protection - such as the center post or 'cage' that I referenced above, the response might well be along the same lines as an SP trainmaster gave to an engineer who objected to the lack of protection with the first "cab-forward" type steam locomotives by saying he didn't want a caboose in his lap someday: "Mister, you do your job right, and that'll never happen to you". 

Well, fair enough - but even if a crew runs perfectly (and just like me driving on the highway  ), that's no guarantee that some other guy out there isn't going to screw up and do something that causes a collision.  And aside from that, there are other impact incidents which can be caused by someone or something other than any train crew which would make such protection worthwhile, such as: shifted loads/ containers/ trailers; steel coil trucks at grade crossings; trees down; rockslides; runaways from industrial sidings; blind shoves or other bad moves in yards; construction equipment too close to the tracks; MOW equipment fouling the track; a derailment of another train on an adjoining track right in front of the locomotive, etc. 

- Paul North. 

Paul, it happened  April 13, 2005 at Blairstown, Iowa. 

FRA Accident Investigation Report HQ-2005-33.

I have a pdf copy if you can't find it on line for some reason.

Jeff 

Thanks, Jeff - and not only for that, but for all of your other very informative and insightful comments on this and other threads here.    (And now I know you read my post above, which I also intended . . .  ) 

- Paul North. 

Thank you Paul for the kind words.

I've often thought the FRA was very kind to the railroad in placing primary blame on the crew and secondary blame on the defective brake equipment and not the other way around.  The crew did everything right, except for not realizing the brake application wasn't taking effect like it should have. 

The fireman quit after this incident.  The engineer was hurt enough that he hasn't come back.  The conductor came back and retired a couple of years ago.  I see him at the Clinton Wal-mart from time to time.  I worked with him a few times afterward.  The location of the collision is now sometimes referred to as, "(engr's name) Curve."

Jeff

I once rode an excursion on the Clinchfield RR, and they had just, a few days earlier, had a head-on collision of two freight trains inside of a tunnel.  All of the wreckage had been pulled out of the tunnel and was piled up outside near each end.  What an awful predicament that would be.  There would be no way to jump and get away from the crush, and the tunnel would hold the trains in a straight line, so nothing could deflect.  All the force of both trains would go right to the point of impact.  

I jsut watched an interesting safety video yesterday, im sure some of you have heard of it. It is called "Mental Vacations" and I believe is from CSX. Now long story short the crew realized they couldn't stop and were going to go head on with another train, so the fireman started to run out of the back of the engine to jump off, but realized he was going to get crushed. He then ran back into the cab and crouched behind the engineer, rode it out, and they all (4 man crew) survived. It was interesting because they hit at probably 20 mph and they just had scratches.

Sometimes jumping is the best option, but sometimes not.  I read an account in the book Call the Big Hook where a fireman on a steam passenger train stepped off at about 70-80 mph and survived.  The road forman of engines was standing behind the engineer coaching him to make better time, and the fireman told him they had better slow down because they would not make the next curve at that speed.  The RFE told the fireman to mind his own business, so the fireman went down the ladder and stepped off.  Now that is conviction!

The engine hit the curve, and the train leapt across the Arkansas River, killing the engineer and the RFE.

In general Locomotives are alot safer for crews than they ever were before. Just like modern passenger cars some level of crash worthiness is a major part of its design. Passenger cars are designed to be survivable for the occupants in a collision with a vehicle of similar weight at a reasonable speed.

While I am this loco/automobile analogy.....

 

I witnessed an accident on the highway a few years ago where a guy(coworker) was killed.A 2x4 fell off a work truck, bounced off the road, and came through the windshield of, and was impaled itself into the guys face. His relatively new Grand Marquee could have easily and without much damage collided with that same piece of lumber standing on end, but coming though the windshield at 70-80 mph was deadly.

 

Note: I had an image that showed the damage to two locos that had been in a low speed head on. One was an older standard cab loco, the other a newer widecab. You could tell that the crew of the standard cab could have been killed or seriously injured and widecab crew would likely have been able to "drive her home".

 

However the site I remember seeing this on(CSX-SUCKS.com) appears to be no longer with us.

Got it - thanks.  Link to it (7 pages, approx. 144 KB in size): 

http://www.fra.dot.gov/downloads/safety/Accident_Investigation/2005/hq200533.pdf 

From the "Analysis" section of the report, on page 6 of 7:  "It was quickly discovered a one-way check valve within the number 8 pipe of the locomotive's air brake system was defective.  The defective valve allowed air to pass in the wrong direction when the main brake handle was placed in the suppression position.  This allowed air pressure to drive the release control valve up in its cylinder and prevented air from reducing in the equalizing reservoir, thereby circumventing the full service brake application of the train's air brakes."

 I agree, Jeff - with a trainee engineer/ Fireman In Training, that was like a simulator scenario happening in real-life.  The defective valve - geez, those things seem complicated ! - is what disabled the brake system and created the crisis - not the crew's actions - though maybe they should have reacted to that sooner.  And I'm not sure what they could have done then anyway to stop the train quickly, with the brakes malfunctioning that way.

The report really doesn't address the crashworthiness of the locomotive cabs, either.

Thanks for providing that info.

- Paul North. 

tatans

Am I wrong or do locomotive run as well backwards as forward,  just tell the engineers to reverse their engines, it's their prerogative, their job is just to get the goods to where they are going.

After all , steam locomotives ran with 60 feet of boiler in front of them for a thousand years.

LOL you ever ran a locomotive?.........................