On Sunday in Mer Rouge, LA a truck hauling a large crane on a lowboy trailer got hung up on the railroad crossing. A Union Pacific freight train slammed into it and derailed. Some folks waiting in their car caught it on video:
http://youtu.be/AuH1Ogdx4cg
The leaking gas was argon --not toxic but definitely a suffocation hazard. The driver of the truck got out and was unhurt. The engineer had minor injuries, the conductor had serious but non-life-threatening injuries.
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/10/06/2-injured-when-train-derails-in-louisiana/
An Argon tank might expode! Obviously failed chemistry and the possibilty of suffocation is only if the gas seeped into your basement (at 39 gm/mole it is heavier than air -- about 29 gm/mole). The atmosphere is already about 1% argon and hardly explosive nor dangerous.
An Argon tank might expode
Sheriff: "I don't care what's in it. It's a tank car and I know tank cars explode."
ramrod An Argon tank might expode Sheriff: "I don't care what's in it. It's a tank car and I know tank cars explode."
Just like Pinto's explode. What has happened to gray matter in today's world.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
Ray Dunakin On Sunday in Mer Rouge, LA a truck hauling a large crane on a lowboy trailer got hung up on the railroad crossing. A Union Pacific freight train slammed into it and derailed. Some folks waiting in their car caught it on video: http://youtu.be/AuH1Ogdx4cg The leaking gas was argon --not toxic but definitely a suffocation hazard. The driver of the truck got out and was unhurt. The engineer had minor injuries, the conductor had serious but non-life-threatening injuries. http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/10/06/2-injured-when-train-derails-in-louisiana/
In West Texas, UP has posted billboards warning truck drivers about bottoming out on crossings.
John Timm
Only one very long term solution. Start eliminating highway grade crossings. Should be part of trnsportation funds supported by higher road use taxes. NCDOT seems to be farther ahead than any other state on a percentage basis.
blue streak 1 Only one very long term solution. Start eliminating highway grade crossings. Should be part of trnsportation funds supported by higher road use taxes. NCDOT seems to be farther ahead than any other state on a percentage basis.
(1) Truckers must post their lading and proposed route to every government entity on their route.
(2) Ban Lowboys - Tell the rubber tired haulers to come up with a new design less prone to high center (at their expense, a la the DOT 111 cars)
(3) PTC type system for every commercial vehicle.
(4) Trucking industry must inspect their routes weekly (the road agencies aren't doing that yet)
and on and on and on with knee jerk reactionary ideas.
(sorry Randy and Switch7; Rhetorical response.; STREAK : What about all the taxes the railroads paid into fuel and HTF tax coffers over the years? [that were not spent on rail/hwy safety improvements])
Wishing a quick return to health for the crew!
Also, I hope that second locomotive isn't repainted after being involved.
mudchicken blue streak 1 Only one very long term solution. Start eliminating highway grade crossings. Should be part of trnsportation funds supported by higher road use taxes. NCDOT seems to be farther ahead than any other state on a percentage basis. There's another solution, but the rubber tired bubbas would like it about as well as the railroads do with their NIMBY/BANANA raging paranoids: (1) Truckers must post their lading and proposed route to every government entity on their route. (2) Ban Lowboys - Tell the rubber tired haulers to come up with a new design less prone to high center (at their expense, a la the DOT 111 cars) (3) PTC type system for every commercial vehicle. (4) Trucking industry must inspect their routes weekly (the road agencies aren't doing that yet) and on and on and on with knee jerk reactionary ideas. (sorry Randy and Switch7; Rhetorical response.; STREAK : What about all the taxes the railroads paid into fuel and HTF tax coffers over the years? [that were not spent on rail/hwy safety improvements])
There's another solution, but the rubber tired bubbas would like it about as well as the railroads do with their NIMBY/BANANA raging paranoids:
Here's something the rubber-tire bubbas could do, and it's already part of their job. Either a) fix the grade crossing right, or b) put up enough warning signs that even a truck driver could figure out not to cross the tracks there.
The problem is that over the years of adding ballast, rails rise. When roads are redone they take the road down to gravel and redo the entire concrete or ashphalt. The road doesn't rise (neighbors complain if they have to redo driveways). but the rails do. We will experience more high centerring with time.
I like your ideas. Especially number 2, I can just hear them screaming now!!!. . The PTC system would not work for truckers unless you have it set so if a truck with a low boy approaches a grade corssing where the could get stuck, they are disabled and cannot move. Number 4 would not work, because it is impossible to do. Fixing grade crossing to eliminate low boys hanging up MUST be at the truckers expense. The railroads would do the work, since the crossings are on railroad property. Signs do not work. In Chambersburg, Pennsylvania there were huge signs and flashing lights warning truckers of the low overhead and the exact clearance available. Many times they under the former PRR high line and got stuck or tore the top off of their trailer.. They CANNOT READ, so forget thst idea.
Thank God the crew had a widebody in the lead. I shudder to think what would have happened if some piece of crap standard cab was leading.
It's been fun. But it isn't much fun anymore. Signing off for now.
The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer, any other railroad, company, or person.t fun any
Any inert gas in high enough concentrations will suffocate you. Those thick clouds of argon drifting around the tank car are probably 100% argon, or close to it.
My thoughts go out to the crew for a quick recovery.
Let me ask this question as the current issue of Trains discusses PTC. Once active, are the designed PTC allow for interaction with crossings? Seems if a gate or a beam (think garage doors) is stuck up or the beam is broken, it would signal a full service brake application before making visual contact with the stuck truck?
And let me put this out there, if the PTC set off an emergency application can the train crew jump off before impact?
A bad one was several decades on the RDG where a commuter train hit a flatbed carrying coiled steel. The coils more or less stayed in place and the commuter train ran under them, causing the coil to travel down the center of the car like a bullet down a rifle barrel. The only thing that limited fatalities was it was a late evening run and there were only a handful of people on the car.
Dave H. Painted side goes up. My website : wnbranch.com
Looks like the "safety cab" saved a couple of lives in this instance. Prior to the safety cab one can understand why some railroads like Southern, N&W, and CN preferred to run their locomotives long hood forward... makes alot of sense.
Ulrich Looks like the "safety cab" saved a couple of lives in this instance. Prior to the safety cab one can understand why some railroads like Southern, N&W, and CN preferred to run their locomotives long hood forward... makes alot of sense.
Then again, some of those same roads refused to buy safety cabs until forced to by the builders. Not a lot of sense there.
Running longhood forward probably lessened the need for the safety cab, and N&W and Southern liked the bi directional capability of their units.
CN developed the safey cab way back in 1973 and was the only road (aside from a couple of Provdence and Worchester M420s) to use it until 1989... 16 years later! I wonder how many lives would have been saved had all roads adopted th safety cab in the early 70s. a question for the ages: why did no other road purchase the safety cab in all that time? Was it simply a cost consideration? The safety cab was built to withstand a one million pounds of force verses the 300 thousand of a standard spartan cab.
dehusman A bad one was several decades on the RDG where a commuter train hit a flatbed carrying coiled steel. The coils more or less stayed in place and the commuter train ran under them, causing the coil to travel down the center of the car like a bullet down a rifle barrel. The only thing that limited fatalities was it was a late evening run and there were only a handful of people on the car.
I think that was the South Shore in Indiana, rather than the Reading.
That's correct...and it was an early morning run. The coil had been improperl secured, but a secured load in the same spot probably would have been just as devastating.
Carl
Railroader Emeritus (practiced railroading for 46 years--and in 2010 I finally got it right!)
CAACSCOCOM--I don't want to behave improperly, so I just won't behave at all. (SM)
Pictures of the result:
http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=501252&nseq=22
UP AC4400CW, second unit out. Damage appears minor, and it looks like it could easily reenter service with a few small repairs. Hopefully, it retains its SP paint.
http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=501250&nseq=24
First unit, NS Dash 9-40CW. Not sure on this one, damage appears severe, and frame is bowed, although that could be simply due to the removal of the trucks. Safety cab did its job.
beaulieu dehusman A bad one was several decades on the RDG where a commuter train hit a flatbed carrying coiled steel. The coils more or less stayed in place and the commuter train ran under them, causing the coil to travel down the center of the car like a bullet down a rifle barrel. The only thing that limited fatalities was it was a late evening run and there were only a handful of people on the car. I think that was the South Shore in Indiana, rather than the Reading.
There was such a wreck on the former RDG in the late 1970s or early 1980s. I remember seeing the car before it was repaired.
Randy Vos
"Ever have one of those days where you couldn't hit the ground with your hat??" - Waylon Jennings
"May the Lord take a liking to you and blow you up, real good" - SCTV
Suspect the truck was headed to the FF Truck Stop about 150 feet ahead of it. 2 Year old imagery shows a recent renewal of the crossing surface with some old scrapes in the asphalt. Video seems to indicate truck was taking a LH turn (US-165 SB to LA2 EB) accross the tracks and was skew at the crossing when stuck. That rascal was a longer-than-normal lowboy which contributed to the FAIL.
It appears the truck climbed about 3 feet high in the 40 ft approach and then dropped down a foot on LA2 (US425) on the other side of the crossing. With a load that big and that long, wouldn't an oversized/ wide load permit be at least required noting the required routing of the load? (Never have seen a permit where high centering is a concern, either at the jackstand or mid-trailer frame.(and I have painful memories of the regular permitting and inspections required to move a crane carrier 30T crane))
Can't speak for all states, but some have gone to extreme detail to map profile grades in their state GIS systems at any at grade crossing and especially public crossings to spot problems. Colorado has hand carried records maintained by the PUC going back to 1912, so this is not a new concept. In Louisiana over the last decade, there has been an adversarial relationship between the railroads and the road agencies over crossing accident frequencies. Because nobody died, even with an inert gas leak, I wonder if NTSB would even get involved and point out the obvious. From panning around at ground level on Google Earth, I see no evidence of advance warning grade signage in the 6/14 scanner imagery at ground level.
The crane appears to be a medium size all terrain crane, not over width and not all that heavy. Pilot car nor extra permits not required if that is the case, at least in the states where I haul my heavy equip.
Northtowne
The Google "Street Level" view of this crossing appears to show about 4 layers/ strips or overlaps/ overlays of paving on the side where the truck was coming from (and where the video was taken from).
This kind of thing appears to be an institutional 'blind spot', for both NS and the DOT people. I saw a problem with a crossing this past spring in Weissport (Lehighton), Carbon County PA - the Bridge St. crossing of the NS Lehigh Line ( N 40 49.808' W 75 42.019' ), though I had no official involvement with that project. It was being set-up as a one-way westbound detour route while the parallel Thomas J. McCall / US Rt. 209 bridge over the Lehigh River was partially closed (open to EB traffic only) over the summer for substantial rehabilitation. An approximate measurement indicated (MC, I hope you're sitting down now . . . !) a drop of about 2.0 ft. at 30 ft. away (west) of the nearest rail; desirable is 3" (0.25 ft.) max. per the AREMA and AASHTO Geometric Policy "Green Book", so it was about 8 times as severe . . . A neighbor who saw me doing this told me that a auto-carrier truck got hung up on the crossing a few years ago, so the problem was clearly real and not just theoretical. A quick whisper in the ear of a former PennDOT supervisor now in the Carbon Co. office got to the right people, and considerable extra paving (like 12 - 15") was added - it still didn't meet the Green Book standards, though, and no one ever put up the sign that MC included above.
NS was clearly aware of the crossing and the work, because a 3rd flasher and gate was added for the left side of the 1-way westbound traffic, before the crossing - and a flagman was there most days, because the contractor was working under the bridge near the tracks. But it might have been only C&S people - still, this is something that should have been on the Track Supervisor's or Division Engineer's radar screen, because Bridge St. was and is a PennDOT road (Carbon Co. SR 2010), not some decrepit minor borough side street. And yes, the design engineer for the bridge rehab and detour - and the PennDOT reviewers and maintenance people, too - each and all should have caught it.
As part of this, I measured the length between the wheels and ground clearance of several lowboy trailers operated by both PennDOT and contractors, to see what was out there in the real world. The drivers were all cooperative, once I told them why. Most of the rigs had air or hydraulic cylinders to raise them a few extra inches when loading, etc., so that might enable a driver to avoid or get out of a 'close call' situation, but not a real bad one.
I have quite a few photos of both the 'before' and 'after' condition of the crossing, and the lowboys, too, but can't post them until I get the hang of the Forum's new software, and perhaps upgrade my computer's operating system as well.
- Paul North.
PDN: You're preaching to the choir and I know we have both seen worse. Another thing not called out yet is often the damage the high centered load does to the rail, bending (gage) or nick-ing (Broken rail) the rail in the crossing. Local track supervision is often so busy fixing damage and defects that they aren't attacking the causal problems. They probably can tell you from memory where the big problems are and the frequency.
seppburgh2And let me put this out there, if the PTC set off an emergency application can the train crew jump off before impact?
Not at 45mph!
Well, yes, they could jump, but at that speed I'd take my chances in my 'safety cab' locomotive. Now if had been a gasoline or propane truck, then I might reconsider, even at 45mph.
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