Crash Standards for U.S. Rail Vehicles

[Anonymous]

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[Junctionfan]

I believe there are tanks that can be unloaded from the bottom. I refer to wierd tanks I saw that did not have a top latch. Thease tankers were carrying argon or liquid oxgen and were leased to or owned by Linde and Air Liquide.

[BaltACD]

Mark -

Great analysis!

[Anonymous]

I think I heard something once about "Failure chain recognition" training for airline pilots. Basically a group of events that by themselves have little or no consequence, but when they occure in a sequence cause a failure. The training was to always look at events not individually, but to continually construct scenarios understanding all events as interelated.

Thanks for the answer, it was far more detailed than I expected. Making cars and locomotives as rigid as possible seems obviously sensible, and like the jacknifing scenario, it seemed sensible to me if they were actually designed to deflect a collision in a predetermined direction.

[Anonymous]

Also, I notice some tank cars have a conical section, is this for unloading from the bottom?

And, is it at all possible to prevent rollovers in passenger cars?(speculation)

[jchnhtfd]

The buff standards for North American passenger cars are very high indeed -- one of the problems VIA has had working with the Renaissance cars. And I do wonder if they are unnecessarily high...

It would be almost impossible to prevent rollover in passenger cars (or freight cars, for that matter): it's pure physics; unless something breaks, you have a base width of 4' 8.5", which is astonishingly narrow when you really think about it. If you have a typical ballast section with a typical side slope, if the centre of gravity of the car is more than that distance above the rail, over she'll go, no matter what the speed involved. And that distance is at or below the frame of almost all modern cars, never mind up in the car itself (which is where the centre of gravity of the car will be). On the other hand, once they go on their sides, passenger cars (particularly Superliners) rarely keep going unless they are going down a very steep embankment, off a bridge, getting pushed, or something else catastrophic. At which point rolling over becomes rather academic...

[mudchicken]

49CFR215, 49CFR229-231

[Junctionfan]

For humour purposes, I would imagine that for some railroads that there is no crash standards but it is standard to crash.

[mudchicken]

QUOTE: Originally posted by Junctionfan

For humour purposes, I would imagine that for some railroads that there is no crash standards but it is standard to crash.

....As in who was Cascade Green & White and goes KA-BOOM! in the night???[(-D][(-D][(-D]

[espeefoamer]

This is why CORP stands for: Clowns On Railroad Property