Window Safety Glass for Locomotives, Passenger Cars

[rjemery]

I have been reading of the train wreck involving the PRR’s Broker, which crashed in Woodbridge, NJ, the evening of February 6, 1951.  Many of the injured died from bleeding to death caused by severe cuts from the flying broken glass of the coach windows.

Two recommendations that were made afterwards were that 1) all passenger car windows be made of safety glass, and 2) emergency lighting be provided in all cars.  No doubt the safety glass rule was extended to include diesel or electric locomotive cabs.

Some roads may have adopted such standards earlier or voluntarily if later.  Subsequent federal regulations probably made each a mandatory requirement.  When would that have been?  And which federal agencies would have had jurisdiction?

[Randy Stahl]

www.fra.dot.gov

[Overmod]

rjemery

Subsequent federal regulations probably made each a mandatory requirement.  When would that have been?  And which federal agencies would have had jurisdiction?

The history of 49 CFR part 223 will give you your answer.

Congress did not authorize the ICC (the investigative agency in 1951) with any enforcement power for safety recommendations.  The NTSB, started in 1967, likewise lacks enforcement power.  Only when Congress tasked the FRA, successor to the ICC, with ‘promoting safety’ in 1970 did the standards in 49 CFR become ‘enforceable’.

[rjemery]

Overmod, thank you for your response.  I am surprised it took that long.  Still, I wonder if the better roads implemented those two and other safety improvements long before it was required.

[tree68]

rjemery

Overmod, thank you for your response.  I am surprised it took that long.  Still, I wonder if the better roads implemented those two and other safety improvements long before it was required.

I speak with absolutely no authority on this - but sometimes companies (possibly even the railroads) didn't make certain improvements because it might be an indication that they were somehow less safe than their competitors so were implementing a change because they were more likely to suffer an incident where it would be necessary.

Kind of a perverse way to think, but it happened...

[Overmod]

rjemery

I wonder if the better roads implemented those two and other safety improvements long before it was required.

I do not know whether there was the same terror about consequences from ignoring ICC "recommendations" as there is today for the FRA, but it might be possible to see whether new-car construction or renovations started using some form of safety glass in the subsequent era of car construction.

"Normal" forms of tempered and safety glass aren't too helpful in lightweight passenger-car construction, because many of the relevant forces are much higher than in automotive or stationary practice.  Tempered glass actually represents a higher predisposition to shatter, and ballast or vandal incidence would probably produce far more expensive results far more often; the membrane in safety glass can produce very gory results if, for example, a head or other body part 'punches through' the glass and plastic 'sandwich' construction, and then the force reverses, closing the glass fragments that are now reinforced and aligned... this might be more, not less, dangerous with very large 'picture' car windows as cars roll over in derailments.

A different answer can be observed in maintenance problems with 'opaquing' car windows on things like PRR MP54s in the '60s -- this is the result of early adoption of Lexan or similar polycarbonate plastic as exterior glazing.  Lexan is very tough to shatter (remember the 'I can't break it!' commercial) but fairly soft to scratch, and the necessarily-hard bristles in car washers frosted it nicely in fairly short order.  I suspect, somewhat cynically, that the reason for adopting Lexan was to reduce the cost of vandalism damage, but it certainly had safety implications (even for preventing injury to adjacent pax from vandalism shattering...)