Electric Locomotive video

[chefjavier]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxTNle8DEC8&feature=related

What is the cause?

[cprted]

Looks like the pantograph hits a wire or some other part of the catenary. From there everything goes to hell in a hand-basket.

[erikem]

Looks like a catenary support bracket had slipped off the catenary - the pantograph hit it early in the video, and then got its revenge on the catenary.

[trolleyboy]

Yup looks like it snagged the support wire and broke off the pans ear, too bad the crew didn't notice it right away, they could have saved alot of expensive wire repair work not to mention needing to rebuild a pan a who knows what other internal electrical damage to the locomotive.

[cprted]

Yup looks like it snagged the support wire and broke off the pans ear, too bad the crew didn't notice it right away, they could have saved alot of expensive wire repair work not to mention needing to rebuild a pan a who knows what other internal electrical damage to the locomotive.

From the video, it looks like the train starts slowing down 20-25 seconds after the initial strike, and stopped 15-20 seconds later. That isn't bad reaction time given the train was going 75 mph.

[erikem]

My understanding was that the pantographs were designed to break off with less force than needed to damage the catenary. OTOH, maybe some design engineer at the locomotive company got tired of hearing about broken pans and decided to fix the problem (note: this last sentence may have nothing whatsoever with reality).

Pretty spectacular 'footage'. 

[beaulieu]

The bow holding the contact strip is designed to break to prevent serious damage to the cantenary, and once that happens the pantograph should automatically drop without the driver doing anything. This footage was shot on the DB in Germany and is obviously test footage since you don't have a camera constantly taking film of the pantograph in normal service.

[CPRail modeler]

Now THAT didn't look good...!

My favorite part was 22 seconds in when it practically exploded on impact. Another weird thing was that after the initial collision and the following few after that, the thing seemed to rise up and possibly cause the explosion mentioned earlier.

Pretty cool though!