ndbprrMagliari says the tractor-trailer was obstructing the tracks.
Was the truck at a crossing? If not, then that makes it 10X worse...
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On another thread, it was reported it was a "low-boy" flat bed trailer that high centered itself at a crossing and became stuck.
James
The Butler On another thread, it was reported it was a "low-boy" flat bed trailer that high centered itself at a crossing and became stuck.
I saw that on news wire before and i wasnt sure if it was the same thing
When the RTG Turboliners were placed in service, it was on the Chicago-St Louis Line and later when the ROHR Turboliner swere being delivered to Amtrak, each got at least one shakedown trip on that route. The route was plagued with unprotected crossings that ran parallel to th track and then cut over at a right angle. I recall a new Turboliner hitting a trailer loaded with corn. It punched a massive hole through the fiber glass nose of the Power Car buit there was little other damage. A good bodyman repaired the nose and the train was back in service in a couple of days. An RTG hit a truck loaded with hot asphalt mix. The trailer bent around the power car and dumped its load in the vestibule. On another occasion a station- wagon carrying a softball team was hit, killing everyone. None of the collisions were from any cause other than inattentivness of the vehicle driver or racing to beat the train. As I recall, one engineman was so depressed by the frequent and unneccesary bloodshed that he quit.
Jerry Pier
Program & Engineering Mgr, Turboliner (1973-76)
What is your take on what is safe to place at the ends of trains?
It is tragic to have any loss of life, either on the train or in the vehicle in such collisions, but given the greater number of people on the train, it is prudent to give protection to the train passengers and train crew.
On one hand there have been a number of initiatives to improve train performance -- reduced train weight, improved acceleration, better fuel economy -- by doing away with the locomotive. The RDC, SPV-2000, and more recently the Flexliner and CRC DMU distribute diesel engines powering wheels throughout the consist. The United Aircraft TurboTrain and the Turboliners had power cars at the end of the consists. The TurboTrain had "dome seating", an elevated seating section with reduced walkway headroom and a step up to reach the seats, but with "cab ride" like visibility to make these seats attractive to passengers -- the engines were in bays underneath. The Turboliner as you are thoroughly familiar, had "power cars", sort of half-locomotive, half revenue seating "combines" at the ends of the trains.
On the other hand, there is the somewhat "standard Amtrak corridor consist" of a P42 Diesel at one end, a ballasted de-engined F40P cab car at the other end for bi-directional operation, and four or five Horizon cars in between. Back when they were running the Cascades Talgo, and if they ever get that thing repaired and running again, they had an F59PHI locomotive at one end, an F40P cab car at the other end, and 12 of those short, lighweight Talgo cars in between.
There seems to be this notion from FRA, Amtrak, or someone that they need a "battering ram" at each end of the consist. I read somewhere that the FRA waiver to operate the lightweight Talgo in the Northwest is contingent upon having a full-weight locomotive or a non-revenue cab car ballasted to locomotive weight at each end of the consist. You have 240 tons of these lightweight Talgo cars with 240 tons worth of locomotive or cab car bookends on the consist. Fully half the weight of the consist is in the locomotive or the cab car, negating in part the fuel savings of the lightweight Talgo cars.
Is having this degree of "protection" at the ends of bi-directional trains really necessary for the train? Is this motivated by surviving grade crossing collisions, or does FRA have other type of accidents involving collisions with freight trains in mind? Is the day of the DMU or the turbine power car over, or can the case be made to FRA that they are reasonably safe to train occupants in grade crossing accidents?
Perhaps an unrelated question about the Turboliners. The New Haven was at the forefront of experimental trains in the late 1950's. These were the "name trains" named after prominent figures in New England history. There was the Roger Williams Budd RDC with the locomotive noses and the lower profile relative to the standard RDC, the Dan' Webster Train-X with the lightweight Baldwin Diesel-hydraulic locomotives, and finally the John Quincy Adams Talgo with the reduced weight FM Speed Merchant Diesels at each end. The US DOT TurboTrain of the Northeast Corridor Demonstration Project was placed in service a mere 10 years later and was pretty much trying to do the same thing.
The story on those trains was that by not having locomotives, or by having locomotives that were semi-permanently mated to the consist, it was a problem getting them serviced, and the third-rail shoe equipment to get into Grand Central was a particular problem. You had locomotive service shops and car service shops, but getting a combined locomotive-train car consist serviced didn't work out.
Did you encounter similar problems with the Turboliners? Did having revenue seats in the "locomotives" present problems, either with Amtrak's own shops or with the different Federal inspection regimes for locomotives and train cars? One of the raps I have heard on RDC's is that they are both locomotives and passenger cars at the same time as far as Federal inspection and this adds to cost. Does not being able to cleanly uncouple the train into "locomotive" and "train car" portions present problems?
If GM "killed the electric car", what am I doing standing next to an EV-1, a half a block from the WSOR tracks?
The Rennsalaer maintenance facility was built specifically for the Turboliners as was the Brighton Park shop in Illinois. They worked out very well with fast turn-arounds routine. The third rail pick-up system was borrowed from the UAC Turbo and worked quite well with some improvements. Failure of the dielectric shield could blow a 6" diameter hole in the truck sideframe but this was in a low stress area so, after the trains were out of warrantee,. no one worried about it. The trains survived some damaging head-on collisions with freight trains violating signals. To the best of my knowledge, no serious injuries were incurred (the enginemen ran back to the far end of the power section) but in one case the Power Car nose was wiped out back to the windshield. The shop carried an inventory of fiberglass noses and were skilled at replacing the structural steel so the unit was back in service in a matter of days. The nose was considered sacrificial; there was a heavy steel barrier right below the windsheld to protect the crew.
The concept of an F59 and an equivalent weight cab car on the Talgo Trains seems hazardous to me. Locomotives do not have enough friction brake to brake themselves at the same rate as the train, relying on the coaches to make the rate. In a collision the cars will be squeezed between thse too slugs of weight which is not a pleasant thought. I would pick a seat in the middle of the train facing backwards.
Jerry
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