A BNSF train of Autoracks was making a crew change at Cherokee Yard. While stopped someone closed an anglecock and pulled the pin causing the rear of the train to runaway back down a hill. A following train saw a signal drop red in their face, they got their train stopped and just had enough time to bail out and escape before the Autoracks slammed into their engines. The FBI has been called in, and BNSF has offered a $100,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the perpetrator.
http://www.newson6.com/story/24212350/train-deraillment-causes
http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/local/freight-train-derailed-near-north-tulsa-community/article_a9bcfabc-63f3-11e3-bd9f-0019bb30f31a.html?mode=story
Poster event for making the stop with the slack in the train streached. With stress on the couplings you can't get the cut lever to operate.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
But then it's much harder, sometimes impossible to lift a heavy train on a grade. The crew(s) must have been out of the cab for more than a few minutes, otherwise the FRED would have alerted them that it was moving and the engineer could have dumped the tail end with it.
Greetings from Alberta
-an Articulate Malcontent
So it appears that the vandal (rather WEAK description in this case) closed the anglecocks on BOTH cars, effectively "Botteling the Air" in rear section, and preventing the lead section from going into emergency when the train departed. Then pulled the cut bar. I will have to remember NOT to do that when I see a train changing crews. Fortunately nobody was injured or killed.
I'm not a working rail, but it does seem strange that there wasn't enough grade for the cars cars to roll when the cut lever was pulled, but they rolled away after the front section of the train departed. Is it possible that the crew(s) did not know that the cars had rolled away before the front section moved? With the anglecocks closed the engineer would not see a drop in the trainline pressure.
In a case like this, would the FRED alert the engineer that the rear of the train was not operating the same as the lead end? IE, moving, while the locomotive(s) are stationary.
Doug
May your flanges always stay BETWEEN the rails
It sounds like the perpetrator was familiar with railroad equipment and operations. It may turn out to be the work of a disgruntled BNSF employee or former employee.
Mark
Doug: I got the impression that the crew was not on the train when this happened. That they had left it and it was sitting for the relief crew to take over. Am I wrong? Could be!
Ken G Price My N-Scale Layout
Digitrax Super Empire Builder Radio System. South Valley Texas Railroad. SVTRR
N-Scale out west. 1996-1998 or so! UP, SP, Missouri Pacific, C&NW.
Lake Doug: I got the impression that the crew was not on the train when this happened. That they had left it and it was sitting for the relief crew to take over. Am I wrong? Could be!
Had the crew been on the train and in operating position, they SHOULD have seen on their HTD that the EOT was moving, despite having the 'same' brake pipe pressure as the rest of the train. Presuming there was a 'tight' trainline with little leakage, there would have been little if any difference between the parts of the train on either side of the turned anglecocks.
Seeing the EOT register movement doesn't always mean the rear of the train is moving. Depending on where they were stopped at and the sensitivity of the EOT, if there were other tracks near by they may have thought movement on them was vibrating the EOT. When stopped and being run around by a following train, we know when they are coming around because the EOT registers movement as soon as they start by. On windy days, I have had gusts when stopped out in the open rock the EOT. OTOH, every now and then I'll have an EOT that doesn't register movement right away. I'll see the pressure rise on the rear end, take off and not see the EOT register that it's moving until I'm doing 10 or 15 mph. Then there are those that will register that they are moving in REV (reverse) over the entire run.
When stopped for any length of time our rules, and I assume everyone else's, have a requirement to set air to ensure brake continuity through the entire train before moving. Once in a while an inbound engineer might not when the outbound crew is right there ready to get on. In those situations, the first thing the outbound will do is make a set to comply. Usually though, even when stopping while bunching the slack some air will be set. I do now of an incident where a train was stopped, had air set but a person unknown turned the anglecocks after the air was released and pulled the pin. The crew saw the EOT begin to rise and took off, leaving the rear portion of the train. They soon lost EOT comm (You can be out of comm with the EOT for up to 16 mins before the head end device registers comm loss.) reported it to the dispatcher and got down to 30mph. The dispatcher saw a track occupancy behind them, but didn't think part of the train had been left behind. He called for someone to check on the track light and they found the rear portion sitting there.
That incident and the one in Tulsa sound like whomever did it, knew what they were doing. The Tulsa one leaves me with some questions, that I don't expect the news media to cover. I'm sure the railroad's investigation will though.
Jeff
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