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Derailments Caused By Emergency Braking?

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Don, I can see Jeff’s point that an undesired emergency (UDE) is an oxymoron, at least some of the time.  For instance if a train breaks in two, the air dynamites automatically on both halves.  This was one of the primary advantages of the automatic air brake over straight air, or no air.  So an emergency application resulting from a break-in-two is highly desired. However, in the case of a kicker, I agree with your observation that the emergency application associated with it is highly undesired. Therefore, to eliminate the oxymoron of the UDE in cases where it is not undesired, I would change the terminology from “undesired emergency” to “unintended emergency,” meaning that it happened without the engineer’s intention (or action).  The word “unintended” would cover all emergency applications not made by the engineer (or other crewmember) regardless of their actual cause and desireability. I have a couple of key questions about kickers that I would like to clear up: Do they always occur in response to a service application? Or do they sometimes occur spontaneously when no other braking event is occurring? If a train is found to contain a kicker, is there any way to determine which car in the train is the kicker? *************** Your description of higher trainline pressure causing kickers in response to pressure waves is very intriguing.  I gather that would mean that no one car in the train would be the pre-determined kicker.  Instead, the pressure wave distributes the kicking potential to several cars, and one of them might kick.  Then, as the wave distributes the potential another time, another car might respond by kicking.   ***************
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