zardoz wrote: Modelcar wrote: ....I suppose we have to assume signals that must be read by humans...will not be 100% since we all can commit errors.Too true. However, because of the human failure factor, does it not make sense to use any and all means available to reduce the likelyhood of an error occuring?Of course, cost will always be cited as the reason for not implimenting such technology. To which I would reply, "How much were those 25 lives worth?"
Modelcar wrote: ....I suppose we have to assume signals that must be read by humans...will not be 100% since we all can commit errors.
....I suppose we have to assume signals that must be read by humans...will not be 100% since we all can commit errors.
Too true.
However, because of the human failure factor, does it not make sense to use any and all means available to reduce the likelyhood of an error occuring?
Of course, cost will always be cited as the reason for not implimenting such technology. To which I would reply, "How much were those 25 lives worth?"
I can't begin to imagine a value that could be put on the 25 lives that were ended. Nor can I put a value on the suffering of the injured or the anguish of the people left behind who had their loved ones violently and suddenly taken away.
But resources ($$$) are always limited. We can't go in to "If it saves one life, no matter how much it is, it's worth it." If that worked, we'd all be driving around at 10 MPH. Somebody's gotta' decide. I only hope they make their decision on reason and logic and not on raw emotion. Or on political expidiency, as Senator Feinstein seems to have done.
Three shots of the same signal at Deshler (looking south from the diamond):
I forget what the lunar modifier at the top of the mast means. Somebody with a CSX rulebook can fill us in.
The train for which the signal was set came around the SE wye and headed south.
Larry Resident Microferroequinologist (at least at my house) Everyone goes home; Safety begins with you My Opinion. Standard Disclaimers Apply. No Expiration Date Come ride the rails with me! There's one thing about humility - the moment you think you've got it, you've lost it...
DMUinCT wrote: Northeast Corridor, yes, Auto Train Stop, and it will stop the train short of the switching point, if the engineer has slowed to approach speed at the previous signal. 20 yeas ago , at the Crash at Chase MD, the Conrail engines failed slow at the approach signal. They hit the stop signal at 62mph, the stop inductor tripped, the speed caused the locomotives to drift out onto the Amtrak Main in front of the northbound Patriot. Many died, the conrail engineer went to jail.-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CPL!!! Below is a photo of the right side of an Acela Dashboard. Note the Cab Signal panel: a CPL Display, Signal Speed (20), and Track speed (- - is 0).
Northeast Corridor, yes, Auto Train Stop, and it will stop the train short of the switching point, if the engineer has slowed to approach speed at the previous signal.
20 yeas ago , at the Crash at Chase MD, the Conrail engines failed slow at the approach signal. They hit the stop signal at 62mph, the stop inductor tripped, the speed caused the locomotives to drift out onto the Amtrak Main in front of the northbound Patriot.
Many died, the conrail engineer went to jail.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CPL!!! Below is a photo of the right side of an Acela Dashboard. Note the Cab Signal panel: a CPL Display, Signal Speed (20), and Track speed (- - is 0).
I thought I recognized the CPL description from my days playing MSTS
-Morgan
tree68 wrote: zardoz wrote:All this talk of mis-read signals causes me to wonder if misreading of signals would be reduced if the railroads went back to using semaphore indications? Not easy to misread those.Or CPLs!
zardoz wrote:All this talk of mis-read signals causes me to wonder if misreading of signals would be reduced if the railroads went back to using semaphore indications? Not easy to misread those.
Or CPLs!
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
Don U. TCA 73-5735
tree68 wrote: Flashwave wrote: tree68 wrote: zardoz wrote:All this talk of mis-read signals causes me to wonder if misreading of signals would be reduced if the railroads went back to using semaphore indications? Not easy to misread those.Or CPLs!Sorry, CPL? It's pretty clear that it's not open though...Color Position LightThe one in the picture is former B&O at Deshler, OH.As shown, the signal displays stop. Diagonal lamps in yellow would indicate approach, and greens in a vertical line would be clear. Plus all the usual variations (and there were plenty). Gives you two ways to read the signal.IIRC, Pennsy used the same thing, but they didn't use the colors, only white or a variation thereof.
Flashwave wrote: tree68 wrote: zardoz wrote:All this talk of mis-read signals causes me to wonder if misreading of signals would be reduced if the railroads went back to using semaphore indications? Not easy to misread those.Or CPLs!Sorry, CPL? It's pretty clear that it's not open though...
Color Position Light
The one in the picture is former B&O at Deshler, OH.
As shown, the signal displays stop. Diagonal lamps in yellow would indicate approach, and greens in a vertical line would be clear. Plus all the usual variations (and there were plenty). Gives you two ways to read the signal.
IIRC, Pennsy used the same thing, but they didn't use the colors, only white or a variation thereof.
Pennsy used (a certain fog penetrating shade of) yellow lights on theirs. LIRR used them also. And N&W used a variation which IIRC was like the Pennsy's, but for red the center light went out and left just 2 red lights like th B&O one above.
Yes Position Lights and semaphores are safer. I'm sure modern, low maintenance semaphores would be possible with today's technology.
Sorry, CPL? It;s pretty clear that it;s not open though...
Quentin
In the old steam days negineers would miss a signal by looking straight at it and seeing breen when in fact it would be red. He had attended the fire his fireman had messed up and paused to look at signals, straring at the orange fire made a green dot in his eye and breifly looking right at the signal would be it. This type of story seems to existin most countrys , and occasionaly but rarely result in a bad accident.
Of course this shouldn't be the case today.
Jeff, your account of the broken red lens brings to mind an interesting (and disturbing) possibility: vandalism. In the Chatsworth Metrolink accident, could the signal be disabled or tampered with in such a way that a malfunction would NOT register in the Pomona dispatch center?
--Jon
"The sun was in my eyes" is not a valid excuse. Nor is not seeing the signal head at all. Train crews are charged with knowing their territory including the location of every signal, and if you don't see the signal because it was knocked over a few minutes earlier by a runaway garbage truck, you are responsible for treating that signal as displaying its most restrictive aspect. If the sun is shining in your eyes on the signal and there is any chance that you might misinterpret the aspect of the signal, you are required by rule to treat that signal as displaying its most restrictive aspect.
Only in the case of a false-clear or in the case where a searchlight can display a lunar or red, and the lens is gone (as Jeff describes above) so it "displays lunar", is there any forgiveness. This is one reason why searchlight signals are being phased out.
When in doubt, you stop your train. Guessing is not a substitute for the safe course. No one who works for a railroad would do that.
RWM
dehusman wrote: Nagrom1 wrote: Just a thought, but traffic signals for automobiles are designed in the standard position, so someone colourblind can still see the "aspect" if you will. Would having a system like this on the RR make it easier to see in the bright light?From a distance or at night you wouldn't be able to tell the relative position on the head so it wouldn't make much difference. The key is you have to do something about the signal when you see it. Dave H.
Nagrom1 wrote: Just a thought, but traffic signals for automobiles are designed in the standard position, so someone colourblind can still see the "aspect" if you will. Would having a system like this on the RR make it easier to see in the bright light?
From a distance or at night you wouldn't be able to tell the relative position on the head so it wouldn't make much difference. The key is you have to do something about the signal when you see it.
Dave H.
Most new signal installations have multiple lights on a single head. In bright direct sunlight you can't always tell which light of a multi aspect signal is lit. (I'm talking about signal heads that have separate green, yellow, red lights per head instead of a single light (searchlight type) that changes color.)
I was stopped at an absolute located on a signal bridge at Council Bluffs one late afternoon. When the dispatcher asked if we had started to move, I had to ask him to talk me by it because it was impossible to tell what it was displaying with the sun shining on it. All the lights looked the same.
Another time, we came down on a signal that I expected to be (at the time) a stop and proceed. I knew we were following a train. We came around a curve and when I first saw the signal (about a half mile ahead), I called out "approach" to the conductor. He saw it, called approach, wrote it down on his conductor's report and called it over the radio.
Since I was expecting a red one, I had us down to about 8 mph coming around the curve. I let our speed pickup to about 15 mph when about 5 cars from it, the signal looked different. The color of the light had changed from a yellow color to more of a white color. I knew this signal couldn't display a lunar. That's when I also noticed it was the bottom light that was lit, the one that should have had a red lens. As I applied a full service brake application, I saw a red tinge from a shard of what had been the red lens has we rolled by it to a stop.
We reported it to the dispatcher and that we had gotten by it. He told us he would report the damaged signal to the signal department and to procede at restricted speed to the next signal. We had moved about a quarter mile when he called back and told us to stop. About 5 minutes later he told us to again procede. I never heard anything more about it.
Jeff
EJE818 wrote:I wonder if there are going to be changes to the operating modes because of this, like mandating new rules that require two people in the cab of a commuter train. If there were two people in the cab this probably wouldn't have happened.
daniel3197 wrote: Just read these two webpages and see how much trust and faith you place in our current signal systems. I fear that FALSE CLEAR signals has been declared strictly "OFF LIMITS" by railroad management. We so very very BADLY need to focus in on this very CENTRAL and KEY issue of this horrible crash. There certainly have been a LOT of DOCUMENTED issues----problems with our signaling systems. This web page covers documented issues FRA from `1995 to 2004.THere are more than 40 Issue Categories on this page (Yes 40 - Truly AMAZING and SHOCKING )http://www.ironwoodtech.com/researchcenter/falseproceeds/falseproceeds.htm This next NTSB page focuses on Phantom Signal indications from a January 18, 2006 Crash on the NS in Alabama. If you study this page you can see how easy it is to MISREAD some signals at certain times of the day or year: (PDF Document here) : http://www.ntsb.gov/publictn/2007/RAB0703.pdf -- Daniel
Just read these two webpages and see how much trust and faith you place in our current signal systems.
I fear that FALSE CLEAR signals has been declared strictly "OFF LIMITS" by railroad management. We so very very BADLY need to focus in on this very CENTRAL and KEY issue of this horrible crash.
There certainly have been a LOT of DOCUMENTED issues----problems with our signaling systems. This web page covers documented issues FRA from `1995 to 2004.
THere are more than 40 Issue Categories on this page (Yes 40 - Truly AMAZING and SHOCKING )
http://www.ironwoodtech.com/researchcenter/falseproceeds/falseproceeds.htm This next NTSB page focuses on Phantom Signal indications from a January 18, 2006 Crash on the NS in Alabama. If you study this page you can see how easy it is to MISREAD some signals at certain times of the day or year: (PDF Document here) : http://www.ntsb.gov/publictn/2007/RAB0703.pdf
-- Daniel
Nothing shocking about your first one, there may be 40 categories but many have only a single entry. Also note that all of them could be verified after the fact. By now the NTSB will have checked the signal functioning and signal sighting, they haven't found anything out of order. Also there are many different signal systems represented in that database including the advanced one used by Amtrak on the NEC.
Your second citation concerns a situation where the sunlight could cause a signal to be misread, that is always a potential problem and is the reason that many signals have large hoods. But with the facing of the signal at CP Toponaga, the time of day, and the direction the passenger train was moving it is very unlikely to be the problem in this case. The NTSB will take a locomotive of the same model at the same time of day and if at all possible under similar sky conditions and look at the visibility of that signal. I am sure if you could have gotten near the location either on Sunday or today you would have seen a Metrolink F59PH moving towards that signal at about 4:23pm.
A more likely problem would be something happening to distract the Engineer.
A key indicator will be when the Radio Recording is played back, did the Metrolink Engineer call out, and the Conductor acknowledge the signal at Lassen Street as being at Approach. If they did that, then did the Conductor remind the Engineer when he gave him a highball from the Chatsworth Station stop that the last signal was at Approach.
Dave H. Painted side goes up. My website : wnbranch.com
DMUinCT wrote: Most Commuter Trains (and Amtrak) in the US have just one man in the Cab, the Engineer. As Boston uses the same sub-contractor to run there trains, I would think Metrolink would work the same way (correct me if I'm wrong). The Conductor is back in the Passenger Cars with Assistance Conductors (formally called Trainmen) for every 2 or 3 cars. In most cases, Engineers belong to the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Conductors to the United Transportaion Union.
Most Commuter Trains (and Amtrak) in the US have just one man in the Cab, the Engineer. As Boston uses the same sub-contractor to run there trains, I would think Metrolink would work the same way (correct me if I'm wrong).
The Conductor is back in the Passenger Cars with Assistance Conductors (formally called Trainmen) for every 2 or 3 cars. In most cases, Engineers belong to the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Conductors to the United Transportaion Union.
I've ridden one train (MBTA train from Fitchburg to Boston North Station) which had, to my knowledge, only 3 passengers: me and two friends of mine. Pretty much all the crew (engineer and two conductors/assistant conductors were riding in the (leading) cab car. There may have been more assistants in the remainder of the train, but I'm not sure, as one of the crew members in the cab car went out to the vestuable to talk to a passenger on the platform.
That wouldn't be true on a train with more passengers, like the one in LA, obviously. I don't know about when the loco is leading either.
Generally speaking, and from what I've experienced, a missed signal is usually the result of inattentiveness. If the passenger train was taking the siding to meet the UP train (as is my understanding), the crew of the pasenger train would likely have encountered some sort of restricting signal going into the siding, telling them to be prepared to stop at the next home signal (not that taking a siding wouldn't be a big enough clue that you were going to be stopping ;^) ).
Karl
CSX Train Dispatcher
I don't see many RR signals set up like traffic signals. They all seem to be a single light, showing different colours. (spotlight signals maybe?)
Just a thought, but traffic signals for automobiles are designed in the standard position, so someone colourblind can still see the "aspect" if you will. Would having a system like this on the RR make it easier to see in the bright light?
daniel3197 wrote: you can see how easy it is to MISREAD some signals at certain times of the day or year
In this case the track is north-south and sun azimuth was 250.5 degrees-- so sounds unlikely.
(I'm too lazy to do the calculations for the NS collision, but probably the sun was shining directly on the signal?)
simple awnser to this one.. not paying attention to where he was at in relation to where the next signal was...
csx engineer
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