henry6 Evidently the Chinese have learned something from our rail system.
Evidently the Chinese have learned something from our rail system.
What have the Chinese learned from our rail system? Please explain.
I guess the 15+ Billion that is being spent on PTC is nothing.
Appearantly the Chinese are also good at keeping the news from their own people....
http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/07/25/china.train.accident.outrage/index.html?hpt=hp_t2
henry6 As I mentioned earlier, Europe, and at least Japan, work with sophisticated avoidence systems that apparently work. We build bigger and faster and heavier stuff costing lots and lots of money but don't want to put a dime in things like positive train control. Evidently the Chinese have learned something from our rail system.
As I mentioned earlier, Europe, and at least Japan, work with sophisticated avoidence systems that apparently work. We build bigger and faster and heavier stuff costing lots and lots of money but don't want to put a dime in things like positive train control. Evidently the Chinese have learned something from our rail system.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
schlimm 5. Who did China copy (and maybe improve on), U.S., Japan, Europe? As mentioned before, most of the engineering and equipment design originally came from Germany. Siemens and Germany (Kanzlerin Merkel) registered complaints about design copying by China earlier this year.
5. Who did China copy (and maybe improve on), U.S., Japan, Europe?
As mentioned before, most of the engineering and equipment design originally came from Germany. Siemens and Germany (Kanzlerin Merkel) registered complaints about design copying by China earlier this year.
Not in this case:
The trains were, on the right in the photos, a type CRH 5. This is an Italian Alstom design based on the Pendolino Due type but in the case of the Chinese trains, no tilting equipment is fitted because the trains are intended to run on dedicated high speed lines. These trains are allowed to run at 250 km/h.
On the left in the photos was the type CRH 380A. This is derived from the CRH 2 which was a licence built version of the Japanese Shinkansen E2-1000 type.
The trains that Siemens supplied were the type CRH 3 based on the German ICE-3 type, and this was developed into the CRH 380B type. Neither of these types was involved in this accident. Siemens may have some reason to be concerned about copying of the CRH 3 but there are many high speed trains in China that owe nothing to Siemens technology.
It is true that in a recent article, Trains magazine wrongly identified the CRH 380A as being developed from the Siemens design but it is clear that this is not correct.
There are also two Bombardier designs, CRH 1 and CRH 1E based originally on the Swedish Regina design equally not involved here.
M636C
I don’t think I am imagining things when I recall Chinese HSR as being cited as an example of what we should be doing. The general tone is to chide the U.S. for not building HSR, while gloating over the fact that China is passing us by with their HSR. This comparison of Chinese development of HSR to the U.S. position is one of the centerpieces of the argument being advanced by the proponents of HSR in the U.S. The phrase “envy of the world” is a universal catch phrase used to describe Chinese HSR.
But there is a huge disconnect between that glowing assessment of Chinese HSR and the tone expressed in the article Ed posted at the beginning of this thread. That article goes beyond the reporting of the wreck, and delves in to the larger context of the alleged poor quality of Chinese HSR and its management.
This article goes further in that direction. It reports that Chinese officials are burying the damaged rail equipment on site, implying that this is being done in order to conceal evidence of the cause of the crash. The Chinese government says they are burying the equipment because it is too muddy under the bridge to recover the equipment:
http://behindthewall.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/07/25/7157046-deadly-train-crash-in-china-provokes-outrage
I'm not sure which I find more disturbing, the fact that China had a terrible HSR train accident, or the fact that it's becoming a media feedy frenzy. What's with the trend of newspapers quoting bloggers, tweets and comments made on the internet, instead of talking to eye witnesses and people in the trenches? We're starting to see lot more of that type of reporting. To me, it's about as relevent as interviewing a man on the street- a man in a different town.
Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.
"+1" - a cogent observation, indeed.
I suspect mainly because it's cheaper. Our local printed 'future cat-pan liner' has taken to merely rewriting Emergency Services - police, fire, ambulance, etc. - scanner transmissions and publishing those, also without any further inquiry. The results are farcial and would be comical, were they not the symptom of such a serious decline in the quality of the information and what the public needs to know - and that's before we get to how they report anything rail-related . . .
- Paul North.
Our local newspaper is in the habit of quoting from it's own news forums, and passing it off as some sort of folksie insight . Back to the subject at hand- I wonder if the Chinese didn't oversell this endeavor to start with? Perhaps, they felt the need to do something big and showy, in order to prove to the rest of the world that they had arrived. A prudent government might have taken it a little slower and more cautious. Just reading the newspaper information, I can see quite a bit of culture difference between the Chinese and the American governments and industry.
Talk about rampant speculation and over-reaching conclusions in support of private agendas on this thread! How about waiting a bit for the investigation? I guess following the same sort of crazy logic, we should all have condemned the US rail system and Amtrak for accidents like Nevada and Chatsworth, et al. in recent years. This looks like a textbook example of the fundamental attribution fallacy: when we have a problem, the causes lie outside the system (bad drivers, human error); when somebody else has the problem, it's a fatally flawed corrupt system built too fast, built for overweening pride, etc. Kind of a reverse of Shakespeare's famous line:
"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves.'
C&NW, CA&E, MILW, CGW and IC fan
Perhaps the Chinese should set some 60 foot wood poles and install a static wire made of #2 ACSR to give the lightning a place to go to ground other than the train. Each pole would need a # 4 cooper ground wire and enough ground rods to get the resistance down to 40 ohms or less.
George
Concerning Bucyrus' comment about some people reflexively praising the Chinese, nothing new about that. I remember some in this country praising Chinese society back around 1970 or so when Mao Tse-Tung was still in power and the Chinese were so Communist they even scared the Soviets! Why the praise? I don't know, I'm still trying to figure that one out!
Much of this thread is also a good example of Schadenfreude.
There does seem to be a significant negative backlash to China’s HSR, and I don’t see it being just confined to this thread, or to a couple articles linked here, or to unsubstantiated blog comments. So the larger context of the story is far more than just a report on one train wreck. For the larger context, Google “China HSR scandal.”
90 year old West Penn interurban cars had magnetic track brakes and dynamic/regnerative (latter when the trolley wire accepted the generated current) brakes and could stop equally well after a pole dewirement that removed power. Batteries provided the excitation and there was plenty of power available from the decelerating motors acting as generators. An old-fashioned hand-brake was used for the very final stop application. PCC's could also stop on a dime after a dewirement. A assume modern light rail cars are similar.
I think the tragedy is due to the lack of a regulatory backbone as well as a lack of a quality control culture, that places the productivity of various industries before safety which also relates to quality. Whether it is the plague of mining disasters, the issues of quality in their exported products such as steel or drywall, (dare I say model trains..? ) that underscores a technological society that is still in the 19th century in terms of having to compete only with itself in a sense..there is no impetus to self regulate commerce or the quality of that commerce..
Nothing is more fairly distributed than common sense: no one thinks he needs more of it than he already has.
The limited pictures I have seen of the incident make it appear that the incident happened on a curving concrete trestle. To date I have not heard anything to specify the speed of the following train.
In the US freight railroad industry a coupling speed of less than 4 MPH for switched equipment is considered a 'safe' coupling speed. Coupling speeds for occupied passenger equipment is much less than 4 MPH.
The two most recent rear end collisions that have occurred in the US were with the following train operating at less than 25 MPH.
The physics of coupling equipment on a curve will generate forces to the outside of the curve. The equipment pictured in the Chinese incident appears to be of very light weight construction and when impacted with the relative bulk of the following locomotive would come off the loser in such a impact.
PURE SPECULATION ON MY PART - I would expect the speed of the following train at time of impact would have been less than 15 MPH and that the relatively light weight of the non-powered equipment caused it to jump the rails at impact and thereby fall off the trestle. The impact also caused the cars on the head end of the following train to jump the rail and derail. My understanding is that 4 cars of the lead train derailed and 2 cars of the following train derailed.
The big question is why the following train was operating at the speed it was ... man failure ... equipment failure (braking) ... equipment failure (signals). With the incident having occurred in China I suspect it will be quite some time until the 'outside world' finds out the true facts of the incident.
Murphy,
I think it is because access by western reporters is very limited and very, very controlled.
The Chinese version of twitter and the net is pretty much all you will read, except the party's official version, published in the state owned and operated newspapers.
Keep in mind this is the same country that blocked access to the World Wide Web by its citizens last year.
Schlimm, it was Metro Link, not Amtrak at Chatsworth, although your point is still valid.
I don't think you will find any facts or real information included when the "official investigation" plays out, the Chinese have no free press, what you will read is what the party wants you to read.
And no Schlimm, I don't think anyone here is taking any measure of joy or pleasure out of the misfortunes of the passengers, quite the opposite, in most of the links and reports, it would seem that outrage at the way the passengers are treated is prominent.
As for the people on this forum, I don't see where anyone is in the least bit enjoying the death and destruction, but they are beginning to realize that the HSR China built is not all that the press, both here in America, and abroad, presented it to be.
My original post was intended to spark just such a debate, and a little eye opener in that, just because a prominent editor, or a fan based magazine, or a railroad forum promotes and aggrandized something, it isn't necessary truth.
Still wondering why the second train didn't lose power also, so as an assumption, I am thinking the leading train itself was struck, not the catenary, but there still should have been some sort of signal system to stop the following train.
Even here in the "backward" and "primitive" US, if a signal system fail, like a wayside signal, the rules require us to treat any dark signal as displaying its most restrictive aspect, which is stop.
Cab signals are treated the same way and even way back in the day, most northern railroads had some form of an automatic stop system that would perform at least a service application, if not a full stop application of the brakes if an engineer exceeded his authority.
Loss of power to the system stopped all trains.
So, was they any such system on the Chinese HRS system?
Doesn't it strike you as odd that, if they could build the railway across the geography, then picking up and storing the wreck would not present much of a problem?
After all, they had to get machines in there in the first place to construct the bridge and the tracks, so...instead they are burying the necessary evidence as soon as they can.
The NTSB, FRA and OSHA would be throwing a fit if something like that were done here...oh wait, China has no agencies like those in the first place.
They do, on the other hand, have a Ministry of Political Correctness.
Think on it....
23 17 46 11
An interesting Canadian take on the crash.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/bombardier-could-see-fallout-from-deadly-crash/article2108607/
More from Reuters on the "cover-up":
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/25/us-china-train-censorship-idUSTRE76O1IG20110725
<quote>Government directives demanding journalists not question official accounts of a deadly high-speed train crash in eastern China are fueling public anger and suspicion about conflicting details of the accident, such as the death toll. Saturday night's crash killed at least 38 people and was China's deadliest rail disaster since 2008, raising new questions about the safety of the fast-growing and high-profile high-speed rail network. The central propaganda department issued directives to media on Sunday for coverage of the accident. "The major theme for the Wenzhou bullet train case from now on will be known as 'in the face of great tragedy, there's great love'," the department said, according to a copy of the directives posted on a web site called the "ministry of truth", that regularly posts copies of government orders. "Do not question, do not elaborate." Reporters with state media who saw the directives confirmed to Reuters the propaganda department's media guidance on the crash. The department also told media not to "investigate the cause of the accident", and reminded journalists that "the word from the authorities is all-prevailing". </quote> More at the link.
<quote>Government directives demanding journalists not question official accounts of a deadly high-speed train crash in eastern China are fueling public anger and suspicion about conflicting details of the accident, such as the death toll.
Saturday night's crash killed at least 38 people and was China's deadliest rail disaster since 2008, raising new questions about the safety of the fast-growing and high-profile high-speed rail network.
The central propaganda department issued directives to media on Sunday for coverage of the accident.
"The major theme for the Wenzhou bullet train case from now on will be known as 'in the face of great tragedy, there's great love'," the department said, according to a copy of the directives posted on a web site called the "ministry of truth", that regularly posts copies of government orders.
"Do not question, do not elaborate."
Reporters with state media who saw the directives confirmed to Reuters the propaganda department's media guidance on the crash.
The department also told media not to "investigate the cause of the accident", and reminded journalists that "the word from the authorities is all-prevailing".
</quote>
More at the link.
Let's see ...China has had disagreements/blockages with Google, Yahoo, YouTube, And a whole slew of others as well...not very likely are we going to see any announcement as to what caused this incident...image being everything now...
Any argument carried far enough will end up in Semantics--Hartz's law of rhetoric Emerald. Leemer and Southern The route of the Sceptre Express Barry
I just started my blog site...more stuff to come...
http://modeltrainswithmusic.blogspot.ca/
There seems to be quite a bit news pouring out in the wake of the crash. Here is an article that goes into detail about the apparent omission of lightning protection equipment and the rationale for omitting it.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903635604576472051958404820.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
Of course... if you are not a Wall Steet Journal subscriber you can only read the 2 paragraph leader of the article....
Bucyrus There seems to be quite a bit news pouring out in the wake of the crash. Here is an article that goes into detail about the apparent omission of lightning protection equipment and the rationale for omitting it. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903635604576472051958404820.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
Oh well. It opened for me, but I guess that is a one-time free sample. If you Google: china high speed train crash, it comes up at the top of the search.
The BBC world service is doing a long story on this accident this morning.
The Washington Post this morning, July 28, 2011, had an editorial at the top of its editorial page that was highly criical of China's high-speed rail program. It called the cause of the accident an unlikely scenario, and it was highly critical of the failure to consider fail-safe features.
The Reuters account, then People's Daily, then AP:
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/china-train-crash-due-design-flaw-signal-equipment-011250335.html
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90882/7454787.html
BEIJING (AP) — Design flaws in signal equipment and human error caused last weekend's high-speed train crash in China that killed at least 39 people, a railway official said Thursday.The preliminary finding comes in the face of public anger about the government's handling of the accident near Wenzhou in Zhejiang province.Premier Wen Jiabao, who arrived in Wenzhou on Thursday to check on the investigation and the conditions of the survivors, has called for a sweeping and transparent probe into the crash between two bullet trains, which also hurt more than 190 people.Six train cars derailed and four fell about 65 to 100 feet (20 to 30 meters) from a viaduct Saturday night after one train plowed into the back of another train that had stalled after being hit by lightning.An Lusheng, head of the Shanghai Railway Bureau, said there were design problems with the signal light equipment at the Wenzhou South Station and dispatchers did not send any warnings after the lightning strike."After the lightning strike caused a failure, an interval signal machine that should have shown a red light mistakenly upgraded it to a green light instead," An said in comments carried by state broadcaster CCTV.The Beijing National Railway Research and Design Institute of Signal and Communication, which designed the signal equipment, on Thursday issued a letter of apology to the families of the victims and the injured passengers.It said it would cooperate with the investigation and would "have the courage to assume responsibility and accept the punishment deserved."Wen's visit comes a day after more than 20 relatives of people who died in the crash gathered at the Wenzhou South Station, holding banners demanding answers regarding the accident's cause, Chinese media reported."After such a big thing has happened, the railway departments cannot hide behind while they let the local governments deal with it and solve it. They are slow and won't show their faces. Is it the government that wants to protect them, or has the government been threatened by them?" one man surnamed Lin who lost his elder brother, Lin Xiao, in the crash, told the Yangcheng Evening News.The government has ordered a two-month safety campaign for its railway system amid questions about how the crash occurred. Wen called for the campaign to be widened to target all transport infrastructure, coal mines, construction sites, and industries dealing with dangerous chemicals.The accident was the biggest blow yet to China's burgeoning high-speed rail ambitions that have been highlighted as a symbol of the countries rising economic and technological prowess.Rapid expansion of the services has been dogged by concerns about safety, corruption scandals and criticism that schedules are impractical and tickets too expensive for ordinary Chinese. Open just one month, the much-hyped 820-mile (1,318-kilometer) Beijing-Shanghai line has been plagued by power outages and other malfunctions.Saturday's accident outside the eastern city of Wenzhou prompted an outpouring of anger among the public and even in the usually docile state media, with questions posed over the cause of the crash and the government's handling of the aftermath.The firing of three top officials at the Shanghai Railway Bureau did little to tamp down criticism that authorities made only passing attempts to rescue survivors while ordering tracks swiftly cleared to restore service.
There is a very interesting editorial on this incident at the Railway Gazette;
http://community.railwaygazette.com/blog/article/read/id/30-what-happened-at-wenzhou
There is also an article in today's Christian Science Monitor, looking at it in a broader context...
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-Pacific/2011/0802/After-China-train-crash-it-s-not-just-rail-safety-that-worries-Chinese
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