The brakemen of the late 1800s resisted the introduction of the air brake because it made their job less manly. Switchmen resisted the link and pin coupler safety paddles for the same reason.
I am not advocating a need for changing anything. Hand brakes are the perfect technology if people use them properly. What I am talking about has nothing to do with just another train wreck. The industry is not going to have the luxury of arguing that their system is already perfect. The incident in Quebec has started its own runaway train of public opinion. Change is going to be demanded whether it is needed or not. A perceptive industry will recognize the marketing that will be needed just to survive this onslaught public and regulatory scrutiny that is rolling their way.
But I suspect the naysayers are probably right that there will be so much resistance in such a big system of entrenched ways of doing things that they will not be able to comply with the new mandates. Just giving up the oil business will be much easier than changing their way of doing things.
We have an obligation to intelligently use the best technology available. If the test was that any new technology must never fail then we would all still be riding horses and cooking over an open flame.
The Lac Megantic accident was, I believe, caused in part by outdated technology. A modern self diagnostic system would have alerted someone to the potential of a fire long before it happened. As it was, some guy in Nantes who happened to be walking his dog noticed the fire and alerted the fire department. That (to me anyway) should never happen. An oil train should be equipped with the latest technology. That doesn't excuse the engineer for any mistakes he may have made; however, we can't expect him to be efficient when we provide him with old locomotives, sketchy track, and technology that was outdated 50 years ago.
I find it interesting that there's always so much pushback on new technology. I recall when power steering came in for trucks back in the 70s. Although I wasn't yet involved in the industry at that time, I recall vocal opposition from many drivers... because power steering is too complex for trucks..power steering is for sissies, and power steering is dangerous and unreliable.
Now we get the same about automated transmissions. I have drivers who want nothing to do with them because (they say) it takes the control away from the driver. That's nonsense of course. Getting back to trains, over the last two or three decades we've decimated employment on the railroads while overall tonnages have increased substantially. We owe it to those few remaining workers to provide them with the best technology available.. sending one man into the backwoods of Quebec with 75 loads of oil on outdated fire prone equipment is just not acceptable..
BaltACD Everything I am reading here comes from the present 'aura' of since a rule was (or appears to have been) violated - lets do 20 other things - 20 other expensive things to prevent a person from not performing their duties. And we wonder how there end up being $600 toilet seats and $300 hammer handles.
Everything I am reading here comes from the present 'aura' of since a rule was (or appears to have been) violated - lets do 20 other things - 20 other expensive things to prevent a person from not performing their duties. And we wonder how there end up being $600 toilet seats and $300 hammer handles.
This was a big problem. I think we need at least 40 technologies. Maybe 50.
It's been fun. But it isn't much fun anymore. Signing off for now.
The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer, any other railroad, company, or person.t fun any
Didn't we have a problem with a Mars lander several years ago - where part the calculations were done in metric and part were done in feet and inches - and the lander crash landed because Mars wasn't as far away as the sum of the calculations indicated it was.
Men have to be held accountable for their actions - be it applying sufficient hand brakes to hold a train - paying attention to a planes flight status so as not to fly hundreds of mile past the destination - stopping for activated railroad crossing protection.
The world's economy exists for the benefit of MAN. It supports MAN, it provides employment for MAN, it is driven by the wants and needs of MAN Take MAN out of the economy and the world, as we know it, collapses.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
Overmod Now every car becomes a reporter of its condition. And if it starts rolling down the main accidentally -- it can send its position and speed, activate the equivalent of calling post to railroad departments and, if desired, public agencies, set off lights or horns, and yes, activate some form of braking if equipped. Monique.Stewart@dot.gov 202-493-6358John.Punwani@dot.gov 202-493-6369
Now every car becomes a reporter of its condition. And if it starts rolling down the main accidentally -- it can send its position and speed, activate the equivalent of calling post to railroad departments and, if desired, public agencies, set off lights or horns, and yes, activate some form of braking if equipped.
Monique.Stewart@dot.gov 202-493-6358John.Punwani@dot.gov 202-493-6369
That's exactly what I mean. We already have all that in my industry. Example.. the onboard diagnostic system has identified that the left inside rear tire is running hot. An email is automatically sent to us and to the nearest shop in our network, and the driver is notified. The vehicle is routed in (or a service person is sent out to meet the truck) and the problem is taken care of. All we had to do is contact the receiver to notify them of a short delay, but I'm sure that within months those diagnostic systems will take care of that small detail as well. Thanks to ever smarter technology, unexpected events like fires will become less frequent because any malfunction that would lead up to a fire would be identified and corrected early on.
tree68what if we were to take PTC to another level - each individual car equipped with PTC? Then each car could become an enforcer of speed limits specifically. Then even a runaway car (if it were able to apply brakes) would be held to the speed limit.. Of course, the buff and slack forces in a train might then become totally unpredictable.... Probably not a good idea. I think we'll forget about that one.
Instead of equipping each car with full PTC, why not supply wireless equipment that is self-powered and that can communicate simple things like brake pressure or state of handbrake tension. This is not difficult to attach to, say, the kind of sensor box that is glued to a 3-piece sideframe over the bearing and measures wheel vibration and potential bearing failure. Now every car becomes a reporter of its condition. And if it starts rolling down the main accidentally -- it can send its position and speed, activate the equivalent of calling post to railroad departments and, if desired, public agencies, set off lights or horns, and yes, activate some form of braking if equipped.
It might be interesting for some of you to look here for a few interesting concepts -- interesting because people have proposed things very similar in a number of recent threads. As a further reference if anybody wants to ask what the current state of development is: here are the official contacts:
We in the trucking industry like springs. In 28 years I can count on one hand the number of problems we've encountered with a faulty spring. To the point made about springs supplying a variable force, true, but that doesn't matter in the application its designed for. After all the spring is only used for two purposes: parking and for emergency stops. In both cases you need something that is either OFF or fully applied...i.e. you never need a slight amount of parking brake or a gentle application of the emergency brake. Its all or nothing, and the spring is fine for that.
To your point Trees, starting with a clean sheet of paper and redesigning the entire system for railroads might not be such a bad idea. As an industry outsider looking in, I see the need for people to climb all over equipment to set brakes as outdated and archaic. Sure it works.. but I think we can do much better. We landed men on the moon almost 50 years ago now. We are able to remotely control rovers on other planets, yet for some reason a train brake that doesn't require someone to laboriously climb all over equipment continues to allude us. We should be able to do that by flipping a switch, and that system should also be flexible enough to allow the kicking of cars and whatever else is required in normal day to day railroad operations. I think it CAN be done!
Ulrich No bottled air required. All you need to do is to charge the system. with air. The air pressure holds each spring in a compressed state so long as there is sufficient air in the system.
No bottled air required. All you need to do is to charge the system. with air. The air pressure holds each spring in a compressed state so long as there is sufficient air in the system.
I guess I'm at a loss here. It sounds like you want to turn the current brake system on it's ear. Where does the air come from if the car has been sitting for several days? What holds the air in the car to keep the brakes released?
As it is, if the railroad wants to switch a bunch of cars, they can just dump the air from the cylinders in each of the cars - something that can be done by any crewman or member of the car department. Once the car is bled, it's free rolling (if the handbrake is released).
If the air leaks off a spring system, does the car stop mid-kick? Or halfway down the hump? That would put a definite damper in switching operations.
The current "Westinghouse" brake system works just fine, except there's no way to remotely initiate a "parking brake" mode. As noted, the railroad industry went that route, rather than the spring application route for reasons we don't necessarily have handy.
Is it really necessary to have such a system to set the "parking brakes." Sure, it might have helped with the Quebec incident, but so would have properly tying down the train. Methinks we're trying to solve a problem that really doesn't exist.
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...
I am not advocating springs; at least not as the working force to apply brakes; either for service or parking.
Bucyrus Ulrich Getting back to my original point, we in the trucking industry use a SPRING brake mechanism which is activated when air pressure in the system DECREASES. It works in a manner opposite to how the service brakes work. Air pressure is used to compress a heavy duty spring on each wheel. When the air pressure in the system drops the air in the brake chamber containing the spring can no longer hold the spring, and the spring brake is applied. I see no reason why a brake like that could not be adapted for railway purposes. You simply need to bleed air out of the system through a valve on the locomotive in order for all "parking" brakes on the train to apply instantaneously. . It works like a charm on trucks, and I've have had the dubious pleasure of first hand experience to attest to that. That is a natural idea for a fail-safe brake. If you lose the air, the brakes still set. The original railroad air brakes were straight air, and the obvious problem was that if the train breaks in two, you lose all braking on both halves because the train line is open at the break. So Westinghouse invented the triple valve, and a whole new pneumatic strategy that applies the air brakes by reducing the train line pressure, as opposed to the straight air system where you pressurize the train line to apply the brakes. The spring loaded cylinder system would also apply with a reduction of train line pressure. Whatever all the pros and cons of the spring system versus the triple valve system, the industry adopted the triple valve system at a time when the spring system was an obvious alternative. I don’t think that the spring system will replace the triple valve system at this point. The advantage of the spring system over the triple valve system is that the springs will not disengage over time like the triple valve system will disengage due to leakage. Assuming the current air brake system is here to stay, a parking brake could still be developed as an addition that would leave the standard air brake system intact. I am sure there a bunch of patents of workable systems of parking brakes. While a parking brake system should be an add-on to the standard air brake system, it could still utilize the pneumatic cylinders of the standard air brake system for the application of brakes when functioning as the parking brakes. But when you disengage the add-on parking brake system, it leaves the standard air brakes to function as they presently do.
Ulrich Getting back to my original point, we in the trucking industry use a SPRING brake mechanism which is activated when air pressure in the system DECREASES. It works in a manner opposite to how the service brakes work. Air pressure is used to compress a heavy duty spring on each wheel. When the air pressure in the system drops the air in the brake chamber containing the spring can no longer hold the spring, and the spring brake is applied. I see no reason why a brake like that could not be adapted for railway purposes. You simply need to bleed air out of the system through a valve on the locomotive in order for all "parking" brakes on the train to apply instantaneously. . It works like a charm on trucks, and I've have had the dubious pleasure of first hand experience to attest to that.
Getting back to my original point, we in the trucking industry use a SPRING brake mechanism which is activated when air pressure in the system DECREASES. It works in a manner opposite to how the service brakes work. Air pressure is used to compress a heavy duty spring on each wheel. When the air pressure in the system drops the air in the brake chamber containing the spring can no longer hold the spring, and the spring brake is applied. I see no reason why a brake like that could not be adapted for railway purposes. You simply need to bleed air out of the system through a valve on the locomotive in order for all "parking" brakes on the train to apply instantaneously. . It works like a charm on trucks, and I've have had the dubious pleasure of first hand experience to attest to that.
That is a natural idea for a fail-safe brake. If you lose the air, the brakes still set. The original railroad air brakes were straight air, and the obvious problem was that if the train breaks in two, you lose all braking on both halves because the train line is open at the break. So Westinghouse invented the triple valve, and a whole new pneumatic strategy that applies the air brakes by reducing the train line pressure, as opposed to the straight air system where you pressurize the train line to apply the brakes.
The spring loaded cylinder system would also apply with a reduction of train line pressure. Whatever all the pros and cons of the spring system versus the triple valve system, the industry adopted the triple valve system at a time when the spring system was an obvious alternative. I don’t think that the spring system will replace the triple valve system at this point.
The advantage of the spring system over the triple valve system is that the springs will not disengage over time like the triple valve system will disengage due to leakage. Assuming the current air brake system is here to stay, a parking brake could still be developed as an addition that would leave the standard air brake system intact.
I am sure there a bunch of patents of workable systems of parking brakes. While a parking brake system should be an add-on to the standard air brake system, it could still utilize the pneumatic cylinders of the standard air brake system for the application of brakes when functioning as the parking brakes. But when you disengage the add-on parking brake system, it leaves the standard air brakes to function as they presently do.
Springs are a bad idea. They lose their temper, crack and break from low cycle fatigue. They also have variable force with distance - not ideal when dealing with brake shoes that can wear a couple inches. You'd either need a super-reliable slack adjuster or some other system to adjust for this.
A worm and screw parking brake would be better. They already exist on locomotives.
-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/)
A "smart" freight car with it's own energy source and communication scheme could do all sorts of things. Technically feasible. Not mature technology. Expensive. Soft benefits and hard costs are generally a non-starter for companies that have hard savings/increased revenue from alternative investments - like building intermodal terminals.
zugmann Ulrich No bottled air required. All you need to do is to charge the system. with air. The air pressure holds each spring in a compressed state so long as there is sufficient air in the system. So how would you kick a car?
So how would you kick a car?
You build the system that I described.
No, they are not.
An "expensive model collector"
UlrichYou simply need to bleed air out of the system through a valve on the locomotive in order for all "parking" brakes on the train to apply instantaneously.
Unfortunately, you just made Houston Ed's workday a lot longer. When kicking cars, the brakes need to be completely released so the car is free rolling. It would appear that your idea would require bottling the air on each car so it could be kicked, and possibly connecting and pumping up a car before it could be switched.
We usually put our passenger cars on air to move them, and we don't kick them - we couple them up under power. We're normally only switching a couple of cars when we do - I can't imagine the chaos if one was trying to switch hundreds of cars a day.
I doubt that the actual need for improvement or the effectiveness of the improvements will be all that important. What will be important is to look like they are doing something about the problem. And it is not like the industry is going to have the privilege of deciding what is cost effective.
Look what the Chatsworth wreck did for advancing PTC. What is coming will be much more powerful than the fallout from the Chatsworth wreck.
"New and Improved" often isn't.
Jeff
In a broad and general sense, I would not say that railroading is behind the curve of technological development. But I would say that the curve is suddenly about to radically change. Two things are going to change it. One is the rapid increase in crude oil shipping by rail, and other is the rapid increase in public demand for greater oil train safety. I don’t think there is any time in history when the need to change has come on so strong and rapidly.
The answer to the original question really becomes another question - when will a technological advance be as simple and reliable as the current technology? Further, when will the cost of that technological advance be such that it becomes economically worth the cost.
Bearing in mind that we're not talking about the introduction of such items as Janney couplers or Westinghouse brakes and the safety they brought to railroading. Rather we're looking at replacements for such items, most specifically brakes.
Are railroads behind the technology curve? Maybe, but I'll bet most of us still just tie a square knot instead of reaching for a handful of nylon zip ties...
As I sit here typing this it occurs to me - what if we were to take PTC to another level - each individual car equipped with PTC? Then each car could become an enforcer of speed limits specifically. Then even a runaway car (if it were able to apply brakes) would be held to the speed limit.. Of course, the buff and slack forces in a train might then become totally unpredictable.... Probably not a good idea. I think we'll forget about that one.
UPrailfan Here is something to think about if the US Military can come up with an 155MM Arty round that can be Fired out of a Howitzer equipped with GPS and have it home in on the spot they want it to hit within 1 meter I think this should be easy to do. Try looking up the Excalibur Arty round they can use it in Cities to target the Exact Building they want to hit instead of having to blanket the area with rounds now.
Here is something to think about if the US Military can come up with an 155MM Arty round that can be Fired out of a Howitzer equipped with GPS and have it home in on the spot they want it to hit within 1 meter I think this should be easy to do. Try looking up the Excalibur Arty round they can use it in Cities to target the Exact Building they want to hit instead of having to blanket the area with rounds now.
What's even more amazing was that "Deke" Parsons of the USN was able to design a proximity fuze in 1940-41 that would withstand being shot out on the nose of a 5" naval rifle shell and by the end of the war were mounting the fuze's on 40mm shells. Your point is correct in that electronics can be designed to take some tremendous shocks, however the operative phrase is that they need to be designed and tested to do so.
- Erik
better not leave them unattended, should be crewed at all times.
petitnj1. Compasses don't measure true north. (Can Dead Men Vote Twice? Compass Deviation Magnetic Variance True)
Just a quick note: you need to say that MAGNETIC compasses don't measure true north.
The derived compass function in GPS inherently measures true north, and moreover can do so with very low latency if the vehicle is moving or rotating, and needs no declination adjustment, etc.
Inertial navigation systems indicate true north as well, but are dependent on initial setting or external corrections for their precision and accuracy. They are certainly 'good enough' for those aspects of normal railroading where, for whatever reason, a GPS compass system loses satellite lock.
There's another factor in magnetic-compass adjustment ("compensation"), which has to be made for large masses of magnetic material -- say, 710 or 7FDL-sized masses -- near the compass. Techniques for fluxgate-magnetometer compasses can accommodate some of these effects, and operate more precisely at high latitudes where the magnetic field begins to show steep declination along the z axis ... but they are still limited, as noted, by the inherent imprecision in the geometry of the Earth's magnetic field.
Aside from this: all notable points. I would not advocate a derail off the main line for every substantial downgrade, as it is far more likely to produce a derailment disaster than prevent one unless -- possibly -- it is located where it acts to prevent the train from acquiring momentum sufficient to damage the car structures. Having said that: a portable derail applied 20' downgrade from a standing train, perhaps attached by cable to a wheel chock on the opposite rail to give a fixed 'standoff', might be a very wise precaution for future high-risk operations like these oil trains.
When I was doing a 'handheld' PTC system in the late '80s, the test of the unit was going to involve tossing it out of the offices at Suburban Square (8th floor, with appropriate crowd control 'down below') to show that the device as designed could handle such an impact.
Remember that the mass that is most important to protect in deceleration is ONLY that of the package of interest, not the device as a whole. The purpose of the filling is not so much to 'cushion' the item(s) of interest so that if the external shell for any reason decelerates quickly, the item inside is decelerated through a smooth profile, with whatever peak g is required, to match velocity with the shell before the compliance of the filling is exceeded. (There are some other considerations but I think you get the idea)
Very large shock accelerations, as with the Amtrak testing (179g was the recorded number I remember, by the way) are almost by necessity very short. That means that the actual distance traveled while actually responding to the shock force is relatively slight, and in most cases outside rocketry, the subsequent distance available to decelerate the momentum acquired during the shock acceleration is large enough to permit 'bleeding off' the excess energy before the motion can cause difficulty.
The situation is mathematically a bit more complicated if the device rebounds from the impact; in this case the packing will have to deal with more energy absorption and hence likely require a longer travel ... but the reaction involved will tend to limit the rebound acceleration, which is probably a good thing as far as it goes.
Working without access to my notes: I calculated what would be necessary to allow passengers to 'walk away' from a 225 mph train collision with a bridge abutment or similar object that was assumed to produce near-instantaneous longitudinal deceleration. We used peak deceleration rate somewhere between 6 and 10g (the force is only applied very briefly, but we need to consider things like bone damage, some forms of bruising and induced hydraulic shock, and of course aortic shearing dissection) and about 33" of compliance is necessary (assumed that the load can be spread across a large portion of the mass to be decelerated, not concentrated just in the area of a belt or harness). Naturally, in an actual collision this worst-case deceleration would not be observed, but it was interesting to determine how it could be done.
With careful design, and the right sort of materials and potting (including proper lead design and routing), I have seen peak acceleration tolerance as high as 20,000g. There are papers in the IEEE library and elsewhere that discuss optimizing designs for very high shock acceleration.
Short conclusion: Properly hardened electronics packaging will be tolerant of any normal forces encountered in railroading, and probably no few unusual ones.
See the FRA's webpage on the "Advanced Concept train" at: http://www.fra.dot.gov/Page/P0317
It mentions an "Advanced Hand Brake", and elsewhere are mentions of actuators for same, but there are no further links or information there that I could find quickly.
- Paul North.
To give you an idea of the force unleashed during a normal, controled slow speed coupling…as an example to one of my trainees, I put a 4x4 oak post in the mouth of an open knuckle, then coupled into the car….it crushed the oak so much that the moisture oozed out of the end, and the post ended up being less than ½ of an inch thick.
He got the point.
Most of the lading is either a bulk commodity, or a liquid.
You really can’t hurt a load of plastic pellets, a hopper of corn, a tank car full of tallow or a load of I beams in a gondola.
As for box cars, most of what’s in them is secured with internal dividers and tie downs, pretty protected.
I doubt you will find delicate things such as TVs, glass ware or such moving by anything other than an intermodal box, and those cars are rarely humped or flat switched to begin with.
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