VOLKER LANDWEHR Murphy Siding What does that have to do with the derailment in Doon Iowa? Your laws require a number of precautions to prevent oil train desasters like speed limit, PTC, buffer cars. Perhaps in a case of high water special precautions for an oil train on this route might have been adviced. I don't know if this perhaps was done. As I said before I think the railroad must have known of the high water condition at the time of the accident, I don't say the high water was the cause for the derailment. It might have been. The water level Tree68 gave for up-river from Doon is defined as Major Flood Stage: http://ifis.iowafloodcenter.org/ifis/app/?c=Doon_(Rock_River)Klick on the Attention mark for more information.Regards, Volker
Murphy Siding What does that have to do with the derailment in Doon Iowa?
Your laws require a number of precautions to prevent oil train desasters like speed limit, PTC, buffer cars.
Perhaps in a case of high water special precautions for an oil train on this route might have been adviced. I don't know if this perhaps was done.
As I said before I think the railroad must have known of the high water condition at the time of the accident, I don't say the high water was the cause for the derailment. It might have been.
The water level Tree68 gave for up-river from Doon is defined as Major Flood Stage: http://ifis.iowafloodcenter.org/ifis/app/?c=Doon_(Rock_River)Klick on the Attention mark for more information.Regards, Volker
Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.
Murphy SidingWhat does that have to do with the derailment in Doon Iowa?
mudchickenVolker: Miller-Coors and a small craft brewer here in Colorado would differ from your opinion. (And the truckers keep turning over trailers at the same place on a regular basis ... now referred to as "Brewmasters Curve" just outside Golden).
Sorry, but this doesn't tell me anything and I don't understand what you want to tell me.
I don't know if the brewers wouldn't realize a difference if they had to clean-up an oil spill instead of beer that often.Regards, Volker
tree68 charlie hebdo Perhaps you should cool it. The "railroaders" are not totally in agreement and your post has almost nothing to do with the Doon incident. If there is anyone on this forum I would choose to believe over all others on this - it's Mudchicken. He's got more real world experience in the matter (and contacts in the business) than the rest of us combined.
charlie hebdo Perhaps you should cool it. The "railroaders" are not totally in agreement and your post has almost nothing to do with the Doon incident.
If there is anyone on this forum I would choose to believe over all others on this - it's Mudchicken. He's got more real world experience in the matter (and contacts in the business) than the rest of us combined.
As a operating railroader,
Greetings from Alberta
-an Articulate Malcontent
charlie hebdoPerhaps you should cool it. The "railroaders" are not totally in agreement and your post has almost nothing to do with the Doon incident.
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...
The derailment occured Friday. The river rose rapidly Wednesday after 5 to 7 inches (13 to 18 centimeters) of rain fell Wednesday and a further downpour on Thursday. That is a lot of rain and anyone looking objectively can see that there was a lot of standing water all around. Common sense would dictate some degree of caution. Some on here argue a series of red herrings. Was any caution shown? That is the question the public wants answers to because once again, the rails belong to the railroad but the consequences of a lack of caution affect many others.
The Doon crash is the first one involving the new, safer DOT-117R tank cars that promised to make oil safer to transport by rail. The accident reveals that these tank cars are not foolproof, considering the nearly quarter million gallons of oil released from them into an Iowa river.
charlie hebdoThe "railroaders" are not totally in agreement and your post has almost nothing to do with the Doon incident.
My sense is that the railroaders are in fact in general agreement. The actual cause is completely unknown to us. It might have been a broken rail, axle, wheel, or a subgrade failure (liquefaction) due to saturation by the high water. Or something else. None of them could be predicted except in hindsight, including the subgrade if it had never been troublesome in past flooding events.
I think real railroaders are more in agreement with each other than with some of the other people. I think Mudchicken's post has everything to do with the Doon derailment.1. Ownership of the tracks: The speed of the track is the responsibility of the MofW dept. (except in some boiler plate restrictions required by the rules.) The MofW determines the condition of the tracks and issues speed restrictions, the MofW lifts the speed restrictions. The MofW determines them, the dispatcher communicates them.2. Weather support: I went into more detail on that earlier.3. Patrols : Everything Mudchicken said was already said about 4-5 pages earlier. It is absolutely inconcieveable that the track was not being patrolled frequently. Nobody has anything to gain by not letting them patrol and the patrols have the authority to put whatever restrictions they deem necessary, from a reduced speed to impassable and the dispatcher will immediately start communicating that restriction. On the other hand if there is no observable threat to the track, there will be no restriction.
The bridge story perfectly describes the challenge of operating in heavy weather conditions. Even if the track was patrolled ahead of the train it is possible that there would be no defects detected. The whole reason the railroad builds a high dump/fill is so that the railroad will be above water and they will be able to operate when there are "high water" conditions. As I have said before, there is no system currently available that can accurately predict stream levels at specific points outside of the few water monitoring stations.
Dave H. Painted side goes up. My website : wnbranch.com
mudchickenIMHO some of the views expressed are just plain warped logic from folks not versed in the real world and certainly not qualified as railroaders in any way, shape or form. Cool it.
Perhaps you should cool it. The "railroaders" are not totally in agreement and your post has almost nothing to do with the Doon incident.
Murphy SidingIf the dispatcher does notify the crew, what does he/she tell the crew to do differently?
Depends on the alert and the railroad. I don't know what the instructions are for the BNSF. It could be anything from an advisory to a speed restriction to stopping trains.
Possibly high water: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftPBz0a9FJg
VOLKER LANDWEHR Murphy Siding I think you’re oversimplifying this and bit and getting a little bit bucyrussy about it as well. Yup. It happened. If a semi-trailer jackknifes and dumps 5,000 gallons of beer on the interstate, it will cost somebody’s money to clean it up. That’s no different than the oil spilled on the railroad. Wow! Since when is beer a hazardous material or harmfull to groundwater? Crude oil is both. I think it is an adventurous conclusion that beer and oil spills are the same. A company responsible for the clean-up will realize the difference in its bank account. Regards, Volker
Murphy Siding I think you’re oversimplifying this and bit and getting a little bit bucyrussy about it as well. Yup. It happened. If a semi-trailer jackknifes and dumps 5,000 gallons of beer on the interstate, it will cost somebody’s money to clean it up. That’s no different than the oil spilled on the railroad.
Wow! Since when is beer a hazardous material or harmfull to groundwater? Crude oil is both.
I think it is an adventurous conclusion that beer and oil spills are the same. A company responsible for the clean-up will realize the difference in its bank account. Regards, Volker
(1) Bucky and a few others on here have forgotten who "owns" the track. (The train and the dispatcher are mere tenants)
(2) BNSF and the other big outfits have their own weather / meteorlogical teams staffed directly with the centrallized dispatchers micro-managing weatherforecasts and warnings inside the railroad's corridors.
(3) Investigators will be looking at how much and how often bad weather patrols were out in front of the trains and were patrols warranted here given the conditions prior to the incident. Perfect storm or exactly what?
IMHO some of the views expressed are just plain warped logic from folks not versed in the real world and certainly not qualified as railroaders in any way, shape or form. Cool it.
( I had an incident where we had a 500 year rainstorm event compounded by 12" of marble-sized to golf ball-sized hail. We were out patrolling track in front of everything that moved. We cleared Amtrak for 60 MPH instead of the normal 90MPH. A hi-rail patrolled 45 minutes in front of Amtrak, Amtrak went by, and then two timber pile 3-span bridges were gone 20 minutes later. I drove by those two bridges about 10 minutes before Amtrak arrived over them. One of the two arroyos was empty. Mother nature can be an absolute unpredictable b*tch.)
VOLKER LANDWEHR Murphy Siding I was just using beer as an example. Would the train have derailed any differently if it had been corn instead of oil? It might have derailed as well but the consequences to the environment would be significantly different. There is a reason the oil train speeds were limited.Regards, Volker
Murphy Siding I was just using beer as an example. Would the train have derailed any differently if it had been corn instead of oil?
It might have derailed as well but the consequences to the environment would be significantly different. There is a reason the oil train speeds were limited.Regards, Volker
Murphy SidingI was just using beer as an example. Would the train have derailed any differently if it had been corn instead of oil?
tree68 Euclid I have also said that I believe the crew saw the high water and that the water was high enough to meet any definition of “high water.” And that is the crux of the discussion. Are your definition of high water and the railroad's the same for that location?
Euclid I have also said that I believe the crew saw the high water and that the water was high enough to meet any definition of “high water.”
And that is the crux of the discussion. Are your definition of high water and the railroad's the same for that location?
I don’t really have a definition. I don’t think the term, as stated in the rule is intended to have an objective, measureable definition either. If every rule had to technically qualify the meaning of every term, a couple of sentences would become several pages. And then interpretation would also be extremely indefinite and controversial as everyone measured all of the terms according to the definition. For instance, you could define high water as flood stage, or a number higher or lower than flood stage.
It sounds simple, but it would open a thousand more questions about how flood stage is determined and all of the other variables affecting that term. So I think the term “high water,” especially when stated within a group that also includes “Unusually heavy rain” and “storm,” as used in rule 6.21—that rule is guided by common sense to act when the requirement is obvious, also be guided by the other railroad rule stating, “When in doubt, take the safe course.” The rule does not expect the engineer to stop and get out a tape measure.
So under these completely sensible and practical terms, I conclude that the water at the Doon derailment site was high enough to easily qualify for action under rule 6.21. It would be silly to claim that there was not a good enough definition of “high water” to take action.
EuclidI have also said that I believe the crew saw the high water and that the water was high enough to meet any definition of “high water.”
Murphy Siding VOLKER LANDWEHR If there weren't high water information/warnings at the railroad, something went wrong I think...... Which was the safe way to go in such a case or were there standard procedures? I don't know.Regards, Volker I feel that's where a lot of the confusion is coming from. Other than the suggestion of a non-railroader, the deputy sheriff at the derailment site, I think, no one has said that the high water was the cause of the derailment. In the past there has been no history of track issues in this area in relationship to high water. This line has been in place more than 100 years. Even the NTSB seems to think it’s not much more than a random incident. To belabor this over and over by suggesting that the railroaders should have somehow known this would happen at this particular place at this particular time and taken extreme steps to prevent it is just plain ignorant. No one knows if the water level caused this problem. No one knows if the water level didn’t cause this problem. The assertion that the train should have been creeping along at 10 mph to prevent this derailment makes as much sense as parking all the trains. Then you’d have even less derailments.
VOLKER LANDWEHR If there weren't high water information/warnings at the railroad, something went wrong I think...... Which was the safe way to go in such a case or were there standard procedures? I don't know.Regards, Volker
I feel that's where a lot of the confusion is coming from. Other than the suggestion of a non-railroader, the deputy sheriff at the derailment site, I think, no one has said that the high water was the cause of the derailment. In the past there has been no history of track issues in this area in relationship to high water. This line has been in place more than 100 years. Even the NTSB seems to think it’s not much more than a random incident. To belabor this over and over by suggesting that the railroaders should have somehow known this would happen at this particular place at this particular time and taken extreme steps to prevent it is just plain ignorant. No one knows if the water level caused this problem. No one knows if the water level didn’t cause this problem. The assertion that the train should have been creeping along at 10 mph to prevent this derailment makes as much sense as parking all the trains. Then you’d have even less derailments.
Correct me if I am wrong, but I do not recall saying that the water caused the derailment. What I have said is that rule 6.21 requires trains, when encountering high water, to slow to a speed at which they can stop short of any observed track defects that may have been caused by the high water. That rules is a fact and it was posted here by a professional railroader.
I have also said that I believe that a rate of speed that would fulfill that requirement would be less than 10 mph. That is my opinion. I have also expressed my opinion that the oil train was traveling far in excess of 10 mph, and probably over 40 mph, as indicated by the amount of derailment damage.
Based on my opinion of the derailment speed, it is my opinion that the train did not comply with rule 6.21. In my opinion, 40 mph would be way too fast to be prepared to stop short of an observed track defect; so running at that speed would not comply with the requirement of rule 6.21.
I have also said that I believe the crew saw the high water and that the water was high enough to meet any definition of “high water.”
Murphy SidingThe attitude on here is that no one has yet said that it has been determined that water caused the derailment.
I'm perfectly comfortable concluding that water was the prime culprit.
I think we can probably rule out a wall of water coming down the river, pushing the cars off the track. It's that four foot rise in less than 12 hours (as recorded at Rock Rapids and Rock Valley) that was most likely to blame.
Couple that with the heavy rain upstream on the Little Rock River and the possibility of water overtopping the ROW and perhaps causing a washout looks pretty good to me.
Murphy SidingI don't know that I can agree with that. What would the warnings say?
We would have to assume that someone observed the amount of rainfall and concluded that it would result in even higher than normal river levels, which were already high.
The closest to real-time observations would be the rainfall estimates from NWS Doppler radars (yes, that is one of the products from the radars). Any official rain gauges in the area would also have provide an indication of how much rain had fallen, although not necessarily the rainfall rates.
Private observation sites (personal weather stations) could provide that information, but it might not be considered reliable. CoCoRAHs stations, which are considered reliable, only report once per day, and in this case, well after the wreck.
Regardless of who was drawing the conclusion (NWS or BNSF contractor), that information would then need to be communicated to the operating folks, who would then inform the affected crews via bulletins, dispatcher messages, or whatever method BNSF would use. The bulletin likely would have invoked Rule 6.21, and may have specified any known suspect locations (like the Little Rock River).
As has been noted, the water was already high - and possibly had been so for several days. If BNSF had not issued any sort of warning up until that point, I would opine that they did not consider that to be an issue. The ROW had likely survived such high water many times before without incident.
Based on what I saw on the two Rock River gauges, this was an unusual event.
I just checked out the personal weather station at George, IA, upstream on the Little Rock River from Doon. In a short period before the wreck, that station recorded over 4" of rain. This likely funneled down the Little Rock and "collided" with the train. But that's conjecture on my part.
dehusman Murphy Siding I don't know that I can agree with that. What would the warnings say? Railroads get custom warnings from a contract weather agency. They alert the railroad on the things that the railroad has asked them to alert on. Such things as flash flood, flooding, lightning, high winds, tornadoes, ice, heavy snowfalls, rapid changes in temperatures, heat and cold. The agency typically alerts based on subdivision and milepost range. An alert for flooding would be something like "On the Anna Sub, between mp 15 and 20 watch out for flooding from 4:00 pm to 6:00pm." The alerts are independent of the NWS because the NWS is too generic and not actionable. The alerts go to the dispatchers/asst chief dispatchers and sometimes the MofW. The dispatchers notify the trains affected and the dispatchers or asst chief dispatchers notify the maintenance personel as required. Sometimes you notify the trains, sometimes you notify MofW, depends on the type of alert. When a front goes through, a dispatcher can get over 50 alerts an hour. Water levels are very tricky because there aren't that many guages out there (and fewer every day, as they break, sometimes NOAA doesn't fix them). The weather services subscribe to a network, Mesowest, that gets weather readings from places all over the midwest and west. Railroad HBD's feed into that as well as NWS stations, airports, and even garbage dumps and chemical plants. But most of those are temperature and wind. There are realllllllllllly few water level indicators. It is very hard to forecast water levels. There is no weather service in the workd that can forecast water levels on random streams at random locations and compare that to the railroad's track level. Its just not available. Also the railroad's elevation data is suspect. The profile maps can be off by feet. I have participated in efforts to translate flood guage readings to railroad track elevations and it was a dismal failure. There may not have been an active weather alert at the time of the incident. The rain appears to have stopped, There were no high winds, there was no lightning, the water wasn't over the tracks so it wasn't flooded and probably no chance of flooding, the area in question was a back water so it wasn't going to flash flood, heat and cold weren't an issue, none of the winter stuff was an issue. There is no alert that a farmer's field is flooded next to the tracks. There is no measure of how high the water is at random parts of the railroad, so there is no data to generate a meaningful "high water" alert. While we will never know, my guess is that there was no active alert at the time of the incident.
Murphy Siding I don't know that I can agree with that. What would the warnings say?
Railroads get custom warnings from a contract weather agency. They alert the railroad on the things that the railroad has asked them to alert on. Such things as flash flood, flooding, lightning, high winds, tornadoes, ice, heavy snowfalls, rapid changes in temperatures, heat and cold. The agency typically alerts based on subdivision and milepost range.
An alert for flooding would be something like "On the Anna Sub, between mp 15 and 20 watch out for flooding from 4:00 pm to 6:00pm."
The alerts are independent of the NWS because the NWS is too generic and not actionable.
The alerts go to the dispatchers/asst chief dispatchers and sometimes the MofW. The dispatchers notify the trains affected and the dispatchers or asst chief dispatchers notify the maintenance personel as required. Sometimes you notify the trains, sometimes you notify MofW, depends on the type of alert. When a front goes through, a dispatcher can get over 50 alerts an hour.
Water levels are very tricky because there aren't that many guages out there (and fewer every day, as they break, sometimes NOAA doesn't fix them). The weather services subscribe to a network, Mesowest, that gets weather readings from places all over the midwest and west. Railroad HBD's feed into that as well as NWS stations, airports, and even garbage dumps and chemical plants. But most of those are temperature and wind. There are realllllllllllly few water level indicators. It is very hard to forecast water levels. There is no weather service in the workd that can forecast water levels on random streams at random locations and compare that to the railroad's track level. Its just not available.
Also the railroad's elevation data is suspect. The profile maps can be off by feet. I have participated in efforts to translate flood guage readings to railroad track elevations and it was a dismal failure.
There may not have been an active weather alert at the time of the incident. The rain appears to have stopped, There were no high winds, there was no lightning, the water wasn't over the tracks so it wasn't flooded and probably no chance of flooding, the area in question was a back water so it wasn't going to flash flood, heat and cold weren't an issue, none of the winter stuff was an issue.
There is no alert that a farmer's field is flooded next to the tracks. There is no measure of how high the water is at random parts of the railroad, so there is no data to generate a meaningful "high water" alert.
While we will never know, my guess is that there was no active alert at the time of the incident.
dehusman Murphy Siding The attitude on here is that no one can say for sure if the water caused the derailments. That's flat wrong. Finding the cause of a derailment is usually pretty easy. Most derailments are caused by a component or human failure. Figuring out what or who failed is usually pretty easy, why it or they failed is harder. Although its possible that something other than a subgrade failure caused the derailment, it is very likely that it was a subgrade failure. Someone will do the detective work and figure it out. We on this list may never know, but it can be figured out.
Murphy Siding The attitude on here is that no one can say for sure if the water caused the derailments.
That's flat wrong. Finding the cause of a derailment is usually pretty easy. Most derailments are caused by a component or human failure. Figuring out what or who failed is usually pretty easy, why it or they failed is harder.
Although its possible that something other than a subgrade failure caused the derailment, it is very likely that it was a subgrade failure. Someone will do the detective work and figure it out. We on this list may never know, but it can be figured out.
Let me rephrase that. The attitude on here is that mo one has yet said that it has been determined that water caused the derailment. I have no doubt that the cause will be determined by those who do that kind of work for a living. I'm just suggesting that we can't accurately retroactively say what should have been done differently before knowing what caused the problem.
charlie hebdoBottom line: the train derailed and spilled a lot of oil which will cost somebody's money to clean up. But on here, it's,"Gee Dad, it was nobody's fault and it couldn't have been prevented. And since nobody got hurt, let's pretend it didn't happen. Right?"
As to the Titantic,as a side note:
"There were binoculars aboard the Titanic, but unfortunately, no one knew it. The binoculars were stashed in a locker in the crow's nest -- where they were most needed -- but the key to the locker wasn't on board. That's because a sailor named David Blair, who was reassigned to another ship at the last minute, forgot to leave the key behind when he left. The key was in Blair's pocket. Lookout Fred Fleet, who survived the Titanic disaster, would later insist that if binoculars had been available, the iceberg would have been spotted in enough time for the ship to take evasive action. The use of binoculars would have given "enough time to get out of the way," Fleet reportedly said Others contend the binoculars wouldn't have helped because it was too dark as the ship approached the iceberg. Although the night sky was clear, there wasn't a moon to light the way. And there was no wind, creating a glassy sea that failed to give off telltale ripples around floating icebergs."
tree68 charlie hebdo The responses by many on here sound like the captain of the Titantic discussing weather and sea ice conditions that fateful night. "Icebergs? Damn the icebergs! Full speed ahead!!" Well, they were looking, even if the lookouts didn't have binoculars to do so with... The difference in opinion here seems to have to do with a definition of high water, etc. And it sounds more like those memes wherein snow is forecast in the south and the stores have their shelves emptied, while in the north, people might slow down a little if they can't see past their hood ornaments.
charlie hebdo The responses by many on here sound like the captain of the Titantic discussing weather and sea ice conditions that fateful night. "Icebergs? Damn the icebergs! Full speed ahead!!"
Well, they were looking, even if the lookouts didn't have binoculars to do so with...
The difference in opinion here seems to have to do with a definition of high water, etc.
And it sounds more like those memes wherein snow is forecast in the south and the stores have their shelves emptied, while in the north, people might slow down a little if they can't see past their hood ornaments.
Bottom line: the train derailed and spilled a lot of oil which will cost somebody's money to clean up. But on here, it's,"Gee Dad, it was nobody's fault and it couldn't have been prevented. And since nobody got hurt, let's pretend it didn't happen. Right?"
tree68 VOLKER LANDWEHR If there weren't high water information/warnings at the railroad, something went wrong I think. Indeed. Someone dropped the ball.
VOLKER LANDWEHR If there weren't high water information/warnings at the railroad, something went wrong I think.
Indeed. Someone dropped the ball.
VOLKER LANDWEHRIf there weren't high water information/warnings at the railroad, something went wrong I think...... Which was the safe way to go in such a case or were there standard procedures? I don't know.Regards, Volker
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