BaltACDThe railroad DOES NOT STOP just because Flash Flood Warnings are issued.
Nobody has said the railroad does stop just because flash flood warnings are issued. I only mentioned flash flood warnings to dispell the myth that flooding was not anticipated because the company had not been informed by anyone.
Euclid BaltACD The railroad DOES NOT STOP just because Flash Flood Warnings are issued. Nobody has said the railroad does stop just because flash flood warnings are issued. I only mentioned flash flood warnings to dispell the myth that flooding was not anticipated because the company had not been informed by anyone.
BaltACD The railroad DOES NOT STOP just because Flash Flood Warnings are issued.
That has been you contention - water = stop
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
BaltACD Euclid BaltACD The railroad DOES NOT STOP just because Flash Flood Warnings are issued. Nobody has said the railroad does stop just because flash flood warnings are issued. I only mentioned flash flood warnings to dispell the myth that flooding was not anticipated because the company had not been informed by anyone. That has been you contention - water = stop
Euclid I would hate to have you running an OTR dispatch center. Your the kind of REMF that is more worried about covering his BUTT than making sure the customers get serviced. In the Logistics Industry which Railroads play a HUGE part of it the Crew on the SCENE is the person in charge they use their OWN Judgement as to wheter or not something is safe to do. If they are wrong you clean up the mess that happened and learn what they did wrong. We have the same crap happen in the OTR industry all the time when it comes to High winds rain snow ice and other condtions. Guess what we do where I am at we tell the drivers it is their decsion wheter to run or not in the bad weather they make the call and we back them up if they do have a problem due to weather. My boss has gone to bat against his insurance company wanting to get rid of a driver for laying a truck over. In the drivers defense he got hit by a freak storm 100 mph side winds that no one predicted and he is still with us. We even ruled the accident non preventable.
EuclidThe sign you mention is in the rulebook just as you descibe it: GCOR Part of rule 6.21 In unusually heavy rain, storm, or high water, trains and engines must approach bridges, culverts, and other potentially hazardous points prepared to stop. If they cannot proceed safely, they must stop until it is safe to resume movement. ****************************************************
How do we know this crew was operating in a rain storm? Maybe they were running under starry skies.
The rain that caused the rapid rise of the Rock River (and it's tributary, the Little Rock River probably fell as much as a day before the incident.
Further, the water was already high - then it rose some four feet in 12 hours (and just as quickly fell that same four feet). Even BNSF's weather contractor may not have seen that coming.
Unless the dispatcher told the crew there was a potential problem, they did not know there was a potential problem. Unless they are amateur meteorologists. They went to work when called, read the appropriate bulletins, got on the train, and away they went.
As I mentioned before, it was oh-dark thirty. What they could see was limited by the range of vision provided by their headlights. One minute they were looking at dry fields, the next they were surrounded by water.
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...
tree68How do we know this crew was operating in a rain storm? Maybe they were running under starry skies.
Maybe there was not a rain storm at the time. So what? The rule gives three altertives that call for slowing to be prepared to stop. It does not require all three alternatives to be present. It only requres one of the three, and one of the three is high water.
tree68Unless the dispatcher told the crew there was a potential problem, they did not know there was a potential problem. Unless they are amateur meteorologists. They went to work when called, read the appropriate bulletins, got on the train, and away they went.
How do you know that to be a fact? You don't know that the crew did not see the high water or see it in time to slow down. If the water was as high as it appears to be the morning after the derailment, I would bet that the crew saw it clearly with the headlight illumination.
EuclidHow do you know that to be a fact?
Neither of us know it to be a fact, or not.
Based on the sheriff's video, they probably did see water.
But that brings us back to the question "how high is too high?" What is unusual for that location?
Apparently the railroad did not feel it was too high, or they would have issued a bulletin to that effect.
And the crew may have seen similar situations in that spot in the past and given it no further thought because there had never been a problem there before.
The four foot spike, and a tidbit I noticed in the video are telling. One part of the video showed the oil slick going the wrong way through a culvert, perhaps an indication that the major flow in that area during the spike was the reverse of normal, and the embankment may not have been built to withstand that reversed flow.
Or, the crew might have said "Water, shwater. Let's get home for breakfast!
Euclid BaltACD Euclid BaltACD The railroad DOES NOT STOP just because Flash Flood Warnings are issued. Nobody has said the railroad does stop just because flash flood warnings are issued. I only mentioned flash flood warnings to dispell the myth that flooding was not anticipated because the company had not been informed by anyone. That has been you contention - water = stop No that has not been my contention. NEVER have I said that. Show me where I have contened that. You can't. What that is and has been all along is someone else's silly exaggeration of what I have suggested that rule 6.21 requires.
No that has not been my contention. NEVER have I said that. Show me where I have contened that. You can't. What that is and has been all along is someone else's silly exaggeration of what I have suggested that rule 6.21 requires.
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!!"
charlie hebdoThe 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.
Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.
Norris, I have the impression someone wants to acquire equine leather.
Johnny
You would almost think that the derailment never happened. Just a typical trip like the thousands preceding it. Can't see the water because the headlight is not big enough. And how high is high anyway? It sounds like the 600-pound gorilla is being met with 600 pounds of denial.
Murphy SidingDidn't I read that the NTSB wasn't even going to do an official investigation? What does that tell you?
It tells me that NTSB has more than a fair workload already and that there were no fire, explosion, and most important no injuries or fatilities.
Murphy Siding The responses by several on here sound like Chicken Little. "There may be icebergs somewhere in the Atlantic. Every ship should slow to a crawl-just in case".
If there weren't high water information/warnings at the railroad, something went wrong I think. So it was not somewhere in the Atlantic.
Which was the safe way to go in such a case or were there standard procedures? I don't know.Regards, Volker
VOLKER LANDWEHRIf 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
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.
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.
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!!"
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?"
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."
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?"
Murphy SidingI 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.
Dave H. Painted side goes up. My website : wnbranch.com
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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 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
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.”
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.”
And that is the crux of the discussion. Are your definition of high water and the railroad's the same for that location?
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.”
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.
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
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