EuclidI don't think that crossing at right angles will necessarily solve the problem. Casters are squirrelly. They could hit the flangeway perpendicular to it and instantly flip around by 90 degrees and drop right into the flangeway.
One cure for this is to detent and spring the casters on any wheelchair so they take up fore-and-aft alignment if unloaded -- this might ease stowage and transport.
It occurs to me that far before explosive-bolt demountable casters begin to make sense, simple drop-in ramps combined with savvy wheel dimensioning and design might provide the necessary extraction assistance in many mishaps where merely lifting the chair out is not possible and no jacking capability is available. I think if you have differential drive motors this would always let you out.
I don't think that crossing at right angles will necessarily solve the problem. Casters are squirrelly. They could hit the flangeway perpendicular to it and instantly flip around by 90 degrees and drop right into the flangeway.
tree68I believe you could mass-produce signs that say "Cross Tracks at Right Angles" for under $20 each. Maybe include a simple graphic illustrating the concept. Might have to replace a sign from time to time. Problem solved.
A proper sign really has to add the important concern, which is "don't stop or try to turn around no matter what once you start across" (I'll let y'all figure out what that should be in terse English) perhaps with the added note "trains move faster than scooters and faster than they appear".
Keep in mind that we still might be able to lobby FRA for specific exemptions from the nothing-above-railhead mandate permitting 90-degree crossing 'rails' or even ribbing in the crossing plates to enforce wheels-straight...
Convicted One Euclid The solution is right there now, ready to purchase and install. It will probably make a profit with all the money the railroads will save in flangeway cleaning and prevented derailments Updating 3 million chairs has gotta be cheaper than retrofitting 20,000+ grade crossings
Euclid The solution is right there now, ready to purchase and install. It will probably make a profit with all the money the railroads will save in flangeway cleaning and prevented derailments
Updating 3 million chairs has gotta be cheaper than retrofitting 20,000+ grade crossings
I come up with $200,000,000. for the flangeway fillers with installation and $600,000,000 for the chairs. This is contingent on review of your ejection wheels drawings.
Convicted One If we could harness the creativity you expend in determining why potential solutions won't work, instead upon workable alternatives.....we might already be on the downhill side of this dilemma?
Standardize the ejectable wheels, and include a workable spare with each chair, such that there was a field expedient method of installing the spare after the incident?
Perhaps even add two wheels and mount the at-risk wheels in two-wheel span bolster type configuration, thus giving the operator "drive-off" capability for the initial escape?
Or alternately perhaps even installing a ball-and-socket 5th wheel centered between the two at-risk wheels that NORMALLY isn't in contact with the ground, only coming into service once one of the primary wheels had already been jettisoned? (to prevent the chair from bottoming out after the jettison)
I firmly believe that the correct solution will be one specific to the chair, not the grade crossing.
Updating 3 million chairs has gotta be cheaper that retrofitting 20,000+ grade grossings.
Retrofitting all Hoverounds to make them grade-crossing "friendly" is likely to require a change in the medical reimbursement that made so many of these chairs used in the first place (watch a Scooter Store ad carefully if you want details). This complicated by all the users who never go near a crossing, but smell class-action in the offing and request conversion of their unit plus perhaps damages for having sold them an unsafe and unsuitable product... (which of course it was, just not so much to them). The real issue is replacing every single caster and wheel assembly on every Hoveround, even the ones bought out of thrift stores or through private trades.
As Euclid points out, the cost to install flexible flange fillers in the sections of crossings that require them fir this purpose is likely not that great, nor is the cost of periodic replacement, or monitoring for damage or wear, on the part of railroads contracting with municipalities or states. I'd be prepared to see the cost of this as a legitimate crossing-safety line item for funding -- whereas fixing scooters in a non-bankrupting fashion involves just as much ultimate taxpayer "contribution", just more indirectly and not benefiting anyone but a select few scooter owners.
Having said this, a 'first best solution' is to implement the wider yokes and 'lifting-flank' tire profiles for casters I described, and make those mandatory for new manufacture and provide a 'retrofit kit' for older examples -- that just slots into the existing caster mount. This regardless of what people might do with grade-crossing-safety retrofitting in the field...
I believe you could mass produce signs that say "Cross Tracks at Right Angles" for under $20 each. Maybe include a simple graphic illustrating the concept.
Might have to replace a sign from time to time.
Problem solved.
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...
EuclidThe solution is right there now, ready to purchase and install. It will probably make a profit with all the money the railroads will save in flangeway cleaning and prevented derailments
OvermodThis would manifestly not work on a Hoveround, for a couple of fairly obvious engineering reasons. In the New Brunswick incident, jettisoning the 'anti-tip' apparatus might have allowed recovery, but there is no guarantee the chair would still be able to recover onto pavement, particularly if the battery charge were low; it would make no sense to jettison
If we could harness the creativity you expend in determining why potential solutions won't work, instead upon workable alternatives.....we might already be on the downhill side of this dilemma?
Regardless, I firmly believe that the correct solution will be one specific to the chair, not the grade crossing.
Updating 3 million chairs has gotta be cheaper than retrofitting 20,000+ grade crossings.
(I'm watching a James Bond marathon today, and I've gotta believe that "Q" could crack this nut )
The Pinto Principle would seem to apply here.
And - we've discussed this before with other issues - who is ultimately responsible? The encroaching municipality, or the railroad?
I would suggest that a bit of an impasse might well ensue. The municipality saying it's the railroad's responsibility, the railroad saying it's the municipality's responsibility, with the railroad ultimately saying if it's so dangerous, we'll just close the crossing.
Convicted One ...saving the users life while saving the taxpayer tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars? for a remedy that only scarcely would ever be needed?
...saving the users life while saving the taxpayer tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars? for a remedy that only scarcely would ever be needed?
The solution is right there now, ready to purchase and install. It will probably make a profit with all the money the railroads will save in flangeway cleaning and prevented derailments. The only issue I see is the care and attention to detail needed in the installation. This is evident in the manufactuer's installation video. I think neither the cities nor the railroads will want to make the required effort during installation, so trained, certified installers will needed. They will not only install correctly, but also install at less cost than the railroads or the cities.
The product is an idea who's time has come.
Convicted OnePerhaps a more practical solution might be to develop a "quick release" function for the wheels, so that in the rare occurrence where such a stranding actually happens, the chair operator can reach down and slide a lever, and jettison the stranded wheel,
I think the principal problem I have with the idea, though, is how you prevent unintended actuation of the 'quick disconnect', perhaps involving a failure under load. If a chair were to release a front wheel when 'raised and castering' (as described for a different Canadian incident) and the wheel were to drop out or jam, this might conceivably cause tip over and injury -- without much recourse in the subsequent court action for damages. There is also a fair history in aviation of issues like hands-free ejection seats or 'cutting off the wrong engine' that bode ill for user-controlled wheel release.
In the short run, I think the simplest correction for 'scooters' is to implement the kind of extended wheel and yoke I described. There are practical retrofit solutions for other power chairs along similar lines, one possibility being jacks that can lift a jammed wheel combined with an arrangement to rotate or lock the caster in a straight line or other angle to ensure it won't promptly low-center again. Another alternative would be an air-bag arrangement that would lift the vehicle to allow it to be laterally dragged free.
The arguments in Australia and other places that adding width to the wheels may not always be possible is a valid one, but it applies only very peripherally to Hoveround or other 'zero-turn' scooters, where the outside wheels are already reasonably fat and the 'casters' entirely under the skirt of the device at all times.
What i think is the 'ultimate' solution is to establish a better rule for crossings: make them clearly to cross rails at a right angle; clearly provide reflective stripes defining the path to follow, even in dark or rain for users without mandatory vision correction; do not tolerate masts or other equipment from one type of mandated protection from interfering with free passage on sidewalks. And, not incidentally, use the 2.75" 'close' or Euclid-style frying-pan fillers, or full fillers where agreeable, just in the pedestrian-crossing 1.5m or equivalent and, as at Ashland, try to ensure that falling off the outside is 'recoverable'.
Then establish a combination of funding sources and enforcement that gets that done ... and also establishes the necessary ADA or comparable waiver that allows crossings to be marked closed to certain types of traffic until remediated.
Something else that hasn't been discussed is a variant of the 'I've fallen and I can't get up' that would be able to send an unspoofable signal to an 'automated crossing' warning system along with whatever monitoring system it used. A proper camera system would rapidly identify a stuck wheelchair; the railroad would get highly specific warning of an issue (or recourse for a false alarm); appropriate dispatch of first response could be near-immediate. (Note the interesting Canadian discussion of cell-phone emergency calling...)
Perhaps a more practical solution might be to develop a "quick release" function for the wheels, so that in the rare occurrence where such a stranding actually happens, the chair operator can reach down and slide a lever, and jettison the stranded wheel, saving the users life while saving the taxpayer tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars? for a remedy that only scarcely would ever be needed?
EuclidHow many fatalties does it require to be concerned about it?
How many dragons did Don Quixote eventually slay?
As callous as I am sure that it sounds, there need be an acceptable level of risk.
And I just don't see the cost of retrofitting every grade crossing in America with your "frying pan" solution to be justfied by the handful of incidents that might be prevented.
OM: Thank you for stating that so succinctly. It bugs me also to have participated in a thorough discussion of this issue, only to have someone crudely call Bucky a whiner, all the while he proposes a problematic active system.
TrainsButSmallTrue, but this dude is whining about flangeways when there have been few or no cases involving flangeway fatalities, so realism isn't exactly the point.
I am not sure what saying 'few or no flangeway fatalities' is supposed to mean in the context of a thread about a "flangeway fatality" -- had he read the TSB report in the immediately preceding post, he would have learned the number for Canada alone to the report date (7) as well as a great deal of earlier recognition of and concern over the issue (much of which I had not been aware of). Note for example that in both the California and New Brunswick examples a stated likely cause was positioning the crossing-signal mast in the sidewalk; note also (with a nod to the Ashland grade-crossing discussion) that a safety device is what likely precluded the Canadian operator from reversing back to safety.
TrainsButSmall True, but this dude is whining about flangeways when there have been few or no cases involving flangeway fatalities, so realism isn't exactly the point.
True, but this dude is whining about flangeways when there have been few or no cases involving flangeway fatalities, so realism isn't exactly the point.
How many fatalties does it require to be concerned about it?
I went back and reviewed that video of the wheelchair stuck on the track in Lodi. Regarding the seeming lack of urgency on the part of the guy in the chair, I could not see his expressions because his face was intentionally obscured in the video. But it is striking just how close of a call this actually was. He cleared the train with only a second or two to spare. I have a feeling that his overall discomfort of this event will lead him to be in the news again.
Here is the TSB report of the similar wheelchair mishap in Canada. Crossing/wheelchair fatality in Canada with extensive details of historical record of such accidents and related safety measures:
https://www.tsb.gc.ca/eng/rapports-reports/rail/2016/r16m0026/r16m0026.html
In this case, two people were trying to get the chair and the victim off of the track, but failed. He was struck and killed and also one of the two rescuers was struck and badly injured. One point revealed in the report is just how heavy these powered wheelchairs actually are. They said that in the case of this accident in Canada, the chair and rider weighed about 500 lbs. This weight would certainly play a role in how tightly wheels might get jammed into a flangeway, and how much effort it would take to overcome the resistance of the jam plus the 500-lb. load of chair and rider.
I assume that getting the rider out of the chair would be readily achievable even if there is some kind of seat belt that would have to be released. But I wonder about rescuers being confused over the mission of getting the rider and the chair into the clear, versus just getting the rider into the clear and then going back for the chair if there is time.
To the point above about powered, automatic flangeway fillers:
I don’t think they are the answer, except maybe in the EU. For North American railroads, the fully developed solution already exists. It does not solve 100% of the multifaceted problem, but it prevents people in wheelchairs from getting killed. It is a simple product that will more than pay for itself by reducing liability. In addition, it will probably make a profit by reducing flangeway maintenance and the fouling of crossing ballast.
BaltACD Cost to design the system $$$$$. Cost to install the system $$$$$$$. Cost to maintain the system $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$. Not PSR friendly.
Cost to design the system $$$$$. Cost to install the system $$$$$$$. Cost to maintain the system $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$. Not PSR friendly.
I think you're underestimating the cost.... You also forgot liability.
Might make sense if the cost and liability was the responsibility of whoever owns the road crossing the railroad, but some very wamr places will freeze over before municipalities fork over the necessary funs to implement this.
Sidewalk drawbridge!!!
TrainsButSmallSolution: have flangeways closed via solenoids until a train approaches, then proceed to open them after the gates are fully in the closed position. This way, nobody will get stuck unless they venture onto the tracks while the gates are fully closed, at which point they were probably suicidal anyway.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
Solution: have flangeways closed via solenoids until a train approaches, then proceed to open them after the gates are fully in the closed position. This way, nobody will get stuck unless they venture onto the tracks while the gates are fully closed, at which point they were probably suicidal anyway.
The “Grand Canyon” flangeway is intended to be a repository so large, that you don’t have to clean it out often. Like a landfill, it is the size that makes it practical. Also the capacity is aided in delaying cleanout by the natural decomposition of material deposited. Ice and snow melt and the resulting water disappears by runoff, evaporation, and percolation. Dirt washes out or settles deeply into the ballast. Trash rots away. So in that sense, the “Grand Canyon” flangeway is like a septic tank always digesting much of its contents.
The obvious problem with the jumbo flangeway is its hazards to pedestrians. But there is also a downside that harms the interest of the railroad. One reference cites the fact that this internal consumption of debris eventually finds its way into the track bed and fouls the ballast, which then impedes drainage and causes frost heave of the ballast under the crossing. This causes the track under the crossing misalign with the connecting track outside of the crossing, thus forming a derailment hazard at the crossing. So while jumbo flangeways offer some benefit, they are also slowly poisoning the crossing by fouling the ballast.
So when you greatly reduce the size of the maximum size flangeway, you reduce ballast fouling, but the flangeway has to be cleaned out more frequently because its storage capacity has been reduced. If it is not cleaned out frequently, the filling and packing with debris will eventually crowd out and lift the flanges to the point of derailment.
However, with the shallow flangeway rail seal, you attack the ice while it is thin, and you do so often. Every passing train cleans the flangeway.
If that 'you can't trap your foot in a frying pan' is original, you have a really good Lorenzo Coffin-style slogan in the making.
I base my assessment on the material in the shallow-flangeway crossings I've seen on the type of wear or damage patterns I see, which are highly typical of medium to high density polyethylene or similar material. That's not to say that others aren't rubber or elastomer of some kind, or that some may have Zectron-like elasticity in a butyl composition.
Note that all the 'Grand Canyon' flangeways I have seen are essentially self-cleaning in that they are massively open below the edge of the filler' pieces defining the edge of the flange space. The ones on the LIRR in East Hampton appear to be designed to clear dirt and snow out of the entire flangeway space to where it can spill or be compressed across the ties and cribs in the gauge space, much as parking-lot vaults quickly take even the most severe storm runoff and remove it from the driving surface and surface drainage. This limits the active trapping of both debris and frozen water to just the open-bottom space occupied by about a 1.5" slot 'open to below' with metal-defined edges both sides.
All this of course merely makes trapping of transverse wheels a near-certainty over a fairly large gathering angle, and the 'lack of a bottom' guaranteeing full insertion which, for bicycle wheels, near-guarantees both a nasty spill and considerable irreversible wheel damage without sufficient visual warning. It would be possible to mitigate some of this with a grid, rather than continuous, filler at shallow-flangeway depth, and preserve most of the self-cleaning action, but there might still be danger of entrapment and spill. Perhaps the answer is a meshwork 'FF" that would support larger-diameter wheels and perhaps even casters so that they will effectively 'climb' either edge of the flange space as they turn without catching, sufficiently below the railhead that only a small percentage of the flange actually causes deflection of it.
All this of course merely makes trapping of transverse wheels a near-certainty over a fairly large gathering angle, and the 'lack of a bottom' guaranteeing full insertion which, for bicycle wheels, near-guarantees both a nasty spill and considerable irreversible wheel damage without sufficient visual warning. It would be possible to mitigate some of this with a grid, rather than continuous, filler at shallow-flangeway depth, and preserve most of the self-cleaning action, but there might still be danger of entrapment and spill. Perhaps the answer is a meshwork 'FF" that would support larger-diameter wheels and perhaps even casters so that they will effectively 'climb' either edge of the flange space as they turn without catching.
+1
We are indeed focusing on two types flangeway devices. One of them is the flangeway filler (FF) that has to compress and rebound as it is contacted by the flanges. In effect, when there is no train passing, the flangeway is completely filled with a material that will support vehicles but compress to allow flanges to pass. As I mentioned, these seem to be widely accepted for transit lines, but have no chance of acceptance by heavy rail systems.
The other type of device is the SHALLOW FLANGEWAY RAIL SEAL (SFRS). This is to be distinguished from the basic RAIL SEAL which also has a flangeway, but it is deeper than the flangeway of the SFRS.
The basic RAIL SEAL is not intended to address the flangeway safety issue, but the SFRS is intended to add flangeway safety by making the flangeway as shallow as possible. The emphasis is on “Shallow.” The flangeway for SFRS is about 1.5” deep versus up to 8-9” deep for the deepest flangeways, including those without any RAIL SEAL device. The idea behind the SFRS is that you can’t get your foot stuck in a frying pan.
The most preferred approach would be to use the SFRS. It does not need to directly yield to the flange as the FF does. Although the industry is not satisfied with a flangeway that merely clears the flange. They want a lot of clearance. So they will at least be hesitant to approve the SFRS while completely rejecting the FF.
From what I gather, all three of these categories; FF, SFRS, and basic RS are all made of rubber and not polypropylene. This is because the resilience of rubber plays a role in all three device categories as follows:
For FF, the flangeway filler has to compress and rebound with the passage of flanges.
For SFRS, the flangeway floor has to compress and rebound if ice or dirt builds up on the floor and that layer then is contacted by the flange. If it does so, the flanges will clean the fouling layer out of the flangeway. It is the flexing action of the flangeway floor that bends and fractures the layer so the flanges can crush and eject it from the flangeway.
For the basic RS, the whole assembly has to compress like a rubber gasket upon installation in order to make a seal around the rail and keep dirt and water from getting under the rail and into the ballast.
If this self-cleaning of the flangeway is proven effective, this SFRS is a brilliant solution to the problem of flangeway cleaning and flangeway safety. Not only will this flangeway not derail trains, it may very well prevent derailments that might otherwise be caused by dirt or ice fouling of the flangeways.
But the industry has got to be convinced that they don’t need the Grand Canyon flangeway in order to hold dirt and ice in storage to prevent it from contacting the flange. Indeed, the Grand Canyon flangeway cannot be made self-cleaning, so it will always fill to the point where it must be cleaned of ice, or dirt as soon as these materials build to the point where they are contacted by the flanges.
So rather than having the Grand Canyon flangeway that provides the longest possible interval between manual cleanings, they can have the self-cleaning SFRS and not have the need for any manual cleanings at all. A need for manual cleanings can lead to derailments if not cleaned in time. A self-cleaning flangeway, with no need of manual cleanings, make derailments impossible.
Quite possibly and thanks for a cogent, yet thorough summary of the main types.
charlie hebdoIn terms of safety, I'm not sure the filler needs to come to the top of the railhead. Rather the ones I see (on a very busy heavy rail line) slant down, more or less parallel to the flange outline.
It is correct that this could be shy -- even an inch or two shy -- of being 'perfectly level' with the railhead; it is even relatively unlikely that the inch or two of ice or dirt that might accumulate in the resulting recess would pose much more derailment risk than similar accumulation in the flangeway of a crossing with the HDPE strip fillers.
It will literally take an act of Congress, or some scheme that caps or removes railroad liability for accidents related to or arising out of the full-height fillers, to get them established at crossings. I don't blame either the railroads or the AAR for fighting to ensure they stay out of becoming unfunded mandates or assumable risks for railroad companies.
I wonder if a 'transition' profile, an otherwise full-height filler with a groove in it corresponding in location and depth to what a locomotive would 'cut for itself' in fresh asphalt, would be more acceptable as an alternative?
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