What happened? CSX crew failed to realign the switch for straight ahead? Did Amtrak arrive before CSX crew had time to geto the switch to realign ito straight ahead?
Railroad employees know the answers as to why this happened. The investigation will be thorough, I'll wait for the final official report. BUT it does remind me of the Graniteville, South Carolina, January 6, 2005, Norfolk Southern train accident.
There is always a new bureaucratic regulation or system that will prevent the accident because for the rail bosses anything slowing down train movement is unsafe for the next quarters dividend payments. There is absolutely no reason those people had to die or be injured except boss greed. No is no reason on earth for running a train down a dark signal road at 3 or 4 in the morning with passengers at 50 MPH. If they didn't hit that switch they could have just as easily hit a vehicle at a crossing with no lights or gates down. They only reason the rail bosses want PTC now and not back in the 1950's is they're planning for a railroad with stationary engineers monitoring multiply trains in remodeled round houses with multiple video cameras and monitors. If you think this self driving car talk hasn't pricked their ears your wrong after all who else can afford a Tesla automobile?
They tried out a version of PTC in the 1950's and rejected as to costly. Sure to costly because they couldn't run trains through red blocks. You can watch "The Taking of Pelham 123" made in 1974". The subway train goes into an emergency stop when it hits a red block.
I have been qualified and have been using PTC in signaled and dark territory for about 14 months now. It does work when everything is functional. Don't get me wrong. It still has faults every now and then. Something that CSX works on every month with planned outages to improve on the system.
It's unclear how much if any recording time was lost in the accident. If the horn was activated at 7 seconds before impact, that would mean it was activated approximately at the switch. If the recording ended before impact, the horn would have been activated before the switch, if it kept recording after the impact it would mean the horn and braking would have happened after the switch. This is now speculation, but given time of day, potential fatigue issues, visibility of the switch from the approach direction, and the shock of seeing/recognising the signs of an upcoming, unavoidable accident, any reaction likely occured after the train was being switched onto the occupied rail.
I would tend to agree. It's normal for crash recorders to stop at the moment of impact, and depending on their design, a few seconds of data may not yet have been saved to the recording medium. "Black box" recorders are designed to record all detected data, but video recorders often retain such a delay, and that appears to hold true in this case. The black-box recorded a final speed of 50mph, so that was, at least, not post-impact. Taking the average of the initial and final speeds, 7 seconds at 53mph is 544ft, which is slightly less than the distance from points to impact. Hence it appears that the actual diversion was the first indication of trouble for the Amtrak crew; they were only able to reduce speed slightly in the remaining time. Based on the information we have, I don't think we should blame the Amtrak crew for this at all. It looks as though the CSX crew missed a very important and routine procedure relating to manually operated points. I don't know whether these points' position were normally indicated to the signalling system and the dispatcher, nor whether (in light of the maintenance underway) any such indications were disabled along with the signals themselves. I *do* know that British railway practice would not have permitted these circumstances to arise.
I worked 20 years on a railroad, and the questions from the press lead me to conclude that the media are idiots, except for the reporter from Trains Magazine, he seems to have a good idea about train operations---the others are just idiots.
The nomenclature and terminology alone is enough to confuse the average reporter. It's humorous to see the names for equipment and procedures "dumbed down" to a point that the general public can grasp the concept. Overall I'd say the NTSB does an outstanding job at this, despite the nearly complete lack of understanding. I imagine this is a highly frustrating phase of the investigation for this reason alone.
I give Chairman Robert Sumwalt a pat on the back for his patience with the %^&# press
What happened? CSX crew failed to realign the switch for straight ahead?
Did Amtrak arrive before CSX crew had time to geto the switch to realign ito straight ahead?
Railroad employees know the answers as to why this happened. The investigation will be thorough, I'll wait for the final official report. BUT it does remind me of the Graniteville, South Carolina, January 6, 2005, Norfolk Southern train accident.
One of the things that came from Granitville SC crash was.
Switch Awarance Forms used in Dark Territory or in Signal Suspensions.
There is always a new bureaucratic regulation or system that will prevent the accident because for the rail bosses anything slowing down train movement is unsafe for the next quarters dividend payments. There is absolutely no reason those people had to die or be injured except boss greed. No is no reason on earth for running a train down a dark signal road at 3 or 4 in the morning with passengers at 50 MPH. If they didn't hit that switch they could have just as easily hit a vehicle at a crossing with no lights or gates down.
They only reason the rail bosses want PTC now and not back in the 1950's is they're planning for a railroad with stationary engineers monitoring multiply trains in remodeled round houses with multiple video cameras and monitors. If you think this self driving car talk hasn't pricked their ears your wrong after all who else can afford a Tesla automobile?
There not to to far from what your saying now Kim O'Brien.
Between Trip Optimizer and PTC I basically babysit a train now instead of running it.
They tried out a version of PTC in the 1950's and rejected as to costly. Sure to costly because they couldn't run trains through red blocks. You can watch "The Taking of Pelham 123" made in 1974". The subway train goes into an emergency stop when it hits a red block.
I have been qualified and have been using PTC in signaled and dark territory for about 14 months now.
It does work when everything is functional.
Don't get me wrong. It still has faults every now and then. Something that CSX works on every month with planned outages to improve on the system.
It's unclear how much if any recording time was lost in the accident. If the horn was activated at 7 seconds before impact, that would mean it was activated approximately at the switch. If the recording ended before impact, the horn would have been activated before the switch, if it kept recording after the impact it would mean the horn and braking would have happened after the switch.
This is now speculation, but given time of day, potential fatigue issues, visibility of the switch from the approach direction, and the shock of seeing/recognising the signs of an upcoming, unavoidable accident, any reaction likely occured after the train was being switched onto the occupied rail.
I would tend to agree. It's normal for crash recorders to stop at the moment of impact, and depending on their design, a few seconds of data may not yet have been saved to the recording medium. "Black box" recorders are designed to record all detected data, but video recorders often retain such a delay, and that appears to hold true in this case. The black-box recorded a final speed of 50mph, so that was, at least, not post-impact.
Taking the average of the initial and final speeds, 7 seconds at 53mph is 544ft, which is slightly less than the distance from points to impact. Hence it appears that the actual diversion was the first indication of trouble for the Amtrak crew; they were only able to reduce speed slightly in the remaining time.
Based on the information we have, I don't think we should blame the Amtrak crew for this at all. It looks as though the CSX crew missed a very important and routine procedure relating to manually operated points. I don't know whether these points' position were normally indicated to the signalling system and the dispatcher, nor whether (in light of the maintenance underway) any such indications were disabled along with the signals themselves. I *do* know that British railway practice would not have permitted these circumstances to arise.
Yes, that's pretty much what I said.
I worked 20 years on a railroad, and the questions from the press lead me to conclude that the media are idiots, except for the reporter from Trains Magazine, he seems to have a good idea about train operations---the others are just idiots.
Yep. Trains Magazine reporter was the best!
The nomenclature and terminology alone is enough to confuse the average reporter. It's humorous to see the names for equipment and procedures "dumbed down" to a point that the general public can grasp the concept. Overall I'd say the NTSB does an outstanding job at this, despite the nearly complete lack of understanding. I imagine this is a highly frustrating phase of the investigation for this reason alone.
Amtrak 47 and Csx 130 are a total loss