As an ex Amtrak conductor, i have my unexpert opinion is the crews didn't have enough training. The wife and i rode one of the trains from Portland to Seattle, two months before the accident, we made it as far as Olympia, as there was a landslide blocking the tracks. I asked the conductors why we couldn't we use the Bypass, one said they weren't trained and there weren't any pilots available. (A pilot is railroad parlance is someone who is qualified on a stretch of railroad territory) This explains a lot in my book!
It's still such a shame that the whole Cascadia corridor isn't linked by a proper bullet train yet, even ones running at JUST 125 mph. Hard to imagine that happening when they can't even get low-speed rail right when it comes to safe, reliable corridor construction..
@@stickynorth Anything over 125 mph in the USA is plain stupid .....I worked on a regional railway were we ran 45 with some spots at 50....grade crossing accidents were monthly
Except for the conductor reference at the beginning, very well done. You nailed all of the important points. Before retiring I used this incident in my training program for passenger train inspections. Again, very well done.
I studied the DuPont derailment, specifically from the perspective of a designer, not training (i.e the driver did not receive enough training on the route) as part of a senior ethics course for mechanical engineering. It was infuriating to learn that the design was knowingly under par. Thank you for this video.
This is an Excellent animation of a train derailment. It was such a horrific accident. The animation had such realistic details and the narrative was easy to understand. It kept me captivated through the whole video. Thank you for sharing it!!!
2 of 3 people were rail fans! One who I know someone was so excited to get the last ticket before it was sold out! I was upset for months on how could such an error happen! RIP for those who shouldn't be killed!
I’m sorry for your loss. I knew a railfan who was killed in a metro link accident in California years ago and it is always upsetting when people die in preventable accidents. My friend took the train to and from work instead of driving because he loved trains so much.
This is one of the nicest simulations/recreations that I have seen. The commentary what top notch, not a robotic AI voice, the music was not jarring or intrusive, just pleasant and the video was very realistic and did not seem like a low quality video game. Overall the video content was excellent, covering the major factors that contributed to this disaster without making it sound unrealistic like the sensational TV channel videos! Overall this is a 💯 in my book 👏
Originally it was a meandering railroad back in the day, and was pretty low speed by the time i5 went thru. They started running a track thru there to stay out of the way of other trains and have a slightly straighter shot on another existing freight line.
Great animation, very realistic, lots of hi-res detail. Audio was clear and easy to understand. The script was well written, easy to follow, and leaves you with an understanding of what happened, why it happened and it's consequences. Want to see more like this!!! (Clearly not AI generated)👍
The VO is AI generated. The script is inspired by the NTSB report, which is mostly a series of quick summaries, with the exception of the speed limit sign section. Some paragraphs may have been phrased in ChatGPT, but they were mostly written normally and then edited with Grammarly. All the graphics are traditional 3D animation or After Effects. No graphics were created with AI.
Great work recreating the scene true to life! Were all the assets (amtrak talgo and gensis) created specifically for this video? Your work does a fantastic job recreating that viarl video and photos from years gone by. A sister of a friend was in traffic very close to the accident but luckily was unharmed.
The Amtrak locomotive is a modified asset, the Talgo cars were modeled for this animation, and the Gensis Locomotive, like the other vehicles on the road, were premade assets.
So many factual errors here: 1. The engineer was at fault, not the conductor. 2. Despite the lack of training time on the line, both the engineer and the other head end rider lost situation awareness of where they were on that railroad. This should have automatically triggered them to reduce their speed until they could positively identify their location, but neither person in the locomotive made any attempt to take control of this situation. 3. The locomotive engineer, according to NTSB interviews, drove his personal vehicle up to the Seattle area to scout the new line ahead of his scheduled trip, and in fact stayed at a hotel adjacent to the railroad near J.B.L.M. 4. At the time of the accident, PTC was not required be in place nor active. However both the Locomotive and Wayside were equipped with PTC, but the "Back Office" portion was not on line yet. 5. The NTSB omitted the most glaring fact in their investigation, and that was the Sound Transit and the other agencies in the area had already published their new timetables and had their job awards for drivers and operators for the route change. None of the agencies involved were willing to move the date out, so that Amtrak could have more time to prepare their crews properly. The NTSB also fails to mention that Amtrak was limited to the times in which they could perform training of their crews because the construction side was behind schedule, and the training trains would further impact construction completion.
To my understanding, as the other person mentioned, the wheelsets rode on the track, and the cars practically floated above them. . . The initial fear was that a derailment throwing cars every which way like this would allow for the wheelsets to separate like they did and cause further derailme t and possible injury like they did. Back when the cars were initially supposed to be retrofitted to the car's stronger end walls, it looks like they were, but the cables must have either wore out and were replaced by unknowing employees, or they were possibly cheeply installed with the *nylon?* straps instead. Dk if that was thought to be better, tho, so yeah.
@@mamarussellthepie3995 talgo car body is suspended over the rodal but thers also a conection on the bottom under the gangways idk what the safety cables were for but can make the axle guidance not work properly and produce wear as the wheels will not enter radial to the turn would been better to secure the cars and not the wheel sets also would been imposible to avoid the cars to spread bc anny mecanichal conection btween cars and rodal would be destroyed and in the case of metal cables would make most estructural parts not able to be repaired
A friend of mine was the Engineer on that train. The training they received was wanting, to say the least. The Road Foreman of Engines was riding train 500 that morning. I used to work with him at UP. My opinion as a BLE&T Local Chairman (and thus an Investigator) was that he should have been on 501, riding between Tacoma and Olympia-Lacey, instead of starting out in Portland. There is never one thing that causes an incident. It is always a multitude of variables that add up. Taking one of the variables out of the equation is enough to prevent the incident from occurring.
Great video! I had no idea the fatalities were from the bogey assemblies breaking loose and striking a coach. I'd have assumed it was from being thrown about or crushed which makes this tragedy all the more sad and preventable... Horrifying to say the least. No wonder these Talgo Trainsets were never used in Wisconsin despite being paid for. I believe Lagos is using them instead on a commuter rail line to its Northern suburbs and airport which is still a bit worrying but hopefully they will receive the proper upgrades...
Talgo trainsets have been used in a lot of countries for many many years. They are not inherently more dangerous than other train types, I think you are looking for the wrong culprit here. Unfortunately any train design would end up causing casualties when overspeeding and derailing along an elevated curve like this.
Why did this engineer not know he should have been going 35 MPH around the turn instead of 79 MPH?!?! Plus they should have banked the curve a little steeper to allow a safer margin of speed-to-turn ratio.
This rail bridge probably is at least 60 years old and was never intended for high speed hence why the speed is limited to 30 mph. Mostly it is Burlington Northern freight that uses the same track as Amtrak.
This accident is somewhat similar to the one in Northen Spain also involving Talgo cars. In both, and you can see it carefully, what derails are the locomotives (much heavier and with higher center of gravity). Possibly the Talgo cars may have made the curve, but the locomotive overturns and pulls the cars into derailment. I doubt the accident would have been prevented by these straps, metal or nylon.
The problem with those accidents is not the train, the main problem is that in both the driver was speeding and the safety systems were disabled, Talgo has built some of the best trains that exists nowadays but most of them are designed for high speed lines and not the crappy railroad infrastructure that exists in the US.
@@applebee155 PTC is not my point. This video blames Talgo for the injured and killed. Had the train been made up of Amfleet, Horizon or Superliners, the result would have been the same.
There wasn't enough line training for the train crews. The training runs were done at night. The engineer on that train had never run that type of locomotive before. There were mechanical issues in Seattle before they left. Usually whenever a train runs on unfamiliar track, or any special circumstances there will be a road foreman in the cab and there was none. It was a scenario that was set up for failure.
My thought is that the operator that was at the controls was not the trained person, but by using seniority, wanted to run the first trip. This was expressed to me by several people in the industry and I see no reason to doubt how pride can lead to this kind of tragedy. Worst part is that they decommissioned a perfectly good train set to shift the blame.
There still is no excuse for missing the speed limit signs. Original Sin is to miss the mark! 🎯 With 3 railfans on board! NO EXCUSES, YOU BOTH WILL THINK ABOUT THE PPL YOUR MURDERED FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIVES.
Everything about this accident is a mess, first of all, the safety systems should have been connected, the driver more trained, the bridge with a much larger curve radius and the train shouldn't have been Talgo, this type of train is designed for good tracks and infrastructures with constant maintenance and the truth is that the American network is shit compared to the European one in terms of track quality.
Passenger trains are not worth the trouble. Screwed up the vastly more critical interstate highway. Everything you buy at your local grocery store gets there by highway.
As an ex Amtrak conductor, i have my unexpert opinion is the crews didn't have enough training. The wife and i rode one of the trains from Portland to Seattle, two months before the accident, we made it as far as Olympia, as there was a landslide blocking the tracks. I asked the conductors why we couldn't we use the Bypass, one said they weren't trained and there weren't any pilots available. (A pilot is railroad parlance is someone who is qualified on a stretch of railroad territory) This explains a lot in my book!
It's still such a shame that the whole Cascadia corridor isn't linked by a proper bullet train yet, even ones running at JUST 125 mph. Hard to imagine that happening when they can't even get low-speed rail right when it comes to safe, reliable corridor construction..
@@stickynorth Anything over 125 mph in the USA is plain stupid .....I worked on a regional railway were we ran 45 with some spots at 50....grade crossing accidents were monthly
stickynorth You just give the capital and it will get built.
@@MilwaukeeF40C that's not at all true lol
Considering that this was a repeat of the Philly crash, it was a massive failure of Amtrak management
This is incredible animation, great work!
Such a devastating preventable crash. Rest in peace to the 3 people killed.
Another facts: the train in question was the first passenger train to use the bypass. The three people killed were train enthusiasts
Except for the conductor reference at the beginning, very well done. You nailed all of the important points. Before retiring I used this incident in my training program for passenger train inspections. Again, very well done.
I studied the DuPont derailment, specifically from the perspective of a designer, not training (i.e the driver did not receive enough training on the route) as part of a senior ethics course for mechanical engineering. It was infuriating to learn that the design was knowingly under par. Thank you for this video.
Amazing work Brian. Your animation/lighting are always beautiful and super detailed.
I'm got a great question for you how did you make an animation documentary video of this, cuz it looks pretty realistic.
This is an Excellent animation of a train derailment. It was such a horrific accident. The animation had such realistic details and the narrative was easy to understand. It kept me captivated through the whole video. Thank you for sharing it!!!
2 of 3 people were rail fans! One who I know someone was so excited to get the last ticket before it was sold out! I was upset for months on how could such an error happen! RIP for those who shouldn't be killed!
I’m sorry for your loss.
I knew a railfan who was killed in a metro link accident in California years ago and it is always upsetting when people die in preventable accidents. My friend took the train to and from work instead of driving because he loved trains so much.
This is one of the nicest simulations/recreations that I have seen. The commentary what top notch, not a robotic AI voice, the music was not jarring or intrusive, just pleasant and the video was very realistic and did not seem like a low quality video game. Overall the video content was excellent, covering the major factors that contributed to this disaster without making it sound unrealistic like the sensational TV channel videos! Overall this is a 💯 in my book 👏
I still don't understand why you would build a brand new railroad for the purpose of speeding up the trains, but build this random sharp curve on it.
You wouldn’t. It wasn’t clearly explained, but it was an existing route they “upgraded” for the use of the high speed trains.
Originally it was a meandering railroad back in the day, and was pretty low speed by the time i5 went thru. They started running a track thru there to stay out of the way of other trains and have a slightly straighter shot on another existing freight line.
It isn't a random sharp curve. It is on an existing rail track where only portions of it were upgraded.
That was amazing documentary footage and no camera whatever tape it! Do you think you can create Amtrak 188 Frankfort junction Trainwreck of 2015?
Great animation, very realistic, lots of hi-res detail. Audio was clear and easy to understand. The script was well written, easy to follow, and leaves you with an understanding of what happened, why it happened and it's consequences. Want to see more like this!!! (Clearly not AI generated)👍
The voiceover is definitely AI. The script may have been generated by AI too, but I'm not too sure.
The VO is AI generated. The script is inspired by the NTSB report, which is mostly a series of quick summaries, with the exception of the speed limit sign section. Some paragraphs may have been phrased in ChatGPT, but they were mostly written normally and then edited with Grammarly. All the graphics are traditional 3D animation or After Effects. No graphics were created with AI.
More of these please! Can we get a better view of the accident simulation? It looked really cool and we didn't get to see it much. :D
Great work recreating the scene true to life! Were all the assets (amtrak talgo and gensis) created specifically for this video? Your work does a fantastic job recreating that viarl video and photos from years gone by. A sister of a friend was in traffic very close to the accident but luckily was unharmed.
The Amtrak locomotive is a modified asset, the Talgo cars were modeled for this animation, and the Gensis Locomotive, like the other vehicles on the road, were premade assets.
So many factual errors here:
1. The engineer was at fault, not the conductor.
2. Despite the lack of training time on the line, both the engineer and the other head end rider lost situation awareness of where they were on that railroad. This should have automatically triggered them to reduce their speed until they could positively identify their location, but neither person in the locomotive made any attempt to take control of this situation.
3. The locomotive engineer, according to NTSB interviews, drove his personal vehicle up to the Seattle area to scout the new line ahead of his scheduled trip, and in fact stayed at a hotel adjacent to the railroad near J.B.L.M.
4. At the time of the accident, PTC was not required be in place nor active. However both the Locomotive and Wayside were equipped with PTC, but the "Back Office" portion was not on line yet.
5. The NTSB omitted the most glaring fact in their investigation, and that was the Sound Transit and the other agencies in the area had already published their new timetables and had their job awards for drivers and operators for the route change. None of the agencies involved were willing to move the date out, so that Amtrak could have more time to prepare their crews properly. The NTSB also fails to mention that Amtrak was limited to the times in which they could perform training of their crews because the construction side was behind schedule, and the training trains would further impact construction completion.
There is no explanation about what the safety cables were supposed to do.
To keep the wheelsets attached to the body of the car instead of separating, at least thats my best guess
To my understanding, as the other person mentioned, the wheelsets rode on the track, and the cars practically floated above them. . . The initial fear was that a derailment throwing cars every which way like this would allow for the wheelsets to separate like they did and cause further derailme t and possible injury like they did. Back when the cars were initially supposed to be retrofitted to the car's stronger end walls, it looks like they were, but the cables must have either wore out and were replaced by unknowing employees, or they were possibly cheeply installed with the *nylon?* straps instead. Dk if that was thought to be better, tho, so yeah.
@@mamarussellthepie3995 talgo car body is suspended over the rodal but thers also a conection on the bottom under the gangways idk what the safety cables were for but can make the axle guidance not work properly and produce wear as the wheels will not enter radial to the turn would been better to secure the cars and not the wheel sets also would been imposible to avoid the cars to spread bc anny mecanichal conection btween cars and rodal would be destroyed and in the case of metal cables would make most estructural parts not able to be repaired
A friend of mine was the Engineer on that train. The training they received was wanting, to say the least. The Road Foreman of Engines was riding train 500 that morning. I used to work with him at UP. My opinion as a BLE&T Local Chairman (and thus an Investigator) was that he should have been on 501, riding between Tacoma and Olympia-Lacey, instead of starting out in Portland.
There is never one thing that causes an incident. It is always a multitude of variables that add up. Taking one of the variables out of the equation is enough to prevent the incident from occurring.
This is very nice animation, very realistic and modern
Reminds me of Blender
10/5 (it’s 5/5 but it’s so good I had to add a extra 5)
Love your work.Thanks for sharing, looking forward toseeing more
Great video! I had no idea the fatalities were from the bogey assemblies breaking loose and striking a coach. I'd have assumed it was from being thrown about or crushed which makes this tragedy all the more sad and preventable... Horrifying to say the least. No wonder these Talgo Trainsets were never used in Wisconsin despite being paid for. I believe Lagos is using them instead on a commuter rail line to its Northern suburbs and airport which is still a bit worrying but hopefully they will receive the proper upgrades...
Talgo trainsets have been used in a lot of countries for many many years. They are not inherently more dangerous than other train types, I think you are looking for the wrong culprit here. Unfortunately any train design would end up causing casualties when overspeeding and derailing along an elevated curve like this.
It’s not the train sets. It’s your training and inadequate infrastructure.
Why did this engineer not know he should have been going 35 MPH around the turn instead of 79 MPH?!?! Plus they should have banked the curve a little steeper to allow a safer margin of speed-to-turn ratio.
There is no banking that would give that much margin.
They hadn’t properly trained the engineer
This rail bridge probably is at least 60 years old and was never intended for high speed hence why the speed is limited to 30 mph. Mostly it is Burlington Northern freight that uses the same track as Amtrak.
Was the engineer on his phone or texting? Cell phones should be banned for some occupations.
@@kolsen6330 No, he wasn't too familiar with the route
you are underrated
This video taught me so much!
How in the hell did that one car do a whole front flip with nobody inside dying
I know someone who was in that car.
They still have no clue.
I was in Auburn, Washington when that happened back in 2017.
I was in Kent
This accident is somewhat similar to the one in Northen Spain also involving Talgo cars. In both, and you can see it carefully, what derails are the locomotives (much heavier and with higher center of gravity). Possibly the Talgo cars may have made the curve, but the locomotive overturns and pulls the cars into derailment. I doubt the accident would have been prevented by these straps, metal or nylon.
The problem with those accidents is not the train, the main problem is that in both the driver was speeding and the safety systems were disabled, Talgo has built some of the best trains that exists nowadays but most of them are designed for high speed lines and not the crappy railroad infrastructure that exists in the US.
Interesting! I was just there on the train last night! Rip
I challenge anyone to run any Amtrak equipment in use today at 79 MPH on that curve and tell me the result would have been different.
I think there PTC now that would forcibly slow the train down?
Pretty sure ptc is active on this line and it forces the train to slow
@@applebee155 PTC is not my point. This video blames Talgo for the injured and killed. Had the train been made up of Amfleet, Horizon or Superliners, the result would have been the same.
2:39 the truck was just trying to go under the bridge
There wasn't enough line training for the train crews. The training runs were done at night. The engineer on that train had never run that type of locomotive before. There were mechanical issues in Seattle before they left. Usually whenever a train runs on unfamiliar track, or any special circumstances there will be a road foreman in the cab and there was none. It was a scenario that was set up for failure.
My thought is that the operator that was at the controls was not the trained person, but by using seniority, wanted to run the first trip. This was expressed to me by several people in the industry and I see no reason to doubt how pride can lead to this kind of tragedy. Worst part is that they decommissioned a perfectly good train set to shift the blame.
0:16 so well made
Do you mean engineer?
Great animation. Did you use AI?
Only the Voice Over. There are no AI graphics
I understand with a new route, you've got to have experience first! 🥇
There still is no excuse for missing the speed limit signs.
Original Sin is to miss the mark! 🎯
With 3 railfans on board!
NO EXCUSES, YOU BOTH WILL THINK ABOUT THE PPL YOUR MURDERED FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIVES.
FirstnameLastname-tp4zw Jeez, sht happens. In nomine patris, et filii, et spiritus sancti, Amen.
@@MilwaukeeF40C No Shit Does Not Happen. God knows how to split 🪓 a man from the feet up.
Keep your fingers and toes straight!
Nema!
0:23 The car driver must think that he might going to beat the train when its dersiled!! But sadly,its failed to be that train.....
P42 181 remained on the tracks.
Another poetic licence reanactment. 🤣🤣
i remeber when that was fresh out of the news
The conductor doesnt drive the train, its the ENGINEER, so tired of people always getting this simple thing wrong ._.
Everything about this accident is a mess, first of all, the safety systems should have been connected, the driver more trained, the bridge with a much larger curve radius and the train shouldn't have been Talgo, this type of train is designed for good tracks and infrastructures with constant maintenance and the truth is that the American network is shit compared to the European one in terms of track quality.
Como un conductor que va a doblar una curva lleva esa velocidad ?? Hasta un niño sabe eso , ese chofer era un novato
LABRAT-KNATZ
STAY UP!
That was dead-on accelerate & kind of real :O
As always corporate shortcuts = civilian fatalities ALWAYS
Passenger trains are not worth the trouble. Screwed up the vastly more critical interstate highway. Everything you buy at your local grocery store gets there by highway.
So, what are all of those refrigerator boxcars hauling? The great rail vs highway battle continues…..
Talgo is probably the ugliest train in America! 🤔👎