Ed, Don't get me wrong I'm no expert. I'm going off my observations of train ops,And if I were an Engineer or Conductor I would have been Freaking about 1/4 to 1/2 mile before the train hit the turnout!
There would have been no way to tell until it was too late that something was wrong. We have engineers that leave their "brights" on sitting still in broad daylight for hours. Based on some of the people we have that are "engineers", it's amazing this doesn't happen more often.
There would have been no cause to freak out until that signal changed to red about 5 seconds before impact. (I agree they probably could tell the train was still moving at 1/4 mile, but how fast might have been hard to tell.) Every time trains meet those guys see headlights, and normally the opposing train is stopped and they glide into the siding and on their merry way...and like Rick said it is flipping a coin weather they dim/cut the lights. I'm no engineer, but I see meets ALL the time from the ground and I can say the lights don't always get dimmed. (And another thing, the ditchlights seldom get flashed at crossings either.) The tell-tale sign might have been seeing the crew hitting the ditch...I'm assuming the one you could see in the video was the last of the three to jump so that would have stuck out pretty good I'd guess. But all this probably happened a lot faster than it seemed in the video...which was still plenty fast. Not that it probably would have helped much in 5 seconds, but it seems to me that the occupants of the diverging train would have done themselves a favor by opening the throttle to try and beat the "kiss". They almost did anyway. I watched it again a couple of times tonight...showed it to my parents and when they hit it made my mom blurt out a four-letter word. mg: (I didn't tell them what was going to happen :zip: ...I'm a bad son) Just amazing...makes you realize how dangerous railroads can be, and how life can turn in a second. Like others have mentioned, I hope the crew was able to recover physically...not sure you'll ever get over that otherwise. Very shocking.
Apparently the UP crews in this area do things a little differently, not that I want to say anything good about the "Borg". Even if I didn't know what was going to happen,I would have thought something was wrong.
Here is more information about that June 16 crash. The engineer on the train on the main line had been off for 80 hours before being call for that job at 1:30am. When he and the crew realized what was going to happen the train was in emergency. But going at track speed Its a little hard to do anything about it. After the accident the BNSF has reviewed its crew calling, and has cut the pool of engineers way back. A close friend of mine who was a pool engineer at that time is now on the conductors board unable to hold pool freight.
Amazing footage and im sure pretty scary for the Engineers. In our Signalling principals here in Sydney we would not allow that to occur, before we would clear the signal for the loop road we would need to prove that the train on the mainline has come to a stand by timing out the approach signal before setting the points and clearing the signal for the loop.
Maybe so, But I don't do it for a living. I'm sure there are things that I do at work that others that don't work in the field would think twice about!
I tried to save the video last night but was unsuccessful, I'm figuring because of the amount of views the link is currently unavailable, has anybody tried searching for it on youtube?
I whatched the video link last night ok, but this morrning , yeah it's gone alright. I did a search on youtube, no luck. The headon smash is a serious freakout, enough to give engineers nightmares. Every meet would make you paranoid. It sure gave me the jitters just watching it.
Well I can't get the video. Anyone who has it can i get a look at it please. While you are supposed to turn off your brights and ditchlights when stopped not everyone does it. You have no clue if a train comming at you is stopped or not unless you are looking at it except for the signal system. If you are looking at the train and the signals go all red you know crap is about to happen. But headlights have absolutely nothing to do with a train moving or not! It is all up tp the engineer remembering to turn them off. They just don't go to dim when you stop. I really wish they would so that the ignorant and lazy people wouldn't blind me as much.
Just looked closer at the pic on page 2. Looks like they shoved 2 regular sets of trucks under the engine. I bet they fix the engine. I now need to tell the NS that the BNSF ruined another one of our engines. Ha Ha.......
What I could get out of it from the several times I viewed it, is that when I first saw the approach signal it appeared to be yellow over yellow, however as the train drew nearer, it appeared to me to be red over red especially since it appeared to me that the bottom fresnels on both signals were lighted. That would be the red aspect. I did not see a red over green on either signal. I did hear the hogger dump the air, you can actually hear the brake pipe fully exhausting. So what I am in a quandary over is that I feel that the hogger blew a red board(the approach signal) realized what was happening and then dumped the air. But in addition the train holding the main was in the foul of the switch and he was STILL MOVING, so the hogger of that train had to have blown a signal or two as well, not to mention that either he forgot that he was to have a meet and or he just plain blew the signal and/or didn't hear the DSPR tell the trains that they were to have a meet. I really dont see any innocent bystanders in that whole situation CT
Ed, That's what I was trying to imply,I knew the lights don't shut off or dim themselves. It should just happen if that's what supposed to happen,Just common courtesy to other crews and a little self-discipline. Just like driving a car and getting blinded by some jackass with his brights on!
This should hold you over till someone finds the BNSF video.... [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6Mxe7QmjK8&mode=related&search="]YouTube - MSTS - Extreme Train Crashing[/ame]
