USA - railways, public transport, services and incidents (merged posts)

[whole diary]

[Electric train]

47 mph does not seem very fast to cause such a catastrophic derailment, until you take into account the length of the train 149 waggons which can be 67 feet in length 70 to 100 tons.

The use of a knuckle couplers (Janney coupler) with no buffers; these coupling will not prevent rail cars knife jacking, disconnecting in a violent vertical movement, although US rail cars carrying hazardous substances have coupling which is designed to prevent this.   

[ChrisB]

From the BBC^» (British Broadcasting Corporation - home page)

CCTV^▸ (Closed Circuit Tele Vision) shows the moment a ceiling panel came crashing down, nearly hitting a commuter at a subway station in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MBTA) said the panel was installed in the 1980s, and weighed about 11kg (25 lbs) because of moisture build-up.

No injuries were reported, and the MBTA said it had now removed any other panels from the station that posed an immediate safety concern. It also announced it would carry out inspections on panels in all of its stations.

Click here

[infoman]

near Raymond in Minnesota(which in the central North) near the Canadian border at 01:00am local time

The train was carrying Ethonol and corn syrup

LIVE pictures from Sky

No injurys were mentioned

[Red Squirrel]

The train was carrying Ethonol and corn syrup

…on it’s way to a Californian Zinfandel factory, perhaps?

[Mark A]

Lovely survivors.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtFpFHuy6D0&t=1s

Mark

[grahame]

Four years later - the Florida toll continues

From Yahoo News

NTSB investigating 2 Brightline high speed train crashes that killed 3 people in Florida this week

FORT LAUDERDALE Fla. (AP) — The National Transportation Safety Board said Saturday it will investigate two crashes involving Florida's Brightline train that killed three people at the same railroad crossing on the high speed train's route between Miami and Orlando.

The crashes happened Wednesday and Friday at a crossing along the U.S. 1 corridor in Melbourne, on Florida's Atlantic coast, where the high speed train passes through on its daily routes to and from South Florida. Since Brightline launched the 160-mile extension that links South Florida and Orlando in September, there have been five deaths, according to an Associated Press database.

Friday's crash killed driver Lisa Ann Batchelder, 52, and passenger Michael Anthony Degasperi, 54, both of Melbourne. On Wednesday, 62-year-old Charles Julian Phillips was killed when the vehicle he was driving was hit by the train. Three passengers in that vehicle were injured, according to Melbourne police.

Melbourne Mayor Paul Alfrey told reporters at the scene that the SUV tried to outrun the train. He said he's spoken to Brightline officials about doing another public safety campaign to warn drivers not to go around railroad crossings because the train is traveling at higher speeds.

“I start by saying if the arm is down don’t go around,” Alfrey told Orlando television station WKMG. “There’s no good outcome with a train. This is an unfortunate situation. We have the loss of life again. There’s safety precautions for a reason, and people need to adhere them.”

The bright, neon yellow trains travel at speeds up to 125 mph (201 kph) in some locations. The 3.5-hour, 235-mile (378-kilometer) trip between Miami and Orlando takes about 30 minutes less than the average drive.

[stuving]

Four years later - the Florida toll continues

From Yahoo News

NTSB investigating 2 Brightline high speed train crashes that killed 3 people in Florida this week

I know there's a huge number of grade crossing along that line, and was wondering how many. I found a forum post saying "Brightline has 328 grade crossings in about 190 miles apparently." That sounds quite plausible. Brightline did improve some of those, by adding central reservations so you can't dodge round the barriers etc. But Floridans are just not used to trains that arrive before you hear the horn sound.

NSTB have not posted that investigation yet, though they do have at least one already underway on Brightline. They classify grade crossing accidents under highways, which looks odd - but maybe isn't. The one I did find involved a vehicle stopping on one track to wait for a freight train on the other, before the barrier came down behind it. There was a fast train the other way as well ...

[broadgage]

It appears that the military vehicle, some type of large self propelled artillery piece, was grounded or otherwise stuck on a level crossing and then struck at a considerable speed by a freight train.
No serious injuries reported, perhaps surprisingly.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/videos/c93p35wd00eo

[Chris from Nailsea]

'Goose Creek' - so apt.

And the freight train just kept going. 

[Electric train]

Perhaps the weapon that the USA should send to Ukraine is CSX 

Level (grade) crossing collisions in the USA are a daily occurrence

[stuving]

If you go to Goose Creek (virtually, of course) you can see that the track is above road level and a short ramp of asphalt has been built up to it to help vehicles get across. Short vehicles, at least, since it's far too short to prevent a low-loader grounding. And there's even a sign warning of exactly that hazard! A pictorial one, which still looks odd to me in the land of verbose road signs (I think this is a recent change).

I've tried to attach a .kml file - I've never worked out how to link to Google Street View (in Earth or Maps), but we'll see how it goes. If all else fails, the location is 33°00'03.70" N  80°02'13.27" W.

Plan C is a screen shot - at least that works!

[Chris from Nailsea]

From the BBC^» (British Broadcasting Corporation - home page):

New York police have arrested one of two people they suspect of taking and crashing an empty subway train.

The person arrested, a 17-year-old girl, is charged with criminal mischief over the incident in Briarwood subway station in Queens, shortly after midnight on 12 September.

She and her companion are accused of entering and operating the train, then causing a "collision".

A search continues for the companion. No injuries were reported in the crash.

The New York Police Department (NYPD) has offered few other details and it remains unclear how the pair gained access to the train.

The BBC has contacted the NYPD and New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) for further comment on this aspect.

Nor have officers said how far they were able to travel in the train before they fled.

Surveillance images released by police showed one suspect dressed fully in pink - including a shower cap - and a second person wearing blue.

As well as the criminal mischief charge, the arrested teenager has also been charged with reckless endangerment.

The second person was described by the NYPD as a male with a slim build and light complexion, who was last seen wearing a blue tank top and red shorts, and carrying a black backpack.

A similar incident was reported in January at Forest Hills-71st Avenue station, also in Queens. Again, nobody was hurt and no damage was reported.

At the time, officials speculated that a stolen key was used.

They moved to reassure the public that the train would not have been able to leave its yard and reach active tracks.

[grahame]

From the Independent

A sparsely populated town in Texas is home to the least-used Amtrak train station in America, only receiving 247 passengers within a year.

The National Railroad Passenger Corporation, better known as Amtrak, spans across 21,000 route miles in 46 states in the US, operating more than 300 trains a day.

[snip]

In Amtrak data analysed by MailOnline, it was revealed that Sanderson, an area in Terrell County, Texas, with a population of only around 700 people, received 247 passengers at its station in 2023.

[snip]

Despite its low passenger use, the station got a $3m makeover in 2021, with a new open-air shelter, concrete platform and walkways to make the station more accessible.

The station is served six times a week, westbound and eastbound, by the long-distance Sunset Limited train that runs from New Orleans to San Antonio, then to Los Angeles for a 48-hour-long journey, as well as the 32-hour Texas Eagle, which departs from Chicago on its way to Los Angeles.

While only a small town, Sanderson has come to be known as the “Cactus Capital of Texas”, and is also an important livestock grazing center.

[Chris from Nailsea]

From the Independent

A sparsely populated town in Texas is home to the least-used Amtrak train station in America, only receiving 247 passengers within a year.

The National Railroad Passenger Corporation, better known as Amtrak, spans across 21,000 route miles in 46 states in the US, operating more than 300 trains a day.

[snip]

In Amtrak data analysed by MailOnline, it was revealed that Sanderson, an area in Terrell County, Texas, with a population of only around 700 people, received 247 passengers at its station in 2023.

[snip]

Despite its low passenger use, the station got a $3m makeover in 2021, with a new open-air shelter, concrete platform and walkways to make the station more accessible.

The station is served six times a week, westbound and eastbound, by the long-distance Sunset Limited train that runs from New Orleans to San Antonio, then to Los Angeles for a 48-hour-long journey, as well as the 32-hour Texas Eagle, which departs from Chicago on its way to Los Angeles.

While only a small town, Sanderson has come to be known as the “Cactus Capital of Texas”, and is also an important livestock grazing center.

... a new open-air shelter ...

In other words, a roof with no sides. 

This at a location where the annual rainfall is 41 inches, and there is less than one passenger a day. 

That was $3m well spent, then.

[eightonedee]

So it's not just the UK^▸ (United Kingdom) where it seems to cost a fortune to build anything on a railway....