Posted on 07/10/2013 8:25:29 PM PDT by rawhide
On a truck you set the brakes and the spring brakes apply the pressure. You can bleed off all the air and the brakes stay on. All of ours had spring brakes on all four drivers. The trailers didn’t have them.
These trains should not be left unattended period. Especially with a cargo like that.
Here is an informative thread on train brakes:
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20120225065552AAHkHaP
I totally agree. The engineer should never have left it unattended. He needed to wait until he was relieved.
Also, there should always be two people working together, in case one gets hurt or gets in trouble.
That was good. From that thread
” However, spring brakes are used as a parking brake on modern trains. In the the simple air and vacuum brake systems, when a train was parked out of service for any length of time, the crew had to remember to apply the hand brakes (screwing it down), otherwise the air would sooner or later leak out of the system and allow the brakes to release. Modern trains have auxiliary brake cylinders with powerful springs to apply the brakes. Whilst the train is ‘cut in’, with the compressors running, compressed air is supplied to these auxiliary cylinders to hold the brakes off. When the train is parked and ‘cut out’, the air eventually leaks away, allowing the springs to apply the parking brakes. These auxiliary brakes are only sufficient to hold the train stationary on any gradient, and are not used in service. Source(s): Retired UK Train Driver”
There should have been two engineers on the job. The company was running big risks by running so bare boned.
For the sake of $100,000 engineer, a billion dollar accident happened.
Great so your rail-line kills 30 some people and you’re going to pin it on an employee, ruin his life, probably gonna go to prison for the rest of his life.
Way to run a company 101.
Please... totally different things. That movie was so ridiculous. Not realistic at all.
The dead man's switch only works while the engine is running. The only way to secure the train is to set the manual brakes and chock the wheels. That way if the air bleeds down on the air brakes you're not depending on them alone to immobilize the train.
I had been under the impression that such brakes were “Normally Closed” systems, where lack of air pressure resulted in the railroad car applying it’s brakes automatically. That way, if a RR car is decoupled and loose, it naturally brakes. Am I mistaken.
(Never worked as a Friction Engineer.)
Assuming one engineer failed to follow procedure spelled out by the company that would have prevented this, how is the entire company liable?
I used to be a nuke engineer and the possibility of a mistake always kept me half awake at night. I’m too old for that now.
It just seems to me that they are scape goating some random employee. He said he set the brakes, they say he didn’t.
I want more information, but gut reaction says they are putting the blame on him.
“I want more information, but gut reaction says they are putting the blame on him.”
Well, explain how the company might be liable. The only possibility I can think of is that the brakes were not maintained and they covered it up.
I read something that said there were no warning sensors going off for some odd minutes that should have. The engineer could not have set the brakes, but the engineer can’t possibly be responsible for the entire scenario, can he?
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