Posted on 12/18/2017 6:00:15 PM PST by Mariner
The Amtrak train that derailed Monday morning on its inaugural trip through a faster railway route was supposed to slow dramatically before entering the curve where the crash occurred.
The speed limit at the curve where the train crosses Interstate 5 is 30 miles per hour, said state transportation department spokeswoman Barbara LaBoe, while the speed limit on most of the track is 79 mph. She said speed-limit signs are posted two miles before the lowered speed zone and then just before the zone.
“Engineers are trained to slow trains according to posted speeds,” she said.
Daniel Konzelman, who was driving on I-5 south parallel to the train, said he was traveling at 60 mph or more and watched the train pass his vehicle about a half-mile before the crash. A website that monitors locations and speeds of Amtrak trains, transitdocs.com, reported that the train was going about 81 mph shortly before the derailment, The Associated Press reported.
Russell Quimby, a consultant who was previously an investigator-in-charge for the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), said it appeared to him that the derailment was caused by speed. He said the track appeared relatively undisturbed, so it seemed unlikely that something knocked the train off the track, and he noted that it appeared the train drove in a straight line, missing the turn.
(Excerpt) Read more at seattletimes.com ...
Haven’t heard that song in like, forever. Nice to see a reference to it, and it is very apropos.
Did one of the bright lights at ANTIFA diddle with the electronic warning sensors?
(they might not be guilty on this case - but they are still guilty bastards)
Agree.
The concavity is towards the photographer, so cars being inside the cup doesn’t initially make sense.
If speed is the culprit here(and it may be), then it would make more sense for the cars to have fallen outside the cup (off to the left of the tracks).
He could have breaked too hard going into turn.
My gps tells my speed and the speed limit.
A new theory.
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That angle was noted earlier in this thread
Antifa! = Another Nutty Theory Is Failing Again?
Thanks NOVACPA.
Now we’re back to software and braking override failure we talked this AM about. Unless they want us to believe the engineer was fine with doin 80 in a 30mph turn.
My mistake - I believe the antifa thing was brought up in a different thread. Nevermiiiind.
Wasn’t the guy on the east coast fine with doing that speed in a curve?
If you’ve ever drive like a demon, you know that you can’t brake driving your car through a curve. If you do, you’ll throw your car off the roadway. The momentum would make the top of the car lean off the road, over you go.
If the brakes of the train had been applied, I would suggest it would have been even more likely to go outside the curve, with no cars winding up on the inside of the curve.
You have to moderate (bleed off) speed in the straight away. Once you’re in the curve, the die is cast. You just hang on at that point, and hope for the best.
“Haven’t heard that song in like, forever.”
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Driving that train, high on cocaine, Casey Jones, you better watch your speed.....
or, as The Man In Black sang it:
“Headaches and heartaches and all kinds of pain all the part of a railroad train
Sweat and toil the good and the grand part of the life of a railroad man”
(Casey Jones)
I thought about last-minute braking, too.
For auto tires, look up “Friction Circle”.
good question. It was an initial trip on new tracks. Kind of hard to believe someone could mess up like that.
“Unless they want us to believe the engineer was fine with doin 80 in a 30mph turn.”
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Do they audio or video record the goings-on of the engineers?
Looks like the loco took down a few fair sized trees.
Hitting a tree tends to slow you down.
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