Posted on 09/27/2011 3:35:44 PM PDT by Bean Counter
The unions have the motive, and they have the means, with access to the tools needed to tamper with heavy guage rail.
Nevertheless, a couple of railroads in New England have had 8-foot sections of rail cut and removed (presumably for scrap). At 110 lbs+ per yard, it takes two men to lift an 8-foot section of rail.
But it doesn’t seem worth the effort. Sometimes the crooks aren’t able to move the section they’ve just cut more than a few inches. If they do get it in the truck, scrap yards won’t buy it.
Fortunately, the “tampering” has been detected before a train tried to run over the missing section.
BTW, $10K is small potatoes compared to $4 million or more for a new locomotive; and that’s just the first car on the train.
It doesn’t take much to do what they did...But for them to delay 9 trains, someone has the know how on how the centralized track signaling control system works.
I can see some of the Union crybabies doing something like this, but most of the conductors and engineers are just looking to return home safely...
And the conductors and engineers are union also. Bet they are looking closely at their union "brothers" as likely suspects.
How does that work?
yah...the scrapyards out here have really gotten serious about what they accept, who they get it from, and they no longer pay in cash, you must accept a check, and you must have a permanent address before they will issue you one. They have been forced to get very serious about their business precisely because of all the theft that goes on. They all have notices at the front gate that warn you about railroad scrap and they have cut that theft down to almost nil.
When scrap prices started heating up a few years ago, we had people out stealing lengths of guard rail off the interstate ramps. Rural bridges were being partially disassembled to the point where they were no longer safe to hold any traffic. They were stealing signposts, aluminum light poles, bronze monuments and markers off of gravesites...you name it, someone would show up at the scrapyard trying to sell it, and leave the scrapyard holding literally tons of stolen property, public and private.
Just last week here locally, salvage crews hired by the US Coast Guard finished removing the last piece of the former Liberty Ship SS Davy Crockett from the Columbia river where it sank along the bank after a small crew illegally tried to disassemble and scrap the vessel to the point it failed structurally and sank. Of course it was full of old bunker fuel and thousands of gallons of lube oil along with the trash and asbestos waste. The cleanup and removal has already cost over $20 Million and the scrap that was recovered was worth a fraction of that.
The top scrap stealing story here locally remains from about six years ago, when fire crews were called to a fire at a local electrical substation. It took 45 minutes to get the power turned off, and that’s when fire crews discovered what was left of some meth head who had attempted to steal insulated copper cable off of a live 20,000 Volt transformer. The only thing on fire was what was left of his body. His bolt cutters were fused to the cable and his near hour-long electrocution began as soon as the cutters broke through the insulation.
But tampering with the tracks in 12 places over a sixty mile stretch of mainline railroad takes some big brass balls, coordination and more than just one person. This is criminal conspiracy, and eventually some thug that helped do this will brag to the wrong person...
I’m betting that this would not be the time to attempt to go for a pleasant stroll anywhere near a railroad right of way anywhere in Washington State right now.....
How do you spell Longshoremen?
union sabotage was my guess too — and I know zero about this situation and live thousands of miles away.
somehow I just can’t visualize Seattle made guys, too metrosexual here. Paulie would have a fit.
“While I am not claiming that enviornmentalists are smart, but causing the derailing of a train carying sulfiric acid and other hazardous waste is far worse than letting it pass through.”
Heh, funny you should mention a train carrying sulfuric acid.
I once ran a hazardous materials train, 40 tank car loads of sulfuric acid, from Port Jervis (NY) to Oak Island (NJ, near Newark) with no usable service brakes.
Yes, you read that right.
The train _had_ brakes, but they weren’t working properly. One of the cars was a “kicker” - that means when the engineman attempted to make a “service brake reduction” (ordinary application of the brakes), the control valve on that car would “kick” into emergency instead (a sudden and uncontrollable maximum application of the brakes). When one cars goes into emergency, the entire trains follows. That raises heck with the “slack” in the train and risks a possible derailment.
Got the train at Port Jervis. Two EMD SD-40’s, a “spacer” car, and 40 loads. Incoming guy warned me about the kicker.
Off we go up the mountain. SD-40’s are 3,000hp each, but this is a pretty heavy train for only 40 cars. Get through Otisville tunnel at the top, and I’m wondering about the downgrades on the other side. They’re not as steep as going up, but you still have to deal with them.
Get rolling through Middletown and it starts going down all the way to Campbell Hall. Got the dynamic brake on (kind of like the jake brake on a truck), pretty much all the way, and it’s really pushing. We’ll be coming to the Campbell Hall passing siding soon, and if there’s a train coming the other way, may have to stop to let it by. No way I can do this with dynamic alone — will have to try the air.
But the signal’s clear. The grade levels off a bit, so I can relax.
Coming to Central Valley, though, we’re going to have to meet a passenger train. I get the dynamic on early (the siding is two miles long) and it’s level, so get the train down to about 10mph, and use the independent brake (locomotive air brakes only, not the brakes on the train) to ease it down to a stop.
While we’re waiting, I figure I’ll try the air to see what happens. Take a slight brake pipe reduction, and.... BAM! Into the hole, as it’s called. The other engineman wasn’t kiddin’.
Get it recovered, the passenger train gets by, and off we go.
The railroad gets more congested after Suffern, but we get through Ridgewood Junction OK (another place on a downgrade that would make a stop problematical).
Get to Hackensack (HX) and off the main into Croxton, then through the old Erie freight tunnel under the Palisades, and nurse our way over the “stilts” through Jersey City and finally across Newark Bay at Upper Bay lift bridge.
From there, just a little ways to a siding where we tie it down. Stopped with the independent brake again.
Told the next guy who picked it up from me that there was a sure-fire kicker in the train — I’ll guess he was careful, too.
Probably the most challenging job I ever had. That one would have been on the news if it had derailed...
Forty cars of sulfuric acid and essentially no train brakes, but I made it!
Just recollectin’....
Thanks for sharing that story. Glad you made it safely.
(This would be a good feature story for Trains magazine.)
Only reason I bring it up is that I live about 300 feet from some tracks and an industrial park that has a chemcial plant and a steel factory and it seems sulfiric acid is the #1 chemical either manufactured or used back there. I know if the train were to derail I would be at high risk for death or some nasty chemical burns.
Thanks for your local perspective. I don’t imagine you have many aluminum phone booth left out there.
I just looked on a very large industrial catalog site that I use almost every day for my work, and they still list and sell a railcar derailer for $539.18 that just slips on the track. They sell them for businesses that have rail service into their plants, and is made to derail a car rather than have it come through into the building accidentally.
Granted the thing has a big sign attached to it, but all someone has to do is buy one, cut the sign off, paint it black and set it somewhere like a switch point where it would easily go unnoticed until there was no time for the engineer to stop the train.
Hell just the picture alone of how easy it would be to make one of these should be taken down, much less the sale of it.
Oh, the stories that you railroad men can tell! Used to listen to my Dad who was freight conductor and passenger conductor tell stories. He is gone now, miss him like blazes!
One time my mother and I drove down to Creedmoor, NC where he was working a freight, I think, to Henderson, NC, to take him another pair of glasses. (Don’t ask me where we were able to meet him because I don’t remember.) He saw us off in the distance and came walking with long strides to us. Just a memory of him...
Wish you would share more stories...Please? (Funny name you picked!)
I immediately thought of Atlas Shrugged.
I need to get that book and read it!
I’m probably one of a handful of people on FR that understood every single word of your story.
I wouldn’t have wanted to be anywhere nearby if that thing went on the ground.
Did you lift your feet as you crossed Moodna Viaduct, to lessen the load on the bridge? ;-)
I rode that line behind C&O 614 in the late’90s when NJ Transit sponsored steam excursions from Hoboken to Port Jervis. I rode 3 of the trips and chased most of the other 19 making audio recordings from on board and video from trackside.
If you’re interested in seeing some of my video work check out my YouTube page. My handle there is Yankinga
“12 places over a sixty mile stretch of mainline railroad” not a case of brass balls.........only a UFO could do that! Aliens at work!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.