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AMTRAK Train derailed in Philidelphia USA
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No, he stated a low speed section with a curve on it but no speed restriction for the actual curve. There wouldn't be any protection for that. For example leaving a station on a 30mph section of line and entering a tight curve but a driver opening up and forgetting to shut off leading to the 30mph curve being taken at 40-50mph.
Take the northern city line-30mph all along with fairly tight bends in a narrow tunnel. The train stops taking power above about 33mph but on the up road you are downhill so theoretically there is nothing to stop a train continuously accelerating by gravity and reaching a dangerous speed. The only protection is the 10mph entry to Moorgate which has trip cocks.
Could in theory happen at lots of locations and there is no protection for it. But there again it isn't something that, as far as I'm aware, has ever led to an incident in this country. There are many approach release junctions where once the signal has cleared for a diverging route you could easily be doing 2 or 3 times the speed by the time you reach the points. The 25mph points in to Welwyn down back platform spring to mind-after the signal has cleared to route you onto that 25mph points you could easily (even from a stand) hit those points at 50+mph.
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Quite so, that's just what happened in Philadelphia. For example, coming out of Euston, if you barrel it up the hill (this Amtrak loco was about 8,000 hp and had a short train) what protection is there round the curves at Primrose Hill. I don't believe any previous generation of Amtrak loco was even capable of getting up to anything like 100 mph in such a short length.
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philabos
Member
Question - The eastbound curve at Frankford Jct. is 50mph reducing from 80mph.
My understanding of TPWS is that TPWS will set a warning in advance of the speed restriction and make a penalty brake application if not acknowledged.
Is that correct?
My understanding of TPWS is that TPWS will set a warning in advance of the speed restriction and make a penalty brake application if not acknowledged.
Is that correct?
Not quite, no.
The aws will give an audible warning if the speed difference is great enough. This needs cancelling. The TPWS is seperate and does not need acknowledging. If the train passes over the TPWS loops too quickly the brakes will be activated.
In UK our AWS and TPWS safety system is far from perfect and can never be immune to all possible subtleties of human error and equipment failure, but there's no doubt in UK the approach to such a curve would have been provided with a permanent AWS inductor associated with an advanced warning board, followed by an overspeed TPWS loop on final approach to the commencement board. Whilst I'm sure the speed change was signed in the US, there was no technical equipment at all to warn or intervene in the case of over-speed. Remember that the permitted speed on approach to the curve was 100MPH. It was Amtrak's sifting process when they fitted ATC in the 1990s that discounted this location as being a tolerable risk. It is good news that ATC has now been installed at this location, and to be considered at many more, but I'm sure the lawyers and their clients will be more interested in the process Amtrack used originally to prioritise the sites, and whether any assumptions those decisions relied on had changed subsequently. The introduction of new more powerful traction may have undermined some assumptions for instance.
What I think we have to know is that the 100 mph limit preceding the curve can only have applied for a couple of miles after the previous limited curve round over the Schuylkill River bridge, and having travelled along there in the past, trains never accelerated to any significant speed until past the further curve where the derailment occurred. Therefore for generations there would appear to have been little or no prospect of a train approaching from this direction with an overspeed, or even being capable of doing so. Coming south into this location was straight and full speed for many miles, and this was rightly identified as one to be protected with speed control.
WatcherZero
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Amtrak has announced they will install cab cameras in 70 locomotives in the North East Corridor by the end of the year to monitor engineers while driving.
This is not directly linked to this accident, but it makes interesting reading. The relationship between Amtrak and the republican party is not good; to say it mildly! >
http://qz.com/409824/yes-amtrak-was-sabotaged-by-congress/#
http://qz.com/409824/yes-amtrak-was-sabotaged-by-congress/#
I think that was also one of the measures introduced after the Metro North Bronx derailment.
TheNewNo2
Member
Republicans hate anything which isn't charging you a fortune to rip you off.
philabos
Member
This does nothing for safety but does make the NTSB's job easier.
I suppose you could make the argument in would improve safety post accident.
In this case apparently the engineer has no memory of the accident at all.
I think it is equally, if not more important to have forward-facing cameras for post-accident investigation, especially considering the USA's huge number of road level crossings in rural areas, but such a forward cam ought to have immediately been able to determine the veracity of the projectile through windshield theory in this incident. Perhaps it did if it was already provided, as would seem likely, on these nearly brand new locomotives. I wonder if the cab-cams will have a live feed to a control room as well as a black box recording function. Is it unreasonable to be able to constantly watch an employee doing their job in real time at any time, perhaps without their knowledge of if or when they are being studied individually? Do unions have a position on this in the US?
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WatcherZero
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The coming generation of trains here (AT300/Desiro City/etc...) will be transmitting all their camera footage and train performance/maintenance data back to HQ in real time as well.
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ac6000cw
Established Member
I'd generally agree with Fred Frailey's Trains magazine blog on this subject:
"Anyone who thinks inward-facing cameras will make railroads safer is delusional. All they will do is make the job of railroad officials and accident investigators easier after an accident. They won’t make an exhausted engineer stay awake. They won’t stop disruptive behavior in the cab. They won’t do anything to anyone before an accident occurs."
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
Forward-facing cameras are fast becoming standard equipment on US locomotives. They help stop lawyers for the vehicle driver claiming that the crossing barriers weren't working/crew didn't sound the horn etc....
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philabos
Member
Unions are opposed to inward facing cameras.
Their problem is the politicians they strongly support are the same ones calling for those cameras.
WatcherZero
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I don't know about you but I would be a lot more wary about using my mobile or reading a newspaper while driving if I knew I was being filmed.
philabos
Member
But the issues here are more fatigue related than mobile phone/newspaper related. An investigator can still easily find out of a mobile phone was being used without the need for a camera.
The problem with this quote is that it completely ignores the fact that incidents and investigations are actually the main method by which rail transport gets safer.
If in-cab cameras can help a post-incident investigation pick up a problem which might otherwise have gone undetected (remember, major investigations always have more than one recommendation coming out of them) or even lead to a problem getting detected before it results in a major incident, they will help those safety improvements come earlier and easier.
Or perhaps wedging something in the footwell to keep the dead man's pedal pressed down, which in New South Wales was only discovered by management after a crash where the driver had a heart attack but the pedal was of no use because it was stuck down. Like almost all improvements to operational safety, the installation of more sophisticated vigilance devices only came after the need for them was discovered the hard way - and the unions protested them at the time just like they would do with in-cab cameras.
Had that been either deterred by an in-cab camera or picked up in a randomly selected viewing of camera footage (instead of during a post-crash investigation) and something done about it earlier, seven lives may have been saved.
But is it not the case that the unions have historically opposed (on purely ideological grounds) almost all safety improvements?
I'm not sure that the unions' ideological insistence that "the cab should be private" is a great idea. It shouldn't be public (not in English-speaking countries where there is not much respect for train drivers) but when the consequences of a driver's actions are so great it shouldn't be free from proper scrutiny either in my opinion. My line manager in my work can walk in and see what I'm doing at any time, so I do the right thing since if I've got nothing to hide, I've got nothing to fear.
WessexEclectic
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The installation of cameras in cabs implicitly says that the manegment do not trust the driver to do the job properly, and so needs to be constantly watched. If there is not trust between employer and employee...
At the monent a driver's line manager can always go for a ride in the cab to check - which is why they were called traction inspectors.
It is also hugely flawed. It implies the camera will be constantly watched. Who will do that and surely if there is one job more 'boring' and fatiguing than driving a train it is watching someone drive a train! And if they see a driver fall asleep what can they do about it?!
A completely ill thought out overreaction!
I can't see these feeds being watched live much of the time.
It would be impossible to watch each and every driver all the time without vast armies of inspectors sat at screens back at base doing the surveillance, so some sort of cyclical or random basis would have to apply. In any case I can't really see much benefit in having any serious numbers of inspectors sitting back at base rather than riding the network actually interacting and talking with drivers to better determine their fatigue levels and state of mind, so the practical result is that any individual feed would not be observed by humans very much of the time at all although there would be the constant potential that it might be. Live monitoring could usefully be triggered by events from other protection systems however, so if a vigilance device was not being operated in time, or a braking intervention was made by a speed control device, then the feed would be switched to the duty officer's screen. In that case it would initiate a dialogue anyway, eg:
After initiating event monitor light comes on.
'I see you had an emergency brake application, is everything ok?'
'yes sorry, my hand slipped from the controller - I'm building pressure again now'
'don't forget to notify the signaller'
Monitor light stays on for two minutes then is extinguished indicating live monitoring has ceased.
Otherwise it's a courtesy thing. In any kind of business it's perfectly acceptable for a manager or inspector to openly come and sit next to an employee 'to see how they deal with the next few customers' (say), but for the employee not to be interacted with, yet slowly get the feeling they are being hovered over by an authority figure just outside their personal space frankly can be rather creepy and possibly distracting, which is precisely the wrong kind of result in a safety-related occupation. The video thing, unless announced by a monitor light and probably a courtesy conversation would be equally odd, certainly in western cultures - I couldn't say what the response would be in China or Japan.
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Sorry, but "we pay them to do their job" is a very outdated form of protection on the railways.
A position of great responsibility demands great accountability.
notadriver
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But they won't have inwards facing cameras.
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---
Planes don't have inwards facing cameras. Why should trains ?
Possibly, although the radio comms are recorded and there is very little other conversation in the cab normally.
philabos
Member
A new article from Bloomberg News this morning.
Not much new, NTSB has found nothing amiss with equipment and track.
The unions continue to oppose cameras but will be unable to stop the installation.
Politicians of all stripes continue to misunderstand PTC vs ATC despite the fact the Amtrak president admitted in the same article the ATC signal speed control was simply not active on tracks 1 and 2. This system was installed by the Pennsylvania Railroad 60 plus years ago.
As to,using the "profit" from the NEC to improve safety, they do not understand the trains themselves make a profit above the rail but cannot fully bear the burden of the NEC capital requirements.
Nonetheless, we shall join hands and charge forward - somewhere.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...ruled-out-in-fatal-amtrak-crash-officials-say
Not much new, NTSB has found nothing amiss with equipment and track.
The unions continue to oppose cameras but will be unable to stop the installation.
Politicians of all stripes continue to misunderstand PTC vs ATC despite the fact the Amtrak president admitted in the same article the ATC signal speed control was simply not active on tracks 1 and 2. This system was installed by the Pennsylvania Railroad 60 plus years ago.
As to,using the "profit" from the NEC to improve safety, they do not understand the trains themselves make a profit above the rail but cannot fully bear the burden of the NEC capital requirements.
Nonetheless, we shall join hands and charge forward - somewhere.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...ruled-out-in-fatal-amtrak-crash-officials-say
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