tsr
Established Member
Meanwhile, based on what did happen at the accident site, rather than what didn't, I'm wondering the following... any discussion welcome! If I've overlooked anything, let me know...
1. When the driver laid the short-circuiting bar, what information did the ECO receive, and what action did they take? The report states that the signaller was attempting to arrange an emergency isolation of both lines, so was there either an assumption being made by them that there was no such thing in place, or did the ECO not have any information about problems detected with the electrical supply? I would hope that upon arranging a switch-off/isolation, the signaller would have been informed that the ECO had already been notified of the short-circuiting but that assumes the driver had laid the SCB correctly and that the power system failed safe. It looks like we are not told what the sequence of events was here.
2. Could the short-circuit of the power supply have adversely affected an already fragile onboard GSM-R system? Would it be possible that such a radio, already tripped out and without a secondary battery system, could be made more vulnerable with the 750V DC power supply in the vicinity being violently interrupted?
3. Once the signaller was aware, via various parties including the KICC, that there had been a serious incident, they attempted to resolve the problem by stopping traffic and contacting the ECO. Unless I am misreading things, it seems that nobody involved in the control of the electrical supply voiced much concern until they were contacted some minutes after the incident. In the area I work, ECOs generally get in touch with the signaller within moments of any indication of a problem. Often this is either as a driver is on the phone to the signaller, or sometimes before.
I suspect we will actually never know the answers to some of these, but it seems that other than the driver laying the short-circuiting bar, we do not know much about how electrical safety was maintained, and what other actions the ECO took. This is actually of more concern to me than TCOCs not being laid... the train appears to have derailed in a manner that it was of potentially more harm if other factors then played out other than the obstruction it was causing. The main problem I am thinking of is the presence of multiple animal carcasses near a complex electrical system. Had these caught fire, say for example on a damaged third rail, potentially a large amount of animal would have been burning underneath a stranded train with passengers onboard. Sorting out electrical problems is thus of high importance here. All that said, though, it remains that my training and that of other safety-critical staff is to stop traffic and block lines first, and arrange other things later, which is something which didn't quite happen right here - again, as above, probably largely due to the mental trauma of the incident, which I totally understand.
1. When the driver laid the short-circuiting bar, what information did the ECO receive, and what action did they take? The report states that the signaller was attempting to arrange an emergency isolation of both lines, so was there either an assumption being made by them that there was no such thing in place, or did the ECO not have any information about problems detected with the electrical supply? I would hope that upon arranging a switch-off/isolation, the signaller would have been informed that the ECO had already been notified of the short-circuiting but that assumes the driver had laid the SCB correctly and that the power system failed safe. It looks like we are not told what the sequence of events was here.
2. Could the short-circuit of the power supply have adversely affected an already fragile onboard GSM-R system? Would it be possible that such a radio, already tripped out and without a secondary battery system, could be made more vulnerable with the 750V DC power supply in the vicinity being violently interrupted?
3. Once the signaller was aware, via various parties including the KICC, that there had been a serious incident, they attempted to resolve the problem by stopping traffic and contacting the ECO. Unless I am misreading things, it seems that nobody involved in the control of the electrical supply voiced much concern until they were contacted some minutes after the incident. In the area I work, ECOs generally get in touch with the signaller within moments of any indication of a problem. Often this is either as a driver is on the phone to the signaller, or sometimes before.
I suspect we will actually never know the answers to some of these, but it seems that other than the driver laying the short-circuiting bar, we do not know much about how electrical safety was maintained, and what other actions the ECO took. This is actually of more concern to me than TCOCs not being laid... the train appears to have derailed in a manner that it was of potentially more harm if other factors then played out other than the obstruction it was causing. The main problem I am thinking of is the presence of multiple animal carcasses near a complex electrical system. Had these caught fire, say for example on a damaged third rail, potentially a large amount of animal would have been burning underneath a stranded train with passengers onboard. Sorting out electrical problems is thus of high importance here. All that said, though, it remains that my training and that of other safety-critical staff is to stop traffic and block lines first, and arrange other things later, which is something which didn't quite happen right here - again, as above, probably largely due to the mental trauma of the incident, which I totally understand.
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