Train derails on highway bridge in Washington state

[MarkyT]

As others have said, though, a board is not very visible in darkness or low light if not accompanied by something, such as a flashing light, which shows where it is and can be easily seen by the driver (engineer).

I agree. A better sited, more visible warning indicator ideally also equipped with something as simple as an AWS-like transponder with an alarm and reminder in the cab could have been very effective, as proven in UK. It is surprising that the US doesn't have some legacy system like this but remember even here it took a while before AWS was employed for speed restriction, years after its introduction at distant signals.

 

[NSEFAN]

SemaphoreSam and Taunton I must agree with you both. The cards were well stacked against the driver (engineer). He should have been on top of it, but I would liken it to a 50/50 traffic collision, or perhaps more to when a road hasn't been well engineered and a collision occurs. The various railroad bodies must share at least 50% of any responsibility.

I guess it depends on the culture of the USA. In the UK, we would firstly be looking at what, if any, factors caused the driver to overspeed (such as discussed above, sighting of signage, reminders, trainstop systems etc).

I seem to recall that after the Santiago de Compostela crash, the apparent prevailing view was that the driver was 100% responsible, even though in Britain we would be looking at factors such as systematic causes of fatigue and distraction, and also a lack of TPWS/other such system.

 

[ac6000cw]

As others have said, though, a board is not very visible in darkness or low light if not accompanied by something, such as a flashing light, which shows where it is and can be easily seen by the driver (engineer).

The standard US locomotive headlights are two very bright 300 Watt PAR 56 sealed-beam halogen lamps (or LED equivalent) plus 'ditch' lights low down on either side (for comparison, the headlights on a car are only about 60-70 Watts each). These all provide very good lineside illumination - see photo below, most of the illumination in it is from the loco head and ditch lights:

Truckee night time UP 7 by ac6044cw, on Flickr

...and head + ditch lights from the front:

Truckee night time UP 6a by ac6044cw, on Flickr

 

[edwin_m]

Speed warnings in the UK are no more than a retro-reflective sign to be lit by the train headlights, although admittedly the more severe ones are protected by AWS and/or TPWS. We used to have illuminated (but only very dimly as I recall) speed restriction warnings in the days when trains only carried a marker light that was about as powerful as a candle - but almost no other sign was illuminated.

 

[Taunton]

In some respects the US has been ahead of the UK, in others behind. Cab signals arrived in quantity as long ago as the 1920s, even on steam locos, and on some railways replaced the lineside signals at a very early stage. For a technology nearly 100 years old that relies on coded track circuits and inductors on the locomotive, it is notably reliable. They were made compulsory at 80mph, which is why so much US trackage is rated at 79mph, as on this new stretch involved in the accident. The irony of this, of course, is they are not required at places where there is a severe speed limit, as here.

Positive Train Control (PTC) is analogous to TPWS. It has come in recent decades, and although compulsory in various circumstances it has had a decidedly spotty introduction. The main driver of the government directive has been the number of major rail accidents which involve hazardous chemicals. It seems that it is installed on the traditional Seattle-Portland main line, which this shortcut is intended to bypass, but is not yet functional on the new line. There are also accounts, which sound surprising, that while the system was to be commissioned within months, the (brand new) locomotive at the head of the wrecked train was not PTC fitted.

This is the third serious USA passenger train accident at a sharp curve at the end of a high speed section in the last few years, with trains derailed running at multiples of the limit, the federal authorities will surely have something to say about it.

 

[SemaphoreSam]

The Federales have a LOT to answer for, not just to... "say about it". In England, the Great Western Railway started providing, in the cab, signals to warn the driver that he may have missed a distant signal; and the ability of the driver to deal with the situation by actively cancelling the signal with no effect, or, if no input by the driver was given, the train would be braked without driver input. This wasn't in 2005, or 1975, nor 1935, but 1906-1910! And, we in the "wonderfully advanced" USA, cannot protect an overspeeding train in 2015, when the operator's predecessor (PRR) had a system in place, in (is it true?)...1950? Nor can it protect a train driver from inadvertently missing a major speed restriction in....2017? We can kill millions throughout the world with our powerful military, in place after place, but protect our rail passengers....well, not so important. I guess no money to be made in THAT pursuit. Sam

 

[#Vlad]

I guess it depends on the culture of the USA. In the UK, we would firstly be looking at what, if any, factors caused the driver to overspeed (such as discussed above, sighting of signage, reminders, trainstop systems etc).

I seem to recall that after the Santiago de Compostela crash, the apparent prevailing view was that the driver was 100% responsible, even though in Britain we would be looking at factors such as systematic causes of fatigue and distraction, and also a lack of TPWS/other such system.

I believe you to be correct in what you've said here. It was quite clear in some reports of the Santiago crash, that the driver was being spoken to by his train manager about a minor problem ahead. As a driver of high speed trains, I get how distracting that can be. You have to prioritize, and sometimes that means being taken as rude. On my routes, apart from the Belgian classic line, there's usually no real issue with safety if you're distracted, except to your safety record. In other words, you might get told off for a brake intervention, but it wouldn't have killed people. I don't take this lightly, and so I do treat an interruption on spurious grounds, as a low priority. Some people can waffle on and it is not always possible to determine if they have a valid point to make, while leaning over towards the radio, and trying to listen over the wind noise and traction motor noise over a dodgy sounding handset! So you have to cut them off. 76 people died in Spain, because the driver did not do that, I believe.

 

[Groningen]

In the Netherlands it seems that driver is on his/her own with speeds below 40 kilometers an hour. Than the ATB-EG (Automatic Train Influence) does not work. But things are improved with ATB-Vv, ATB-NG and ERTMS.

 

[Darandio]

Just some updated information on this.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...l-crash-near-seattle-u-s-agency-idUSKBN1FE2NH

Amtrak engineer misread signal before fatal crash near Seattle: U.S. agency

The Amtrak engineer aboard a passenger train that derailed last month in Washington state has told the National Transportation Safety Board he misread a signal and tried to brake before the crash that killed three people, the agency said on Thursday.

All 12 cars and one of two engines jumped the tracks at a curve on Dec. 18, sending some cars tumbling from a bridge onto an interstate highway near Seattle.

The NTSB this month said the crash, which also injured 70 people, could have been prevented if a safety technology system known as positive train control had been operational. It said the train was traveling at 79 miles per hour (126 km per hour) when it derailed, far above the 30 mph speed limit.

The agency said it was not able to interview the engineer and the qualifying conductor, who were in the lead locomotive, until last week because both had suffered serious injuries in the crash.

The engineer told investigators he was aware that the curve with a 30 mph (48 kph) speed restriction was at milepost 19.8 of the track, and that he had planned to start braking about one mile (1.6 km) prior to the curve, the agency said. The engineer said he did not recall seeing milepost 18 or the 30 mph advance speed sign that was posted two miles (3.2 km) ahead of the speed-restricted curve, the NTSB said.

The engineer also mistook another signal at the accident curve for another signal located to the north, it said.

The train was on its inaugural run on a faster route from Seattle to Portland, Oregon. The agency reported last month that six seconds before the derailment, the engineer remarked that it was speeding, and that he then applied the brakes but apparently not the emergency brake.

The NTSB did not disclose the name of the engineer, 55, who was hired by Amtrak in 2004. It said he had completed about seven to 10 observational trips in the locomotive as well as three trips operating the equipment in the weeks before the accident. The agency said the engineers reported being well rested and that the qualifying conductor was not a distraction.

 

[philabos]

Here is the updated NTSB advice after interviewing those on the engineer and conductor that were the two occupants of the locomotive.

https://www.ntsb.gov/news/press-releases/Pages/mr20180125.aspx

• The engineer said he felt rested at the start of his shift.
  
• The engineer recalled that as the train passed milepost 15.5 it was travelling about 79 mph.
  
• The engineer told investigators that he was aware that the curve with the 30 mph speed restriction was at milepost 19.8, and that he had planned to initiate braking about one mile prior to the curve.
  
• The engineer said that he saw mileposts 16 and 17 but didn’t recall seeing milepost 18 or the 30 mph advance speed sign, which was posted two miles ahead of the speed-restricted curve.
  
• The engineer said that he did see the wayside signal at milepost 19.8 (at the accident curve) but mistook it for another signal, which was north of the curve.
  
• He said that as soon as he saw the 30 mph sign at the start of the curve, he applied brakes. Seconds later, the train derailed as it entered the curve.
  
• The engineer said that he didn’t feel that having a qualifying conductor in the locomotive with him was a distraction...

 

[theageofthetra]

Here is the updated NTSB advice after interviewing those on the engineer and conductor that were the two occupants of the locomotive.

https://www.ntsb.gov/news/press-releases/Pages/mr20180125.aspx

In the early reports it said that the emergency brake hadn't been applied- there is no mention of this here?

 

[MarkyT]

76 people died in Spain, because the driver did not do that, I believe.

... and also because management, at some level, had decided that, because the configuration of the infrastructure was at a temporary interim stage before full integration into the standard gauge high speed network, a gap in speed supervision by safety systems was acceptable despite the obvious risk of a very sharp curve after a long stretch of high speed running. I wonder if the fact that two drivers were on duty in the cab at the time was a mitigation specifically applied because of the gap in safety systems. The legacy protection system COULD have been used to control speed approaching the curve very cheaply and easily, and the fact engineers were out there adding equipment to do just that, within days of the tragedy, demonstrates the practicality of the measure.

 

[Chris M]

In the early reports it said that the emergency brake hadn't been applied- there is no mention of this here?

In one of the recent updates it said that he applied the service brake but not the emergency brake.

 

[philabos]

... and also because management, at some level, had decided that, because the configuration of the infrastructure was at a temporary interim stage before full integration into the standard gauge high speed network, a gap in speed supervision by safety systems was acceptable despite the obvious risk of a very sharp curve after a long stretch of high speed running. I wonder if the fact that two drivers were on duty in the cab at the time was a mitigation specifically applied because of the gap in safety systems. The legacy protection system COULD have been used to control speed approaching the curve very cheaply and easily, and the fact engineers were out there adding equipment to do just that, within days of the tragedy, demonstrates the practicality of the measure.

One was a driver as you say, the other was a conductor, or a guard in your terminology, being qualified on the route riding in the locomotive.
Curious, what "legacy" system could have been utilized? The legacy system here was an advance speed board approximately two miles before the restriction warning of 30mph. Neither person in the cab apparently saw the warning. The PTC system was not active and is still not active. Even if it were, the locomotive was not PTC equipped. The "management " in this scenario was Amtrak, Sound Transit who own the tracks, and Washington DOT, all three government agencies.
The emergency braking was not applied which is the reason it is not mentioned as a result of the interview.

 

[SemaphoreSam]

Curious, what "legacy" system could have been utilized? The legacy system here was an advance speed board approximately two miles before the restriction warning of 30mph.

No, the "legacy" system was, and is, PTC. That system was mandated to have been installed, I believe, in 2015 on passenger routes; the "management", not the crew, should be held accountable. The NTSB can only recommend, but AMTRAK could have, and should have, insisted that PTC be installed, AND OPERATIONAL, on ALL new routes, especially after the crash in Philly, or Operations would be delayed until it IS operational. As I previously said, similar warning systems have been in use in the UK since 1910, and in the States since the 20's and 30's, on the Pennsylvania, among others. The crew will be punished; the higher the "management", the less the accountability. The CEO Richard Anderson should go to jail. He won't. Screwed up world. Sam

 

[MarkyT]

Curious, what "legacy" system could have been utilized? The legacy system here was an advance speed board approximately two miles before the restriction warning of 30mph...

Sorry for any confusion. I was talking about the Spanish incident that Vlad had referred to.

 

[philabos]

No, the "legacy" system was, and is, PTC. That system was mandated to have been installed, I believe, in 2015 on passenger routes; the "management", not the crew, should be held accountable. The NTSB can only recommend, but AMTRAK could have, and should have, insisted that PTC be installed, AND OPERATIONAL, on ALL new routes, especially after the crash in Philly, or Operations would be delayed until it IS operational. As I previously said, similar warning systems have been in use in the UK since 1910, and in the States since the 20's and 30's, on the Pennsylvania, among others. The crew will be punished; the higher the "management", the less the accountability. The CEO Richard Anderson should go to jail. He won't. Screwed up world. Sam

Amtrak is in no position to insist upon anything.
As of the date of this incident, none of their off corridor locomotives were equipped to use PTC. After this derailment, Amtrak trains went back to the original route which is PTC equipped. The BNSF and UP freight engines are PTC equipped, but sadly Amtrak locomotives are not, which means they cannot take advantage of the system installed by the railroads. Yet.
As to the date of the system being mandated, it is the end of 2018.
PTC is hardly a legacy system. It is and has been a work in progress.
Where I will agree with you is the fact there have been systems, like TPWS, that have been available for decades. The Chatsworth collision in 2008 was caused by an engineer who was texting on his phone and passed a signal at danger. He was employed by the commuter authority, Metrolink, and collided head on with a Union Pacific freight train operating on a clear signal indication.
In a matter of weeks, Congress in its rush to appear to be doing something, decided to mandate PTC which was a developing concept rather than an off the shelf system. Alternate systems, though not as supposedly all encompassing as PTC, would have prevented every accident I can recall since then (save low speed terminal over runs which PTC will not either!). The classic example of perfect being the enemy of good.
As to the derailment in Philadelphia, yes the Pennsylvania Railroad legacy system installed in the 50's would have prevented that accident had in not been deactivated on the eastbound mains - by Amtrak.

Before you send Mr. Anderson off to jail, I would point out he has only been at Amtrak a few months. Someone made the decision to start service on the new routing before PTC was operational and I sincerely doubt it was Anderson, but that is probably the one item we will never know.

 

[MarkyT]

In addition to the PRR coded track circuit systems deployed widely in the East Coast corridor and New York's commuter networks, other US Railroads had a simple inductive PTC system which began to appear in the 1920s and had reached peak coverage of 8650 route miles, 14400 track miles, and 3850 locomotives by 1954. With the post WW2 collapse of passenger rail travel however, and the serial bankrupcies of the 1970s, regulators began to allow RRs to gradually remove the system from the majority of previously equipped mileage, on the grounds of reduced passenger traffic.

Like early European safety systems, the most common use of this technology on main lines was to warn an driver of an upcoming hazard, and if the alert was not acknowledged, stop the train by means of a full application of the brakes. At signals the magnet would be energized only when the signal was displaying a full "Clear" indication. Any other indication would de-energize the magnet triggering an alarm in the cab, which, if not cancelled within a few seconds, would initiate a penalty brake application that could not be reset until the train came to a complete stop. The system was flexible enough to allow "Inert" (passive) inductors to be placed in advance of fixed speed restrictions (for curves, bridges etc). The system must work in a similar way to AWS, presumably with a permanent magnet to trigger the warning when the electromagnet is de-energised, and only a permanent at a passive site.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermittent_inductive_automatic_train_stop

 

[edwin_m]

The system must work in a similar way to AWS, presumably with a permanent magnet to trigger the warning when the electromagnet is de-energised, and only a permanent at a passive site.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermittent_inductive_automatic_train_stop

From that link:

The receiver consists of a two coil electromagnet carefully aligned to pass about 1.5 inches above the surface of the inductor shoe. The inductor shoe consists of two metal plates set into a streamlined housing designed to deflect impacts of debris or misaligned receivers. The metal plates are connected through a choke circuit in the body of the shoe. When the choke circuit is open magnetic flux in the receiver's primary coil is able to induce a voltage in the receiver's secondary coil which in turn triggers an action in the locomotive. When the circuit is closed the choke eliminates the magnetic field and the voltage induced by it allowing the locomotive to pass without activation. Where unconditional activation was desired specially shaped metal plates could be used in place of a fully functional shoe, however the design of the system can result in accidental activations when the train passes over switches or other metal objects in the track area.

So the same sort of application as AWS but different principle of operation (for those not aware, AWS uses trackside magnets detected by reed switches or modern equivalent on the train).

 

[MarkyT]

So the same sort of application as AWS but different principle of operation (for those not aware, AWS uses trackside magnets detected by reed switches or modern equivalent on the train).

So a bit more like the German Indusi technology, but without the different frequencies for different functions. I like that simple metal plates in the right place is all that is required for a passive unconditional activation.