Train Derailment 3

[dik]

In Washington state, derailment killed 3 people and some still seriously injured. Part of the problem it seems is the design of the rail. From the BBC.

"A US passenger train that derailed, killing three people, was travelling at 80mph (130km/h) on a curve with a speed limit of 30mph, data from the train's rear engine indicates."

The rail was supposed to be a high speed rail and it seems really silly to have a 30mph curve on it.

link:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42408624

Dik

 

[waross]

Great piloting and an amazing coincidence.
In the cockpit were two pilots who had the combined experience and skill set to land successfully.
One pilot had glider experience and the other had first hand experience flying out of the Gimli airport.
What are the odds that those two pilots would be in the cockpit on that flight?


Bill
--------------------
"Why not the best?"
Jimmy Carter

 

[berkshire]

Waross,
Some years ago the two pilots who did this were guest speakers at a Soaring Society of America convention , It was a very interesting story they told among other things they mentioned , The aircraft's fuel gauges were inoperative because of an electronic fault indicated on the instrument panel and airplane logs. They relied only on the quantity put on board which of course was done in pounds instead of kilos so they thought they were getting more fuel than they really did.
But again there was a comedy of errors prior to their taking off which later resulted in the two pilots and three maintenance workers getting suspended.
B.E.

You are judged not by what you know, but by what you can do.

 

[SnTMan]

So often the case. Several seeming unrelated minor problems add up to one big problem. Turned out OK that time, too often does not.

The problem with sloppy work is that the supply FAR EXCEEDS the demand

 

[3DDave]

The last chance to avoid failure was they did not floatstick after fueling to confirm what they thought was on board was actually on board. Failing to repeat the measurement they relied on to determine fuel need was a critical step that would have exposed the calculation flaw. Additionally, they probably failed to close the loop with the fuelers about the range they expected out of the amount put on board. There is no way the plane would be twice as efficient as anything else in the air.

 

[bimr]

Regarding: The biggest issue, of course, is a fundamental lack of desire. The rail companies neither want to spend the money or even to do the job in the first place. That's the only rational explanation for an already 3-yr slip in implementation of positive train control. Any time safety equipment is demanded by the public or the government, companies resist, until they're back up against a wall. Then, the implementation is PDQ, and the companies laud all their safety features, after the fact.

Ronald Batory — President Trump’s nominee to lead the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) — will be pushing for the controversial self-regulatory approach to safety known as “performance-based regulations,” according to his July 26 statement for the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation.

https://www.desmogblog.com/2017/09/...-nominee-batory-performance-based-regulations

The engineers at VW took advantage of the performance-based regulations when they installed modifications to get around the diesel emissions regulations.

 

[Sparweb]

The biggest issue, of course, is a fundamental lack of desire

Are you sure it's not something more human, such as the threat to job security, or the reduction of the driver's responsibility to the point of uselessness?
When comparing rail safety records, one should ask: What do they do in Japan?
North America's rail system is pretty sad compared to the Shinkansen.
"In 2011, 27 shinkansen trains were skimming the country the afternoon of March 11 when a 9.0 megaquake struck... There were no fatalities or injuries."

There is no way a human could make the split-second decisions needed to minutely control a 300 KPH train all day every day. Automation of rail transport has already been solved. A 130kph train is trivial in comparison.

STF

 

[TGS4]

SparWeb has it exactly. Follow the money from the unions to the politicians. Should be an easy connect-the-dots exercise.

 

[IRstuff]

"Are you sure it's not something more human, such as the threat to job security, or the reduction of the driver's responsibility to the point of uselessness?"

Since when has that really stopped any company from executing a corporate desire? It certainly didn't stop the fireman and conductor from disappearing. It certainly hasn't stopped the airlines from reducing cockpit crews from 4 to 2. And when have the unions successfully won anything in the last 20 years? Does anyone really believe that the unions can buy more politicians than the railroads?

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg

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[3DDave]

Japan spends a lot for national pride on a fairly narrow scope project. It didn't translate well into their nuclear program though and they don't ship enough tonnage by rail to be more than a round off error to US rail. Not having to contend with freight trains makes passenger trains a lot easier. I guess if a country wants to be really good at something they are going to spend a ton of money to do so.

Anyway - the 2015 article has some 2017 followup

https://www.dmagazine.com/frontburn...tral-bullet-train-already-gone-off-the-rails/

It's not dead, but it's not a source of pride to a lot of Texans.

 

[MatthewDB]

I can't help thinking that a tech school class could probably design a good reliable safety system for a couple of thousand dollars in hardware.
Is this reasonable or an I blowing smoke?

As others point out, this is all about cost. The technology has been around a long time. There is nothing to "invent", only the implementation. The standards have been all hashed out and every manufacturer of equipment has solutions available.

The New York underground system had positive train control when built in 1904. It was centrally dispatched, with remote controlled switches and automatic signals. A mechanical trip rising from besides the track indicated clear, restricted or stop. Passing restricted too fast or passing stop would apply the air brake to emergency.

The London Underground started automated train control in 1964. It uses wayside coils to indicate target speed by a number of different frequencies. The operator only controls the doors and issues a "go" command and after that the central control system sets speed and onboard controls regulate the speed including the final stop in place.

Are you sure it's not something more human, such as the threat to job security, or the reduction of the driver's responsibility to the point of uselessness?

As you point out, there are plenty of examples of automated systems. They still have an operator though. Automated systems don't do well with unexpected disruptions like objects on the tracks, people blocking doors, etc..

OK, so a GPS/INS + Arduino could be had for around $150 from Sparkfun, and triple redundancy would be slightly more than triple to account for the voting hardware. I would think that the existing train routing software already has the speed limits database, and the programmed route information could easily include the limits along with the GPS coordinates of the track segments.

Rail equipment isn't a since fair project. I know for certain you've never designed anything that goes onboard rail equipment if you think COTS will work without a bunch of modifications. Rail is BRUTAL for vibration and impact.

That said, the real cost isn't in the moving equipment, it is in the wayside equipment, communications and software. Far more often the problem isn't a train going too fast for the location, it is unauthorized movement - going against switches and / or running into another train. For that you've got to communicate who's got authority, where everyone is, etc..

All of the technology is developed and agreed upon in the US. It is a matter of spending the money to put it in.

 

[itsmoked]

A tidbit. Last year I put an LTE Ethernet router into a railcar to provide me with a link into the system controller. Just for the heck of it I "checked the box" to add GPS to the router. I installed the complex antenna on a flat deck already existing on the car's left side roof, about over the rail on that side.

I can VPN into the router and ask it for it's immediate GPS location. If I copy that location and paste it into Google Maps then switch to satellite mode and zoom in, with out exception, I can always tell which way the car is pointing just by that two foot offset of the antenna. I was quite amazed when I realized that.

Keith Cress
kcress -

http://www.flaminsystems.com

 

[Sparweb]

Hi MatthewDB,
Please be careful when quoting others. It makes for confusing reading for everyone else, when you don't cut-and-paste correctly.
Now that that's been taken care of, I want to add that I understand IRStuff when IRStuff wrote the following:

OK, so a GPS/INS + Arduino could be had for around $150 from Sparkfun, and triple redundancy would be slightly more than triple to account for the voting hardware. I would think that the existing train routing software already has the speed limits database, and the programmed route information could easily include the limits along with the GPS coordinates of the track segments.

I believe IRStuff was NOT making an engineering design recommendation about how to automate a rail system. My reading of IRStuff's comment was more to place some ridicule on an industry that has fallen woefully behind in providing its operators with electronic assistance, when every other transport system has done similar things for their operators. You clearly understand the mechanism of doing this in the rail system better than I do, and perhaps better than IRStuff (I won't speak for them) but didn't notice the implied scorn, for not an industry that has not widely implemented it decades ago, when it became possible.


STF

 

[IRstuff]

It's not a matter of cost, it's a matter of cost NOW. One would think that millions of dollars of freight would be offset by a $60k (finished/hardened/qualified) system, but the aggregate cost is that multiplied by thousands of engines, so no one wants to spend the money after the fact (BTDT). Nevertheless, it seems that the freight companies won't even broach the subject with inexpensive COTS demo programs, because that'll just make it harder for them to refuse to implement the full Monte.

When such a system is incorporated into new engines, the cost would be less than half, and no one would even blink an eye if the cost of a new engine were $20k higher, since that would simply get amortized over the freight costs over the lifetime of the engine. Engine additions are much easier to justify, compared to trading between bullets and safety equipment in military. That's been an ongoing losing proposition for at least 20 years. Military helos are routinely lost due to self-induced brownouts caused by the downwash; the technology exists to deal with that, but the aggregate cost constantly makes such systems fall below the budget line.

While rail transport environment is harsh, it's nowhere close to impossible, and nowhere close to military truck transport or naval 901D shock. Anything that a human bottom can handle for 8 hrs is benign, by definition. And note that I was describing a simple warning system, which isn't even close to positive control, and does not require interaction with any other part of the engine, other than power and external antenna.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg

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[SnTMan]

So, rail guys, here's a question for you. There are a number of lines thru my city that are posted that the engines may be unmanned, remote controlled or some such wording. How they doing that?

The problem with sloppy work is that the supply FAR EXCEEDS the demand

 

[wroggent]

Unmanned is easy enough, however controlled, local or remote, I'm not sure.

 

[3DDave]

I believe they are radio controlled with an observer.

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

The caution is that people would think that the lack of a person in the cab means the locomotive won't move and therefore increase the odds for a collision by dodging around crossing-arms, for example.

 

[MatthewDB]

So, rail guys, here's a question for you. There are a number of lines thru my city that are posted that the engines may be unmanned, remote controlled or some such wording. How they doing that?

They are locally controlled via radio from a console worn in a harness. They are mainly used to allow for one man operation in switching service. Most of the time the operator will be in the cab, but when it comes time to back up, make a couple, throw a switch and set it back, etc... the operator will dismount and run the train from the ground. They are always operating with the end of the train in the direction of movement visible.

 

[SnTMan]

MatthewDB, yeah that makes sense, where I am most used to seeing them is near a yard. Thx

The problem with sloppy work is that the supply FAR EXCEEDS the demand

 

[JohnRBaker]

It appears that it's going to be a while before all the details are known, but in the mean time:

http://thehill.com/opinion/technolo...-about-amtrak-derailment-the-stranger-it-gets

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without

 

[3DDave]

I expect a preliminary report in under 6 months.