Pushing The Envelope, Part IV: Train Wrecks

The human being has always pushed the envelope into and beyond the realms of danger. This is the fourth of various Sunday postings displaying how restless Man is with the mundane and how he purposely crosses the threshold into danger willingly -- and sometimes unwillingly.

The above video is taken from the window-cam of a diesel-electric locomotive. I am unable to tell if the engineer and conductor were still in the cab of this locomotive when the collision occurred. However, if you look closely at the oncoming locomotive, a BNSF engine, you'll notice that at around :40 you can see one of its crew leaping away onto the ground prior to the impact. This occurred at the Kismet Siding in California, 2006. The westbound (oncoming) train ignored signal indications. Below is a photo of the oncoming first unit. Amazingly enough, no one died in this collision.

At EVOC we have a theorem called the Lug Nut rule, which goes something like this: in an accident, 5 lug nuts beat 4, 10 lug nuts beat 6, cleated tracks beat all lug nuts and rail beats everything.

Here, you can see that, even with older diesel-electric locomotives of roughly 3,500 hp, any vehicle will lose to a train. Also, please note that, in these tests archived by Pentrex, the units involved were able to stop in remarkably short distances. An average unit train roughly 1 or 1.25 miles long (about 90 to 120 cars), for example, traveling around 55 mph will need at least a mile to stop with the braking systems in full emergency. Remember, the contact patch of a locomotive or car wheel (that portion of the wheel actually touching the rail) is the size of a dime.

Train vs. semi-truck? No contest.

The horrible results of not lining the switch back for the main, after having taken your train off on a siding:

Any time you potentially clash or cross paths with a train or a locomotive, you are most definitely pushing the envelope.

BZ