Giant Steps

June 11, 2005 7:55 PM

A fire supreme. An all-too brief series of photographs demonstrates the disastrous after-effects of a coal train with an overheated wheel bearing stopping on a wooden bridge to investigate the cause of the smoke...
posted by jonson (37 comments total)

That would have been pretty amazing to witness.
posted by ColdChef at 8:02 PM on June 11, 2005

That is my kinda luck.
posted by HyperBlue at 8:20 PM on June 11, 2005

Yikes. But, I think you're stretching on the train = 'trane puns.
posted by nicwolff at 8:30 PM on June 11, 2005

Pyro. Train wrecks. MS Comic Sans. All the makings of a perfect post. This is good.
posted by tomharpel at 8:42 PM on June 11, 2005

Yes, this is not good for the train or for the town. (I liked the train-'trane pun.)
posted by OmieWise at 8:45 PM on June 11, 2005

C'mon, people, it's a COAL TRAIN! How can you resist? I think, frankly, it'd be stretching NOT to make puns.
posted by jonson at 8:54 PM on June 11, 2005

My cousin Mary was on that train...
posted by danb at 8:58 PM on June 11, 2005

... high on cocaine.
posted by bardic at 9:29 PM on June 11, 2005

OW! the comic sans is burning my eyes!
posted by glenwood at 9:45 PM on June 11, 2005

Jeepers! Never ignore hot weeels.
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 10:03 PM on June 11, 2005

Who wants to bet the engineer had an unresolved labor dispute... :)
posted by Davenhill at 10:18 PM on June 11, 2005

bardic: "... high on cocaine."

That nearly made me spit out my water. Well played. :)
posted by danb at 10:31 PM on June 11, 2005

Um, Doh!?!

Pretty amazing pictures though.
posted by fenriq at 10:33 PM on June 11, 2005

Somehow, "whoops" just doesn't quite capture the magnitude of the accident.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 11:44 PM on June 11, 2005

[this is good]
posted by bshort at 11:44 PM on June 11, 2005

The linked site doesn't give a date, but this site (which appears to carry the same text), indicates it was in May of this year.
posted by SPrintF at 12:01 AM on June 12, 2005

Here is more information, it appears to have happened in 2002 already.
posted by sebas at 1:25 AM on June 12, 2005

A link supreme. Tasty.
posted by mwhybark at 1:26 AM on June 12, 2005

we don't need no water....
posted by tim451 at 4:56 AM on June 12, 2005

Last night I watched Hitchcock's The 39 Steps which was made in the mid-30s, I think, and when the protagonist was on a train to Scotland, almost caught by the police, someone pulled the panic cord and the train ground to a halt on a bridge. The conductor immediately freaked out and told the investigators they couldn't possibly stop on the bridge and made them pull forward, giving our hero a chance to escape. So if they knew better 70 years ago, what happened?
posted by sohcahtoa at 5:27 AM on June 12, 2005

The common term on the railroad for overheated wheel bearing is "hot box".
Please return to your regularly scheduled derail.
posted by unrepentanthippie at 5:43 AM on June 12, 2005

*snicker*
posted by jonson at 7:47 AM on June 12, 2005

I don't see the pun.
posted by Kwantsar at 9:02 AM on June 12, 2005

Nevermind.
posted by Kwantsar at 9:03 AM on June 12, 2005

So if they knew better 70 years ago, what happened?

I think it's just a very, very long train. The train crew had to walk about a half mile back from the lead unit to assess the problem, and by that time the bridge was already on fire.
posted by stevis at 10:13 AM on June 12, 2005

That's been around the RR for 50 years, and it wasn't meant as a pun. It's because the wheel bearings live inside the journal box, and the box would glow red hot when they failed.
Rail workers in the old days would get outside the car at a crossing, inspect the train as it passed, and signal the way car at the end, which is what you used to call the caboose before they quit using them.
It just ocurred to me nobody else probably knew that, and I thought I'd toss it in.
< / trivia for the bored
posted by unrepentanthippie at 10:33 AM on June 12, 2005

Just wondering, why could they not drive the damn thing off the bridge when they found out the problem, or when the bridge caught fire?
posted by c13 at 10:38 AM on June 12, 2005

This is a great post and I admire your pun bravery.
posted by nomad at 10:39 AM on June 12, 2005

Pictures like this are just a few of my favorite things.
posted by freebird at 11:56 AM on June 12, 2005

Just wondering, why could they not drive the damn thing off the bridge when they found out the problem...?

Sebas' link tells why -- the bearings failed, derailing that truck[1], throwing the train into emergency[2], and it stopped. The crew went to look at why the train went into emergency, and when they'd walked back and found the problem, they knew they couldn't save the whole train.

The problem. A train engine can't start up a whole consist [3]-- the engines just don't have enough power to pull 100 cars from a dead stop. They can, however, start a single car, even while keeping several dozen other cars moving. Thus, you need to relax the couplers. [4]

So, what you do is this -- you back up, pushing one car back into the one behind it. Then, they push back into the one behind them, and so forth. Soon, the back car moves, the end-train device (ETD) [5], signals the cab that it is moving, and the crew know that they've compressed the whole train. They apply the brakes, and stop the train, then they go forward slowly. This move the engine forward, until "bang", the first coupler pulls to the limit, and yanks the first car to speed. That car moves, pulling its coupler, and bang, the second car moves, then it starts to pull its coupler, and so on, bang, bang, bang, bang, all the way to the end of the consist. Finally, the ETD signals that it is moving again, and now, with the whole package moving, the engineer can apply full power and accelerate the whole train.

When you apply emergency brakes, you end up with a stretched out train. So, once they saw the problem, they knew they'd never get the train out in time -- esp with a car derailed, and the fact that they'd walked half a mile to find the problem (and would have to walk another half mile back to get started.) So, they decoupled the cars that were on the bridge, and waved bye to the six cars on the (already burning) bridge, and, for that matter, the bridge. And, doubtlessly, started filling out paperwork.

Note that the new bridge is steel -- and, by changing the embankments, much shorter as well. Creosote coated timber bridges tend to burn down, usually not with a train on them, but they're not exactly robust in ideal conditions. Dragging a white hot hunk of metal across them is bad.

Those wondering how much energy was available? Work out the kinetic energy of a 100 car coal train moving at 40 mph. Even passengers trains have amazing amounts of energy -- one UK derailment peeled off many many feet of rail -- and rammed the rail through the car, much to the consternation of the passengers aboard.

[1] Truck -- the thing that carries the axles and wheels, and has a rotating bearing connecting it to the frame of the car Usually, you have two trucks per car, two axles per truck, two wheels per axle, or eight wheels per car. Some have more. Trucks are half the reason that trains can use curved lines.

[2] Emergency: Maximum safe braking force, applied to the whole train automatically, as the result of a safety system triggering. Not easy to figure out "safe braking force", but modern brake control systems do a much better job. Bad was when the train went into emergency, and the middle stopped before the end did. The trick: -- put the most braking effort on the rear cars, and put it there first.

This is why the brakeman worked from the caboose -- to stop a train with handbrakes, he worked from the back forwards. Another bad thing -- when the brakeman is trying to stop the train, but the cab crew doesn't realize this, and keeps power on. That's really hard on the brakes, the rails, the cars in the back, and, heck, the brakeman.

[3] Consist: A specific bunch of railroad cars. Engines only pull cars in yards. They pull consists when they're doing real work. Coal and grain consists are dead simple, and basically are accounting to make sure you know where your cars are. Freight consists, however, can be very complex, since you're dropping off and adding cars as you move along.

The reason switchyards are so complex is so you can sort all these cars out and put them in the right order. It makes a dandy puzzle game -- indeed, many of the Sokoban style puzzles are variations on the same problem.

[4] Couplers: The *very* clever bits of metal that hook cars together. The clever comes into the fact that they let the train safely stop, start, and (with trucks) run on curved track. As a bonus, they work automagically -- you bounce two cars together, and they stick. You can push or pull the two cars, and the couples won't part -- but a simple lever throw will split them. A remarkable, almost magical, bit of engineering.

Passenger trains have them, but for safety and comfort reasons, they have many other connections that are made as well, so passenger consists are often semi-permanent units, and in some cases, for all intents, are one very long car that's remarkably flexible.

[4] ETD: The boring thing that replaced the caboose. Once you didn't need four or five guys to run a train, there wasn't a reason to pull a cabin for them. In particular, better brakes meant you didn't need a brakeman anymore.

The big things the ETD tells the cab: 1) Is that end of the train moving? 2) Are the brakes on that end of the train on or off?

Given that the ETD could be a mile away from the cab on the big coal trains in the west, you can sort of see why this info is important.

ETDs communicate with the cab (and the railroad itself) via radio. They also have a blinky light on the back which says "I'm the end of the train!" and has other useful instruments.

They're not even red. Boring. But they do a very good job, and they're much cheaper than brakemen -- and they're much less pissy when they fall off the train.
posted by eriko at 6:46 PM on June 12, 2005 [2 favorites]

eriko, I flagged your post because it was awesome. But it was hard not to pick "derail" as the reason!
posted by bigbigdog at 7:00 PM on June 12, 2005

Back in the day I always wondered about all the banging that freight trains made when i was catching the Go train at the Clarkson stop in Mississauga.

Eriko thanks for resolving a question I had even forgotten I had.
posted by srboisvert at 8:54 PM on June 12, 2005

Awesome post, eriko...
posted by benzo8 at 4:04 AM on June 13, 2005

I flagged it too. Best of MeFi.
posted by languagehat at 6:35 AM on June 13, 2005

Agreed. Awesome comment in an awsome post. [This is Good]
posted by ssmith at 6:36 AM on June 13, 2005

That whole 'relax the couplers' thing is mind blowing!

With a resident train expert on board, does anyone have a detailed accounting comparing energy and environmental impact of shipping by rail vs. road?
posted by Chuckles at 8:14 PM on June 13, 2005

Awesome, lengthy post or not, I'm just GOING to have to nitpick it a bit, based on being a railfan, a one-time-in-a-former-life railroad engineer, and stickler for correctness in technical matters.

A train engine can't start up a whole consist [3]-- the engines just don't have enough power to pull 100 cars from a dead stop.

Geez, I've quite often started 140 from a standing start, uphill, with 4 clapped out GP-40s.

So, what you do is this -- you back up, pushing one car back into the one behind it. Then, they push back into the one behind them, and so forth. Soon, the back car moves, the end-train device (ETD) [5], signals the cab that it is moving, and the crew know that they've compressed the whole train.

Taking in slack went out with steam locomotives. Diesels have so much low end torque that they'll start darn near anything. When a train is made up in the yard, there's no telling where the slack bits are.

When you apply emergency brakes, you end up with a stretched out train.

Nope. You don't know where the slack or tension is in the train. Individual cars have brakes of varying effectiveness, different weights, and different brake rigging, depending on the age and manufacturer if the car, and whether it is loaded or not. When you go into emergency, you basically vent the brake pipe to atmosphere, (either deliberately via the brake valve in the locomotive, or via a break in the actual physical line), which causes a sharp pressure wave to travel through the brakepipe, tripping each car in turn. Some cars have brake valves that sense sharp reductions very quickly, (in fact, there are cars that we used to call "kickers" that would trip into emergency under a heavier than normal brakepipe reduction and send the whole train into emergency) while other cars won't go into emergency until the brakepipe pressure falls an appreciable amount. There's no way you will get a smooth, even stop. When 12,000 tons kicks you in the ass when the slack runs in, you'll know it, believe me.

This is why the brakeman worked from the caboose -- to stop a train with handbrakes, he worked from the back forwards.

Brakemen haven't had to handbrake moving freight trains for over a century. Westinghouse invented the airbrake in 1899 or thereabouts. He started from the back because that's where he was, (time often being of the essence in brake applications)- nice and comfy in the caboose.

The big things the ETD tells the cab: 1) Is that end of the train moving? 2) Are the brakes on that end of the train on or off?


As well as little things like the brake line pressure, and sometimes even the speed of the last car. You need to know the brakepipe pressure at both ends of the train... in the old days the conductor monitored a pressure gauge in the caboose, and compared it with the known pressure required to operate the train. (As an aside, I prefer the term "FRED" rather than "ETD" You know, F******g Rear End Device......The first word is FLASHING, you preverts :)
posted by pjern at 11:46 PM on June 25, 2005 [1 favorite]