Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Watch a freight train loaded with new cars lose a fight with a low bridge

How you doing today hooker?

I worked for a Ford Predelivery Service company when I got out of high school and after I got out of the army for a while. We would fix things the manufacturers screwed up and get the Ford vehicles ready to go to the dealers for sale. Our lot was next to a rail delivery yard where every make of car I could imagine at the time were delivered for dispersal to dealers in the area around Portland...

We would witness all kinds of mishaps, including the guys unloading the cars and getting in a hurry and knocking off the ramps between rail cars and dropping cars between the rail cars and holding up the whole process until they could bring in a crane to dig the car out and get it out of the way... one day a few rail cars come in and at that time, covered rail cars was pretty unusual, and the tops of about 30 Ford Mavericks were sheared off right at the top of the body where the A pillar attached. Once in a while we would also see Ford Trucks or Vans with their tops caved in and windows/windshields trashed, but those Mavericks were unusual in that below where the tops were sheared off by assumedly a bridge, the bodies were perfectly intact. You could have welded on a new top and no one would have known anything happened... of course, that's not what happened- they had to be sent out to be crushed...

Bob

Sort of cool watching the corrugated roof crumple.

What a can opener !!! 😳

That stuff crumples just about perfectly.....grin

Whoever planned that route must be a younger person who studied the 'new' math.

What I'm saying is we don't know from the video where the locomotive engines are. What I can see from the video is that the first car seen striking the bridge had been moved away at some point as the roof of the autorack is already crumpled before it hits the bridge. Then from the end of the video when the camera pans right you see a very long train that goes around a curve. I'm just guessing, but I think the engines are up around the curve.

This was in Memphis so a vehicle train would have a 35 mph speed restriction on the main track for a High Urban Threat Area (HUTA) normal main track speed for a vehicle train is 60-70 mph. Yard and OTM track have a 10 mph speed restriction on them. Since this train isn't moving above 10 mph I'm guessing it's OTM track.

Since the the first car in the video striking the bridge is already damaged, I'm again guessing that they are building this train up around the curve seen in the video. This means that the train will be moving back and forth while doing the assembly. First thing you do after coupling into cars is you pull ahead to make sure all your joints are made correctly. Then you shove back how many cars you need to to add to the train or to clear an ajoining track if you need to set out or pick up from multiple tracks.

What I'm also saying is if you're building a nearly 10K foot long train, sometimes people get complacent. Especially it's a two man crew (conductor and engineer) that dosent have a yard van to help them. If the conductor does their job by the book they have to walk to the rear end of that train before it ever moves backwards if they dont have a vantage point where they can see the rear car and the track in front of the backup move.

What I'm ultimately saying is that if they were pulling ahead both engineer and the conductor are probably going to investigation for termination. If this was a backup movement the only person who will be in trouble is the person who should have been at the rear end of the train protecting the movement and that person is not the engineer. I'm also saying if the conductor was making a blind shove and the engineer knew what the conductor was doing then the engineer is to blame for the damage as well.

Biden has never had a real job Been on uncle sugar since Moses was pooping yellow.

Concrete, not steel but...some years back, a truck on I-84 near here was toting a crane. Somehow the boom came up on the crane between overpasses. He hit the next one at 65 or 70 and the boom cut the concrete 2-lane overpass over half way through. It just sliced right through it.

Running a rail line is not highly scientific - quite simply, you do not run cars that do not fit under the bridges, and you KNOW the height of every bridge on the line and every car in the train. DUH ! And, tin roofs on those boxes - I could hear The Tin Roof Blues.

You absolutely do not know any of that information, it isn't given to the train crew. At least not the railroad I work for. No dimensions are given on railroad cars, and none of the overpasses or truss bridges are labled with clearance markers like the highway overpasses. You're given paperwork that tells you if the car you're pulling is cleared for the route or not and that is it. Then as a conductor you have to double check car numbers to make sure your paperwork matches the train that you actually get.

I agree with tayforce, I worked for a major north american railroad for 38 years. We had an elaborate trip plan service scheduling computer system that we purchased from the BNSF in 1994. I was involved with the implementation team as well as the team that modified the system for our use. Service Design/Service Scheduling provides the route for all rail cars taking into consideration height,width and weight restrictions . The Dimensional team then reviews any exceptional heavy and or high and wide loads. Much like trucking companies would be when hauling dimensional loads.

When the oil sands were booming we saw many huge vessels hauled by rail and truck moving North to Ft McMurray and beyond.

With the limited information this would appear to a yard moment involving human error.

But really hard to deflate the tires on a train.

Is that the Short Line, or the B&O?

I hope their run off insurance is paid up! Railroad managers conduct regular job observations to ensure safety compliance. Violations usually result in a period of unpaid time off. Thus, conductors and engineers purchase insurance from their unions ( BLE, UTU) to provide income while they are “run off”.

Choo - Choo!!!!!!

Oh schitt.......

Pulled a train on that bridge.

BNSF

You seem ta know your sh|t.

Thanks for your input.

My mom's uncle helped design those car carriers.

He made em too fckin tall.