Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Runaway train carrying 180 cars in California

Peter Puffer Pete?

Kelso is on Cima Hill, which is a pretty substantial grade on UP's Los Angeles and Salt Lake line from LA to, yep, Salt Lake through Vegas. Train brakes are relatively wimpy as RR's are comparatively flat compared to roadways. You have 90 pounds of air and normal air braking ranges from 6 pounds to 20 pounds of "set." And you can't recharge the brakes while they are set, you have to release them fully and let the air pumps fill the tanks.
Dynamic brakes are basically, you reverse the wiring to the drive motors which makes them generators, and they run the juice therefrom into brake grids, basically big toasters. You only get so many watts of that, so if your train goes fast enough and builds up more downhill energy than the dynamics can take, away you go.
And obviously, in this case, jumping was a smart move, even if a bunch of DUMB moves led to the speed getting past what the brakes could handle.

Dillonbuck, Note the 5th word in my first sentence..."were". Yes trucks went to spring parking/emerg brakes in the late '50's. The railroad never went to spring brakes, it's a straight air applied system with just the triple valve, service and emerg. since Westinghouse invented the triple valve in the 1870's. I used to spot hoppercars under a conveyor loader. You have to drain all the air from both tanks to move the cars with a frontend loader...when you are done loading, you manually set the brakes with the handwheel until the engine gets there and refills the system.

How many illegals are inside? Hundreds? Thousands?

Yeah...No, that's not how it works. Skinner's explanation is the simple version. When you piss away the air, the whole whole train brake system fails. Every locomotive engineer who runs in grade territory is fully aware of how this happens.

In a truck - air gone, it fails to a status of "brakes are locked up - can't roll" - is it opposite on a train? No air = no brakes?

I used to work for a trucking company. Drivers would come through during the night and drop off trailers. They'd be sitting on the lot with the brakes set. In cold snowy weather, friction heat would make the brakes wet and when locked, they'd freeze the shoes to the drums. When you put the air to them, they wouldn't release. You'd have to get under them with a hammer and beat on the shoes until the vibration broke the ice free and they'd pop open.

I searched a bit but didn't find what I think I remember, a runaway train years ago in California. It got hauling butt downhill and couldn't make a slight corner, derailed, anybody remember that?

That was my thoughts too.

Gee, I wonder why?

It's not the same as trucks, and it's just not that simple.

Look - I don't care to explain in detail how the train brake system works. Just take my word for it, there isn't anything weird about this wreck. It's something that can happen due to certain mechanical problems or simple operator error. It's genesis is the archaic century old brake system, which is also one of the reasons why a guy can't just walk in off the street and be a freight locomotive engineer.