Currently, numerous law enforcement, Hazmat teams, and other agencies are responding to a Runaway train carrying 180 train cars heading 80mph with no one on it as the crew had to jump off.

It was first reported in Baker heading towards Barstow California but the train has crashed and derailed in Kelso California Police are confirming multiple train cars have been derailed and damaged.

Call Seagal...

Commiefornia- - - -WGAF?

Hard to contaminate water there!

At 80 mph?

Nothing to see here, move along.

Link?

My Thought as well

Better stop it in Kelso than Barstow.
The Rail Yard in Barstow is aHuge Hub and that would have shut down a good deal of product transports.

Maybe that was their pan all together.

So why did they have to jump off?

democrats paid them too

we're goin off the rails on a crazy train...

If gawd was going to give the world an enema...Kelso is where the hose would go in.

It's just a matter of time until we have a really big catastrophe involving a train. there used to be car limits in populated areas as well as roll by speed limits. Not anymore. They have relaxed the rules to allow the railroads to do just about anything they want.

Looks like there really is nothing much to see here. It was 55 cars and two locomotives carrying iron ore. Nothing toxic according to a Fox news affiliate in Barstow.

#winning

Bakersfield lost that title?

Well, Kelso isn't quite "Hell", but it's gotta be nearby, so maybe some music is appropriate?

Barkersfield is the Armpit of California.

I thought everyone knew that.

Arvin now, that might be a bit lower than an armpit.

I'm pretty confident they've still got speed limits imposed on them. They slow to 20mph or so through town here then it's back up to 60 or so.

Iron Ore Scattered all over the Barstow Rail junction would have been a real bad disaster to clean up.

It could have stopped a lot of Trains that run through that area.

Nothing to see here, folks. It's your government at work.

......... That was my first thought as well. Three pages into this thread and I still haven't heard an explanation for it.

They probably jumped long before it got up to that speed. Crews know what happens after they piss their air away on a hill.



Would you want to stay on when you know what's coming?

Or maybe the RR companies cutting costs?

There's a grade involved, right? If they haven't handled the air brakes correctly (or some other problem that depletes the air) they can lose any ability to control the speed on a grade. We refer to it as "pissing away your air". Once you let that happen, in many cases, jumping is your only option. Usually, it starts and gets critical before you get much over 25mph.

What about dynamic braking?

Saw it in 85

I was thinking the hose would go in DC......

Two units of DB on fifty something loads ain't enough on a hill. And that assumes that DBs are working - which is too often not the case.

Maybe tin foil here, but iron ore being non toxic would be a good way to tie up a bunch of shipping if a bunch of cars derailed.


Clyde

Going that fast it never would have made it past Afton Canyon. If it did I don't know how well the Afton Bridge would have held up. I've walked on that bridge searching the area for missing hikers.

Rail air brake systems were the basis of what the trucking industry uses today. When you run LOW on service system air, the triple valve on each car senses low air pressure in the 'train line' (supply) and uses the isolated emergency tank to make the brakes apply, independent from the operator...you can't move that car or train until air is restored. It is pretty fool proof...I'm having trouble believing 55 cars failed.

Driving that train, high on cocaine, Casey Jones you better watch your speed.

Trouble ahead, trouble behind and you know that notion just crossed my mind.

Wait a minute, thats where Buck, was from. He walked the streets.

NOPE, .Gov fer shur. Ringma'ams ol' lady got the scoop from Q. She connects dots for him.

Relative is a RR buff.

Says train was 21, 552 tons, 154 load, 8685 feet. He's usually got good info as he's got friends that work for that rail company

Sent a pic of the engine tipped over when I said I was glad the crew got off. As he put it, they'd likely not have survived.

I'll check and see if it's OK to post the pic.

Call Pot Hole Pete! The queer bastard was probably driving!!

Lotta folks have walked those streets.

I've even stopped for grub and gas while traveling and walked a little.

Not far though, as I didn't know the neighborhood.

Not how truck brakes work today.
The emergency circuit has air in tanks, that air actually keeps the brakes from
automatically applying.

In a low service air pressure situation, the valve pops and dumps air from the
emergency circuit. That allows hellishly strong springs to actuate the brakes.

What you describe is 50 years obsolete.
That system was air dependent. The default was no brakes.
It's why parked trucks used to roll away, why chocking truck wheels is still a thing.
Combined with engine designs then, It's why an unmanned truck could start and drive itself away. And why no smart driver ever parked a truck in gear.


The current defaults to locked brakes.

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.