Terrible AMTRAK crash in Wash state

I'll tell you it totally burned the N-S traffic in WA state too. since we are earthquake country I hope that people see that this small infrastructure disruption at one point on one road (setting aside the human tragedy for a moment) essentially closed N-S travel in the state for more than 24 hours.

If we have an earthquake and even some percentage of bridges are closed due to actual failure or precautions, flying will be the only way to travel.

I'm trying to get the spousal unit to let us get a plane to keep nearby at RNT so we have a way out.
 
MIFlyer said:
I'll tell you it totally burned the N-S traffic in WA state too.
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That's a tough place to lose the highway -- in a bottleneck between Puget Sound and the huge Joint Base Lewis McChord. No good options for alternate routes -- only two-lane secondary roads way out in the sticks.

That's why I liked taking the train to Seattle -- avoid the daily traffic jam on I-5 all the way from DuPont to Seattle.

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Pilawt said:
That's a tough place to lose the highway -- in a bottleneck between Puget Sound and the huge Joint Base Lewis McChord. No good options for alternate routes -- only two-lane secondary roads way out in the sticks.

That's why I liked taking the train to Seattle -- avoid the daily traffic jam on I-5 all the way from DuPont to Seattle.

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in this case, train would be a worse option, or are they routing around it now via the old coastal route?
 
There's a little better explanation in this video:
(Skip ahead to 7:00)

The train pivots in a way that leaves the CG still centered over the track.
 
Only difference between 8 and 3 are a couple of curves. But I guess the driver wasn't good with curves.

Too soon?
 
RJM62 said:
I find it hard to understand why it's so costly. It seems to me that it could have been done with a few tweaks to existing GPS receiver technology. I do understand that it also detects obstructions on the track, but that feature's probably useless anyway. By the time an obstruction is in the field of view, it's likely going to be too late to stop the train anyway.

Rich
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A simple speed governor would be easy enough to implement with a GPS and a map. PTC goes beyond that and includes monitoring of switch positions and signals ahead as well as the position of other trains. When the system was designed, for some reasons the railroads decided against using a satlink for the communications part and went with a system of wayside towers to transmit the data to the PTC on board units. This was hung up for years because the FCC wouldnt give out the required licenses for the new frequencies and the thousands of wayside towers this required. Only after congress put their legislative boot up the FCCs buerocratic rectum things started to move a couple of years ago. PTC makes NextGen look like a stroke of genious.
 
flyingron said:
There's a little better explanation in this video:
(Skip ahead to 7:00)

The train pivots in a way that leaves the CG still centered over the track.
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Love the old industrial videos.

The Talgo is just a passive system to increase passenger comfort in turns. It doesn't improve the ability of the train itself to make a turn at a higher speed.

The Italian 'Pendolino' trains with their active tilting system otoh move the CG inward in a turn. This requires gyroscopes g-sensors and hydraulics. This type of train used in a couple of european countries can actually maintain speeds about 35% higher than a conventional trainset on the same track radii. They are powered units with everything including the powerheads tilting inwards on the hydraulically controlled bogeys. That is if the hydraulics work. The italian technology had some teething problems and whenever the mechanism failed, the cars would tilt outwards, espresso cups got spilled and the train was limited to lower than normal speeds.
 
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weilke said:
The Talgo is just a passive system to increase passenger comfort in turns. It doesn't improve the ability of the train itself to make a turn at a higher speed.
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Though as noted above, Cascades Talgos are allowed up to 79 mph on trackage where all other passenger equiment is limited to 70.
 
Pilawt said:
Though as noted above, Cascades Talgos are allowed up to 79 mph on trackage where all other passenger equiment is limited to 70.
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Right, but that is not because it increases the 'roadkeeping' of the train (the locomotives don't tilt at all). It is because at 80 pax would bowl over in the aisles and soup would spill sideways out of the bowls in the bistro car.
 
RJM62 said:
I find it hard to understand why it's so costly. It seems to me that it could have been done with a few tweaks to existing GPS receiver technology. I do understand that it also detects obstructions on the track, but that feature's probably useless anyway. By the time an obstruction is in the field of view, it's likely going to be too late to stop the train anyway.

Rich
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For the same reason that certified avionics are so costly. The Federal DoT (Federal Rail Administration is the part of DoT that handles this) requires certification of the system.

GPS would be the obvious solution, but it doesn't work in tunnels or areas where the signal is obstructed.

Here's an example: the Washington Metro System has a fully automatic control system and alerting system. It uses loops on portions of the track and sensors in the cabs to detect the location and speed of the train & takes input from the control center to control the train. It's 1960's technology, but it's certified for the system. It's capable of smooth operation of the train, precise stopping at the stations, and collision avoidance.

In 2009 (8 years ago) there was a crash between 2 Red Line trains because of a failure in the automatic control system. Basically, it failed to sense a stopped train and sent the next one plowing into the stopped one. 8 deaths, 80 injuries. Since then, the automatic train control system has been disabled and the trains have been run manually. Yeah, Metro is poorly managed and lacks funds, but this was a critical part of the safety system. It tells me that they didn't trust it after the crash. Within the last year they have turned on a small part of the ATC system on one line of the system - the rest remains off. That's despite a year-plus long track rehabilitation project.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/June_2009_Washington_Metro_train_collision

As I understand it, the PTC system uses a variety of sensors to detect things like train speeds and impending collisions. It uses radio data sensors and track block sensors to gather data. There are a couple of different systems being installed, so I'd expect someone like Amtrak to have to accommodate multiple systems. I don't know all the details of the systems, but I do know that being a safety system certain certifications are required. It's not cheap.

How much has been spent on ADSB infrastructure for aircraft? And how many planes still don't have it implemented?
 
I'd venture a guess that the Engineer was not familiar with the new route. That point, along with the PTC failure is what the NTSB will list in their final report. It'll take the NTSB 2 years to come to the same conclusion.
 
Brad Smith said:
I'd venture a guess that the Engineer was not familiar with the new route. That point, along with the PTC failure is what the NTSB will list in their final report. It'll take the NTSB 2 years to come to the same conclusion.
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While we are spitballing, here are swags #1 through #3:

- The opening date of that route was carved in stone as Dec 18th 2017 when WSDOT received the stimulus funding to build it in 2009. The stimulus funding kicked off a requirement for a full environmental impact statement for the project (as opposed to doing it under a waiver as prior to that it was just a 'refurbishment' of an existing track). The EAS process and the nimby litigation from the adjacent towns ate many years of the timeline and a project that was sold as 'shovel ready' in 2009 didn't get in gear until 2015. This pushed back completion against the funding deadline. The investigation will find that in an effort to meet the in-service deadline, shortcuts were taken in the certification of the engineers.

- The engineer did receive the proper training but on short notice, a trainee conductor was sent with him on day #1 of the new route. Trainee asked him something about the new section of track they were on, he lost situational awareness and missed the braking point prior to the S-turn across I5.

- Somewhere in the planning for this project, a grizzled railroad design engineer told them 'you really shouldn't run this new 'high speed' train across that 80 year old trestle. Straighten out the curve, build a new bridge and allow the trains to approach Nisqually junction at whatever speed the junction is rated at'. He was over-ruled as the $30mil cost to change the alignment would have had to come from some project to stop global warming or cooling the polar bears or something.
 
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My wife said,"Reminds me of the Titanic!"

We drove right past the wreck two days ago. WOW! what a mess.
 
Pilawt said:
And more is starting to come to light ...
http://amp.kiro7.com/news/south-sou...to-point-a-finger-at-train-engineer/668115816
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Starting to look like spitball #1 wasn't too far off the mark:

weilke said:
- The opening date of that route was carved in stone as Dec 18th 2017 when WSDOT received the stimulus funding to build it in 2009. The stimulus funding kicked off a requirement for a full environmental impact statement for the project (as opposed to doing it under a waiver as prior to that it was just a 'refurbishment' of an existing track). The EAS process and the nimby litigation from the adjacent towns ate many years of the timeline and a project that was sold as 'shovel ready' in 2009 didn't get in gear until 2015. This pushed back completion against the funding deadline. The investigation will find that in an effort to meet the in-service deadline, shortcuts were taken in the certification of the engineers.
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weilke said:
Starting to look like spitball #1 wasn't too far off the mark:
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Yep. And the big, bad corporation (a government corporation at that) is going to be vilified when everyone that had a Ahmad in creating the delays and putting a hard stop on the funding have a hand in it. That includes state and local government, the nimbys, the government agency providing the funding, Amtrak, DoT, the regional rail authority, and more.
 
Some details told to me by someone with steam train experience are that all the training runs were at night and the accident happened during the day. That would raise havoc with situational awareness, as well.

Any way you look at it, this was bad. 3 people died, dozens were injured. Southbound I-5 was blocked from the time of the accident Monday morning until around 5 pm on Wednesday. It was a mess. And the passenger trains are back to the old, slow route. Freight and military loads are using the revamped rails.

I drove that section of highway daily for 19 years. If the Intel DuPont facility was still open and I was still working there I would have had the commute from hell getting home that Monday. After getting home I would have worked from home until the highway re-opened. Others wouldn't have had that option. The alternate routes were either backed up, taking hours to work your way through or were 65 miles longer, taking plenty of time. None of the alternate routes were multiple lane highways. The only highway failure that would have a similar effect in the area would be a failure of the freeway bridge over the Nisqually River at the Thurston County line. Of all the places, that really couldn't have been much worse.
 
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