Western Railroad Discussion > UP Officer's Special has a bit of trouble - FOLLOW UP.

Follow up to original post on 08/23. 
This morning I spoke with a senior Los Angeles Manager whom I actually trust and asked him what happened to the Officer's Special  to derail at Yuma Junction on 08/23. He was actually watching it on the yard camera at the time when it hit the ballast! 
The locomotive and a number of cars were going through the crossover at 7 MPH when the passenger cars derailed. This was because although they had a signal to advance, the signal download showed point flutter, or a situation where the points were pushed correctly for diverging movement but the pressure on the points was relaxing, applying, relaxing, applying, etc. This was happening while the whole train was moving through the crossover but at the particular moment of flutter where the points relaxed, one axle of the passenger car went straight instead of diverging, thus the derailment. Major damage according to the report. 

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Thanks for the update. As one who ran trains through this bit of railroad, I'm trying to 'locate' these cars
in relation to the LA River. Is it possible to show us a wider view? Thanks for your efforts.

Charlie 

Makes me wonder if something got behind the points that was working against the pressure the switch machine was trying to apply to the points leaving a gap.

Ted Curphey
Ontario, OR

cewherry Wrote:
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> Thanks for the update. As one who ran trains
> through this bit of railroad, I'm trying to
> 'locate' these cars
> in relation to the LA River. Is it possible to
> show us a wider view? Thanks for your efforts.
>
> Charlie 

Location is CP Yuma Junction. The tracks to the left are, from the top are Lead No. 2 to LAUPT via the truss bridge over the river and Mission Tower.
The middle track is the Balloon Track and the bottom track is the Fence Track.

I don't have a better picture view as this is a forward or a forward of a .....
In the background behind the backhoe is the East Bank Line tracks and directly behind those tracks is the LA River. You can actually see the concrete bank of the West side. The distant building is on the West side of the river. 

In dispatcher/interlocking operator lingo, the switch was pumping. If it is adjusted properly, the switch will show alternately in correspondence (the control in the office matches the position of the switch) and out of correspondence (the control in the office does not match the position of the switch) as the points move. The point detector (the circuit controller) detects normal, not normal or reverse, reverse. Pumping is usually the result of the switch needing to be tamped - it's moving as the train passes over it. When the switch warps becuse of improper ballast, the locked points can gap. Back when a dispatcher didn't have 758,000 miles of track to "manage," a pumping switch would be seen and promptly reported to the signal maintainer. The maintainer would ensure that the signal stuff was properly adjusted and not causing the indication, then tell the dispatcher to call the section if it wasn't a signal problem. In my experience, the MofW doesn't take that as seriously as the signal department, so they come fix it when they get to it. On one occasion, it had been so long and been happening with increasing frequency, that I shanghaid a switch tamper machine traveling over my territory to tamp the switch for me before completing the trip.

TAW

I bet some old time REAL UP M/W people are spinning in their graves.

UP found out the hard way just how much maintenance can be 
deferred at the altar of PSR.

On a wooden axle outfit that I worked on in the 21st century we had switches
losing their indications every day.  Especially right after the maintainer did his
monthly inspections.  The big problem was when one end of a crossover lost its
indication.  That would dump the signals on the other main.

Englewood Wrote:
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> I bet some old time REAL UP M/W people are
> spinning in their graves.
>
> UP found out the hard way just how much
> maintenance can be 
> deferred at the altar of PSR.
>
> On a wooden axle outfit that I worked on in the
> 21st century we had switches
> losing their indications every day.  Especially
> right after the maintainer did his
> monthly inspections.  The big problem was when
> one end of a crossover lost its
> indication.  That would dump the signals on the
> other main.

That's why crossovers got attention faster than single switches.

TAW

Englewood Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I bet some old time REAL UP M/W people are
> spinning in their graves.
>
> UP found out the hard way just how much
> maintenance can be 
> deferred at the altar of PSR.
>
> On a wooden axle outfit that I worked on in the
> 21st century we had switches
> losing their indications every day.  Especially
> right after the maintainer did his
> monthly inspections.  The big problem was when
> one end of a crossover lost its
> indication.  That would dump the signals on the
> other main.

The switch in question is maintained by Herzog under contract to Metrolink.

Posted from iPhone

rantoul Wrote:
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> Google Maps
>
>  

A real old Google map. Much of the trackage shown on that map has either been removed or changed.
For example the bridge across the river has been single track for awhile now.

On Rantoul's map above, Taylor Jct. is now Yuma Jct., where the derailment happened.  East Bank Jct. is now CP Main St.

mapboy

Thanks for the update.
IIRC the Metrolink Dispatcher controls all the switches (a tumble-down from the old Mission Tower agreement, where the Santa Fe operated the tower).
Metrolink maintained around the wye to the east, where he landed, only as far as the switch to the connecting track that turns back to the west and goes across the river to Union Station.  That was the SP's historic route of all Coast and San Joaquin trains.  I do not recall inspecting, ordering material, or budgeting for anything east of that.  But I have been gone 16 years now.
As to the point opening up, the rail braces could be loose, the groove for the base of the rail in the switch plate could be worn wide, the ties could be decayed, and/or the surface poor (needs tamping).
One fairly predictable failure mode for a switch is to have the heel joint be poorly supported so that when wheels depress the heel of the point the tip of the point rocks upward.  The spacing of the axles of the two coupled cars can unfortunately match up just wrong and a wheel encounters the point sticking up enough to get the flange on the wrong side of the point.
Best current practice is to not have a joint at the heel of the point, and just let the rail bend as the points are thrown, points are made several feet longer than the distance from the point to the heel (where the heel block is); far enough to conveniently place a field welding mold on the joint, eliminating one more joint....always a good thing.
Like a million other "picked point" derailments one is left asking how THIS car got into trouble at THIS SWITCH when so many others went by OK.

Point “flutter” ( first time in 36 years of RR’ing have I ever heard of it described this way) made me think of a poem:

“The peanut sat on the track
His heart all a flutter
Along came a train,
Wooo, wooooo
Peanut butter”

TractiveEffort Wrote:
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>
> The switch in question is maintained by Herzog
> under contract to Metrolink.
>
> Posted from iPhone

Hirelings at Herzog don't have a clue.

Union Pacific didn't want to pay their own M of W forces, so now they spend their savings on cleanup and repairs to their toy train.

Nothing like floating points to liven up the day. LOL!

Plowhandle Wrote:
-----------------------------------------
> Union Pacific didn't want to pay their own M of W
> forces, so now they spend their savings on cleanup
> and repairs to their toy train.

??? It is Metrolink’s maintenance responsibility and contract, not UP’s.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 09/02/22 09:32 by TractiveEffort.

It's probably close but I believe at that point UP is just a tenant.

Out 

when a special train like that incurs damage on somebody else's track, does the car owner or the track owner pay for repairs, etc?

Thanks

Lackawanna484 Wrote:
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> when a special train like that incurs damage on
> somebody else's track, does the car owner or the
> track owner pay for repairs, etc?
>
> Thanks

Yes the UP in this case would probably pay for all repairs. Based on RTB assessment maybe the reverse might be true. The issue of the points floating caused the derailment and Metro link might or will pay.
I know that I have run trains over this track for 50 years with pigs, auto part cars, trilevels, stacks, passenger trains etc. Plus never had a issue of curvature of the track causing a derailment. I knew had to be a switch point issue or broken frog or some other issue.

Posted from Android

Thanks for the background