Canadian Railroads > Sarnia tunnel news bit

Doesn't have much info, suggested a broken hose bag as derailment cause.
Doug
https://blackburnnews.com/sarnia/sarnia-news/2019/07/12/air-hose-failure-suspected-cause-tunnel-derailment/

Broken hose bag???  Sounds mildly offensive!!!

So, according to the article, a broken air hose forced the front part of the train into emergency, but because the train was in a tunnel, the DPU (and EOT) had no radio communication with the front part of the train, so the DPU kept pushing.

Is there no in-tunnel leaky-wave antenna repeater system to keep the communications links alive?

Ray

hoggerdoug Wrote:
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> Doesn't have much info, suggested a broken hose bag as derailment cause.
> Doug

Interesting. A day or two after they opened the Tunnel for normal traffic I was talking with a Gentleman that was near the west end of the Tunnel, the Port Huron side. He and another CN Employee were on stand-by "In case something happened."
One thing he did mention to me was that there is still something "not working"  with the radio repeaters inside the tunnel.

Last week there were a bunch of photographs showing the inside of the tunnel that were posted here on Trainorders. They then were removed, gone. Hoggerdoug made a comment that maybe they shouldn't have been here and that maybe the guy that posted them..blah blah blah .....

Yes, that seems to be the case. Now that the Tunnel has been repaired and traffic is running fairly normal, it seems CN Officials can now concentrate on gathering evidence against any CN Employees that "did" anything during the clean-up that they "shouldn't have" done.

I know from talking with a few people that were down there during that time that "EVERYBODY" down there had a cellphone with a camera and they all were taking photographs, and video, of the clean-up work.

There were hundreds of photographs, and videos, taken by hundreds of different people during the clean-up. There were a few photographs taken by some Harsco Rail Employees, the ones here, that showed up on a Harsco Rail Website that said this:
Our NTC working in the Canadian National Railroads St. Clair tunnel. The crew is working hard to assist with the repairs to the track which were damaged in a derailment last week.


Ron







 

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hoggerdoug Wrote:
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> Doesn't have much info, suggested a broken hose bag...

Leave my broken hosebag out of this, will ya'? ;-)

Something to point out to non rails. When the air goes the DP goes. So repeaters aren't an issue stopping the train.  UNLESS!! the engines are set up to push for 30sec after an Emergency application. Eastern roads did this. Learned it from a DRGW mechinist at Burnham. When the "new" GP40s showed up they had to rework a few things. This was one of them.
SO, I doubt the radio repeaters are part of this problem.

I haven't heard of any new information about what may or may not have caused the derailment. On a CN GTW DTI DTSL Employees and Relatives Facebook Page we are still seeing comments about the derailment, the cause and the cost, and it's about 50 - 50 whether a broken air hose could be the cause. I did not read the entire TSB Article where they said it was a broken air hose.

Seems to be a lot of speculation on whether or not a broken air hose would only put the portion of the train ahead of the DPU into emergency.

Only time will tell I guess.

I do know that the Radio Repeaters within the Tunnel have not worked correctly for a long time. That was a well known detail about the Tunnel. Everybody in the Port Huron, Michigan Terminal, and the Sarnia, Ontario Terminal knew that they were not working correctly. And, the second night after the Tunnel was re-opened, I had a conversation with a Gentleman that told me that the Repeaters were STILL not working correctly.

Also, there is something going on with the CN 8832, the DPU Locomotive. I think it was pulled out of the Tunnel on the Monday after the derailment, on the Sarnia end. I heard at the time that the only damage that was obvious was the drawbar ripped out of the front, and it was said the hand brakes had been torn off. I don't know how they moved it. If they were able to replace the front drawbar so it could be moved in a train, instead of as a special move. It was seen in Kirk Yard on July 8th.

Ron