Eastern Railroad Discussion > 1993 Bayou Canot accident

For all you "youngsters" today is the 23 annaveristy of the
Amtrak wreck just north of Mobile,Ala...............
Eastbound Sunset Limited slam into the bank of Bayou Canot at appox 80 mph.............

JLSeale

That is sort of a bad analysis of what actually happened; you make it sound like it was the fault of the railroad or railroaders involved. Wrong. A barge, being pushed by a tug with a captain with few qualifications, got dissoriented in foggy/bad weather and hit the bridge knocking it out of line a few minutes before AMTK came; and there was no way the engineer on AMTK could avoid it. Read the NTSB reports. They may now be on-line. A really tragic accident for sure.

There's a rather interesting article in the Trains magazine special issue "Train Wrecks" from a few years back describing the incident... Firsthand account from one of the Amtrak staff members who was on board the train... A really scary article that provides good detail as to the events that led up to the accident and the cleanup/rescue attempts to save some of the passengers (not all of which, unfortunately, were successful, as the article describes)...

Below is a deep link to the NTSB Report on the accident that involved the Sunset Limited.

NTSB Executive Summary
On September 22, 1993, about 2:45 a.m., barges that were being pushed by the towboat MAUVILLA in dense fog struck and displaced the Big Bayou Canot railroad bridge near Mobile, Alabama. About 2:53 a.m., National Railroad Passenger Corporation (Amtrak) train 2, the Sunset Limited, en route from Los Angeles, California to Miami, Florida, with 220 persons on board, struck the displaced bridge and derailed. The three locomotive units, the baggage and dormitory cars, and two of the six passenger cars fell into the water. The fuel tanks on the locomotive units ruptured, and the locomotive units and the baggage and dormitory cars caught fire. Forty-two passengers and 5 crewmembers were killed; 103 passengers were injured. The towboat's four crewmembers were not injured.

ntsb.gov > investigations > accident reports >  NTSB Report RAR9401

* JB *
JB Mentzer

I don't want to try and insert any humor into this conversation about that horrible incident that night. But I remember afterwards....there were lawsuits filed because Amtrak didn't have Life Preservers on board the train in the event of a water landing.

Ron

Lets not forget the bridge was not secured either.   I always thought that was a little mentioned fact.  

The towing industry now has Radar certifications after that.  

> at appox 80 mph

NTSB said "about 72 mph". Timetable max was 70. 

sixaxlecentury Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Lets not forget the bridge was not secured either.
>   I always thought that was a little mentioned
> fact.  
>
> The towing industry now has Radar certifications
> after that.  

Can you expand on that?  Not sure how you go about securing a bridge from a collision like this.

No snark intended--I'm sincerely interested in what can and has been done.

I don't understand "secured", either. It was not a movable bridge and, like thousands of other fixed bridges, had no bridgetender on duty. Sadly the track circuit was not broken when the barges knocked the bridge sideways.

march_hare Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> sixaxlecentury Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Lets not forget the bridge was not secured
> either.
> >   I always thought that was a little mentioned
> > fact.  
> >
> > The towing industry now has Radar
> certifications
> > after that.  
>
> Can you expand on that?  Not sure how you go
> about securing a bridge from a collision like
> this.
>
> No snark intended--I'm sincerely interested in
> what can and has been done.

I believe it was designed to be a movable bridge but was never made completely movable or completely unmovable. It's likely though that damage to the girder structure would have been sufficient to knock the track out of line enough to cause a derailment.

Posted from iPhone

I've always wondered why 72-80 MPH if there was dense fog?
​Is there not rules regarding visibilty of track and signals? I'm guessing there must be signals on that CSX line or else that kind of speed with passengers seems strange.

Mike Bannon
St Catharines, ON



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/23/16 10:15 by algoma11.

> I've always wondered why 72-80 MPH if there was
> dense fog?
> ​Is there not rules regarding visibilty of track
> and signals? I'm guessing there must be signals on
> that CSX line or else that kind of speed with
> passengers seems strange.

An explanation of the whole picture:
US FRA rules allow 59 MPH maximum speed for passenger trains in NON signalled territory, 49 MPH max for freight trains.  79 MPH max for trains in signalled territory without some means of automatic train stop such as ATS or cab signals.

This is signalled territory, without cab signals, so depending upon the track class, 79 MPH would have been legal.

Fog does indeed make it hard to see the signals, and you may only be able to see them for a couple of car lengths before you pass them, but as long as they are visible at all, that is enough.  Now, if the head end crew feels they have mised one, they will immediately reduce speed to a crawl until they find the next one, because the one they missed could have been yellow, with the one they are crawling up to being red.

The territory between Sacramento and Bakersfield Ca. gets "Tule Fog" in the winter.  Normal freight train speed on the former SP was 50 mph, with two expedited trains allowed 70 mph.  Visibility at night was often less than 2 car lengths, and we all joked about "not being able to see what we were going to hit."  The little green spot whipped by, and you could relax for a minute and a half or so, then you were straining to see the next one.

The whole purpose of signals is to advise of conditions ahead, to allow stopping or slowing time.  Unfortunately the barge collision knocked the bridge 4 feet out of alignment, but did not break either of the rails, so the signal system still showed clear.  Many bridges with low clearance over highways have a soft lead wire attached to them so if they are hit by an over-height truck, it will turn the signals red.  Bridges over streams subject to flooding often have a high water detector installed on them.  Many of them  have a manual reset switch, so if a washout happens, and the water level goes down, the signal will stay red so a train doesn't run into a weakened bridge on a clear signal because the water level has gone down.

The Big Bayou Canot was not a navigable waterway, so the bridge had no lights for river traffic, and wasn't wired for collision protection.  As correctly mentioned above, the original installation of the bridge intended for that section to be a swing span, but it was never installed because it wasn't a navigable waterway.  The girders just weren't fastened to the piers as strong as they should have been, but I agree with the above post that it probably wouldn't have made much difference in a collision with six loaded barges.
G

unsecure is meant that the movable part of the bridge was basically floating on the 3 piers underneath it and not anchored in any way to either ends of the fixed bridge structure and the piers ... The Big Bayou Canot was an unnavigable waterway shutoff from boat traffic ... this incident of inept rules on river piloting at that time was SOMEWHAT and i use that term loosely equal to the drug rules of the railroads as in the Chase incident where major rules changes were implemented after both tragic accidents occurred ... the Movila tug was equipped with radar but the "RIVER PILOT", they guy tug captains rely on to get them through the river channels, didn't know how to read the radar screen ... there was a tug about a mle ahead of the Movila and the Movila pilot asked where he was and that tug pilot relayed back that he was right ahead of him on the main channel of the Mobile River ... the Mobile River curves right at 12 mile island and the Bayou Canot curves left ... the Movila pilot veered left when he should've went up the Mobile River and hit the pier but didn't know what he hit but hit it with hard enough of a jolt to wake up the sleeping tug capt out of bed ... a freight train had just passed over the bridge right before the bridge was hit and the Sunset was waiting on a siding for the freight to clear ... with the swing portion of the bridge unsecure, when the barge hit the pier and girder it knocked the track with the bridge girder out of alignement 48" so when the Sunset running on greens came roaring onto the bridge the lead unit hit the end of the bridge girder headon at speed with the engineer not even having a chance to make any brake applications 



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/23/16 15:25 by Out_Of_Service.

Even if the bridge had been more firmly connected to the piers, I doubt it could have absorbed such a heavy impact without enough of a rail kink to put a 70 mph train at grave risk. It's significant that although the body of the report does discuss the design of the bridge, it was not mentioned in the formal findings or in the probable cause statement (even as contributory). I suspect there are hundreds of railroad bridges in this country that would fail in a similar impact. 

At the time this line had searchlight signals that are good in foggy conditions, which are customary in that area.  

That pilot failed his licensing exam 7 times before finally passing it.  Couldn't use the radar.  Was hired as part of a program to make it easier to lure people into the industry (i.e. water down the standards.  Sure worked out swell, eh?)  Wasn't found criminally liable, never went to jail, right?  OTOH, didn't the barge companies abuse their employees with a 6 on 6 off 6 on 6 off, 84 hour a week schedule?  (Since the feds limited them to a max of working 12 hours per day, IIRC.)  Amazing how transportation companies abuse the regulations to insist on unsafe work schedules.

And nothing will change on the rails until there's another wreck that kills dozens.  FRA is always literally splitting the baby in two....

algoma11 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I've always wondered why 72-80 MPH if there was
> dense fog?
> ​Is there not rules regarding visibilty of track
> and signals?

I'm unsure whether or not that's true but I'm also aware of another similar deadly wreck early into 1999 in western Ohio on Conrail... A fast intermodal train moving through soup-thick early morning fog at fast speeds rear-ended a stopped train; the crew evidently never even knew they were supposed to stop... Photos of the incident showed the lead locomotive completely sheared off to just a bare warped frame... I remember hearing signal visibility was a key issue, particularly on the NYC gantry signals that stood 30 feet into the air, which made seeing the signals tricky when visibility in that fog was less than 20 feet...

Maybe someone who knows more about the Ohio incident can provide better detail, but there's been a few fog-related high-speed collisions in recent times...

There are 1.5 miles of straight track immediately south of Bayou Canot, but there are also three intermediate bridges on that stretch. By the time the engineer of a northbound clears the last of those intermediate bridges, he has 3600 feet until he reaches Bayou Canot. Suppose there's no fog and a full moon. If the bridge is already in the water, he will see it but the question is whether he can stop the 70 mph train before he reaches the bridge. If the bridge is out of alignment only a few inches -- still enough to derail the train at that speed -- or if it's a new moon or there's fog, the engineer doesn't stand a chance of stopping short. This is what track circuits are for. The awful thing is that the bridge moved laterally four feet and the track circuits still did not break.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/24/16 14:48 by ctillnc.

ctillnc Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> There are 1.5 miles of straight track immediately
> south of Bayou Canot, but there are also three
> intermediate bridges on that stretch. By the time
> the engineer of a northbound clears the last of
> those intermediate bridges, he has 3600 feet
> until he reaches Bayou Canot. Suppose there's no
> fog and a full moon. If the bridge is already in
> the water, he will see it but the question is
> whether he can stop the 70 mph train before he
> reaches the bridge. If the bridge is out of
> alignment only a few inches -- still enough to
> derail the train at that speed -- or if it's a new
> moon or there's fog, the engineer doesn't stand a
> chance of stopping short. This is what track
> circuits are for. The awful thing is that
> the bridge moved laterally four feet and the
> track circuits still did not break.

after this incident track sensors were integrated into the track circuit on all bridges along that line to put up a TOL (Track Occupancy Light) that would drop the signals to stop but that all depends when a bridge was hit ... 10 minutes prior might have enough time t catc ha red before the bridge ...i don't know the territory 

darkcloud Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> That pilot failed his licensing exam 7 times
> before finally passing it.  Couldn't use the
> radar.  Was hired as part of a program to make it
> easier to lure people into the industry (i.e.
> water down the standards.  Sure worked out swell,
> eh?)  Wasn't found criminally liable, never went
> to jail, right?  OTOH, didn't the barge companies
> abuse their employees with a 6 on 6 off 6 on 6
> off, 84 hour a week schedule?  (Since the feds
> limited them to a max of working 12 hours per day,
> IIRC.)  Amazing how transportation companies
> abuse the regulations to insist on unsafe work
> schedules.
>
> And nothing will change on the rails until there's
> another wreck that kills dozens.  FRA is always
> literally splitting the baby in two...


6/6 rotation was and still is the industry standard. And its pretty good. You know your hours and work twice. Dont forget everyone is living on the boat 2-3 weeks a shot.

Posted from Android