Passenger Trains > Autotrain Derailment

Has anyone heard what caused the AT derailment last week in Florida?  This happened on the stretch of track that CSX wants Amtrak to take owership of.  Was it a result of bad track?

First time I heard about it was from Danny Harmon's new video this morning. 

-Dean

Speculation from a retired CR/NS exec who lives in Florida: Hot day that day, might have been an unreported sun kink. 
CSX is known for having more than the other 4 US class ones put together. Cheapo on ballast depth?

Pretty sure the derailment occured on state owned track, not CSX. 

PRR1361 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Speculation from a retired CR/NS exec who lives in
> Florida: Hot day that day, might have been an
> unreported sun kink. 
> CSX is known for having more than the other 4 US
> class ones put together. Cheapo on ballast depth?

It wasn't CSX trackage.

What I first heard was pertaining to track problem, nothing more specific.

89 vehicles were in the derailed auto racks and all will be total losses.  300 passengers were traveling along with those vehicles.  Amtrak arranged for 100 rental cars to be provided to affected passengers within two hours of the train's (late) arrival in Lorton VA. 

An emergency response team, seventeen employees, went to the wreck site to recover personal effects from the vehicles.

I live in Central Florida and I don't believe it was that hot that day.  I think the max was 89 that afternoon which isn't that hot for Florida and it's not humid yet.  It didn't seem like sun-kink conditions but who knows.

GenePoon Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> What I first heard was pertaining to track
> problem, nothing more specific.
>
> 89 vehicles were in the derailed auto racks and
> all will be total losses.  300 passengers were
> traveling along with those vehicles.  Amtrak
> arranged for 100 rental cars to be provided to
> affected passengers within two hours of the
> train's (late) arrival in Lorton VA. 
>
> An emergency response team, seventeen employees,
> went to the wreck site to recover personal effects
> from the vehicles.

Has there been a previous Auto Train derailment with that many personal autos affected?  That's a really big story.  Certainly it is just 'property' and not injuries/deaths, but cars are very personal to people and to have this happen is quite a shock to many.  

FloridaTrainGuy Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I live in Central Florida and I don't believe it
> was that hot that day.  I think the max was 89
> that afternoon which isn't that hot for Florida
> and it's not humid yet.  It didn't seem like
> sun-kink conditions but who knows.

Kinking can be a matter of the spread of overnight to hottest daylight temperatures....a wide swing can affect the rails just as much as absolute hotness...and if the rail was wanting to run you would need only the extra heat added by running a train over the rail....been there done that a couple times....it it buckles behind you, you might never know....if it buckles under you....you might get on the ground. 
 

How does welded rail hold up vs. jointed rail with heat kinks?

Posted from Android

cabsignaldrop Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> How does welded rail hold up vs. jointed rail with
> heat kinks?
>
> Posted from Android

Kinks are cause by the expansion of the steel.  Jointed rail has "slack" at every joint, so heat kinking is pretty much a non-issue.

Mary McPherson
Dongola, IL
Diverging Clear Productions

Very interesting, I've wondered about this often. So new and improved is certainly not necessarily safer, just less expensive if not too many accidents. 

Track can kink under a moving train. Years ago when I was working as a freight conductor we had a train of about 120 empty coal hoppers moving about 25 mph. I was in the caboose at the rear of the train and started to hear an approaching banging noise, the flagman and I both were looking forward and saw the cars moving through a sharp curve, when the caboose rolled through the "curve" we were thrown to one side. Luckily we didn't derail. Looking at the track from the rear of the caboose we could see where the track had kinked to one side of the road bed. The engineer said they didn't see any type of kink in the track. Yes, we reported it and it caused traffic to back up behind us until the track guys could take care of it. This happened in the early 1980s on the Chessie System.
CR

What he said, and he knows.  As soon as I started reading this thread, I was like "Who gives a damn what the high was that day, what was the low?"

I'm glad all we're dealing with here is personal effects and vehicles, not casualties.



engineerinvirginia Wrote:

> Kinking can be a matter of the spread of overnight
> to hottest daylight temperatures....a wide swing
> can affect the rails just as much as absolute
> hotness...and if the rail was wanting to run you
> would need only the extra heat added by running a
> train over the rail....been there done that a
> couple times....it it buckles behind you, you
> might never know....if it buckles under you....you
> might get on the ground. 
>  

An almost guaranteed way to have a sunkink is to make a repair in cold weather and then forget to come back before spring temperature increases expand the rail.
Say on a 35 degree night they had a broken rail and cut in a piece to replace it.  Now the neutral temperature of that piece of track is 35 degrees.
On a warm day, say 85 degrees, with no wind, the rail can be 30+ degrees hotter than the air so now it is at a rail temperature of 115 degrees, 80 degrees warmer than the neutral temperature.
Add to that some other conditions such as insufficient rail anchors, rail moving with the train to a fixed point, and maybe loose or missing spikes, and the track may buckle.
The proper maintenance procedure is to go back to wherever rails were repaired in the winter and de-stress them by cutting out a few inches of rail and welding them together.
The science is easy, the management is challenging.

Yes, I believe the track northward from Orlando to the DeLand ATK station is now owned by the Florida Dept of Transportation for the SunRail project.  SunRail stations (and the track(s) were not built or refurbished north of DeBary, about 15 miles south of DeLand, because their county pulled out their funding.  So, if the wreck occurred south of DeLand, it was FDOT track, and north of Deland CSX.

It was south of Deland.  Not by much, but south.  North of Deland is to become Amtrak track.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/06/20 21:03 by GenePoon.

Same can be said with broken rail in colder climates!

Posted from Android

Here is quick video of a sun kink / thermal buckle that I encountered summer of 2007on the BC Rail Lillooet sub. Video was taken by member of the on board staff of the Rocky Mountaineer. View is looking south and we had were travelling north when I spotted this kink. I was in dynamic brake at the time, went full DB and full service brake application, a rapid deceleration. Some how we never derailed and the last car of the 6 car Rocky Mountaineer train stopped just past the kink. A few passengers shaken but no injuries.
Doug

You must be a registered subscriber to watch videos. Join Today!

Electroliner Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Yes, I believe the track northward from Orlando to
> the DeLand ATK station is now owned by the Florida
> Dept of Transportation for the SunRail project. 
> SunRail stations (and the track(s) were not built
> or refurbished north of DeBary, about 15 miles
> south of DeLand, because their county pulled out
> their funding.  So, if the wreck occurred south
> of DeLand, it was FDOT track, and north of Deland
> CSX.

Who maintains the track?