Philadelphia Train Derailment
 

Hope none of you or your families were on that train.

Just heard preliminary report indicating the train was traveling at 100MPH in a 50MPH zone. :mad:

Rail travel in the good old USA.

Back in June 2012, 5 of us took the TGV from Paris to Nice. It was delightful. No airport hassles, comfortable, fast, quiet, and scenic. And at many points during the ride at least 2 or 3 of us looked at each other, shaking our heads, that somehow the French can have this and we can't. Just another reminder of how screwed up this country has become.

American passenger rail sucks, but American freight rail is the envy of the world. Given the size of our country, this is probably as it should be.

http://www.economist.com/node/166361...n/tw/te/rss/pe

Just say No! :rolleyes:



Carl

nice post

I had no clue.

(I felt like Whelly :D)

Yep, great article. Too bad we aren't talking about private jets here.


Carl

It'll all boil down to cost and convenience. Most Americans I suspect would rather drive or fly than take a train, even a high speed version. Gas is still relatively inexpensive and airfares are still pretty decent.

In Countries with high speed rail, gas is taxed at the pump and passenger rail is in turn subsidized not only for initial construction but also ongoing operation. Elsewhere in the world, high speed rail lines often barely break even or are money losers.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...021605977.html

Given the US's geography, preponderance of wide open spaces and limited areas of population density, high speed rail lines would have limited application in this country anyway.

I believe that this Amtrak train had just under 300 people on board, just about what an average wide body jet can carry. So in terms of efficiency, airplanes are far more efficient and economical mode of transportation compared to trains. But what about accessibility to people living in small towns even within in a high traffic corridor? Greyhound?

Wonder how much we subsidize the airlines with TSA, airport construction and maintenance, air traffic control, emergency services and other infrastructure investments.

We do subsidize both airlines and trucking. Who builds the airports? Who builds the roads? But do we help freight railroads - not bloody likely. If you have never gone overnight by rail first class then you have missed out - rail passengers are quite civilized unlike airplane passengers. I swear airport boarding ramps are time machines - put a reasonably civilized human in the top end and out comes a Neanderthal at the bottom.:rolleyes:

I have been going back and for from Portland to the Bay Area via Amtrak/Coach Starlight forl fifteen years. When our daughter was going to school in Boulder, CO. took the Zephyr a few times to Denver. Both these trains have killer scenery that I will miss if I am the driver.

We went from Glenwood MD to Glenwood Springs CO on Amtrak in a bedroom first class the scenery as you say was fantastic and the food simply delicious. The reason was because the flight left BWI at 6:30 AM and it was during the time when they wanted you at the airport 2 hours before flight time.

One wonders why trains only have a single driver/engineer? All commercial flights have a pilot, co-pilot and sometimes even an engineer in the cockpit. What if the driver needs to use the bathroom, does he stop the train? They need to get that idiot Mica off the transportation committee.

There is tremendous passenger traffic in the NE corridor between Boston and Washington. Amtrack has 80% of it, airlines have 20%. The corridor is Amtrack's cash machine, if it was all there was to Amtrack, they would be rolling in money.

Efficency? Operational efficiency varies depending on how full the vehicles are, how many stops, and all sorts of things. But just comparing basic fuel efficiency, looks like trains get maybe 1.1 miles per gallon, while a 747 gets something like a third of that.

(numbers gleaned from wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_...transportation )

Last month I took Amtrak between DC and Raleigh and the train was full in both directions but ran close 2 hours late either way on around a 6 hour trip. This was caused mainly by right of way issues rather than Amtrak's inefficiency.

Because Amtrak only owns track from DC to Boston where the Accela runs*. So as beggars on CTX, BNSF, and other lines tracks they take second place behind freight traffic. We got bumped onto sidings a few times on our trip out west. The Europeans think we are nuts.

*Excellent track most of it being steel&concrete ties and welded rail. BNSF is doing a lot of that as well.

:lurk: Whoops, guess there's no smilies here.

Sad to say, that train had no business running 100mph, and having done that in just over 11 minutes from its last stop. Engineer has got plenty to explain, yet has a very convenient "no recollection" of anything about the trip.

Wonder if they have video cams inside the engineer cabin area?

I know we are. :)

BTW, putting citizens after freight is American Fascism in action.

They thought about that but did not do it. However why just one man at the controls? And they used to have Dead Man throttles, take your hand off and the throttle shuts down.

The problem is more likely that he kept his hand on the throttle while nodding out.

^^^That could be because the Black Box says a minute before the crash it sped up from 70 to over 100.

While it was quickly approaching a curve with 50mph speed limit. I heard the emergency brakes were applied right before the crash. That makes me wonder if the machine developed a mechanical problem and that was a last effort to slow it down before entering the curve. I don't know anything about trains, but am very curious to hear the final details. I mean if it's just one man operating it it would seem to me he would've had his hands full.. maybe to full to turn around and call out a ''Houston, we have a problem.'' I don't know what to say as what really happened until it all comes out.

Did anyone else catch this? I remember the first night on the news some witnesses said they saw an explosion and flash fire right before the crash. Then out of nowhere I never heard another word of that on the news again.

Now on the news they are saying the train may have been struck by something.

Could that be why the engineer doesn't remember anything? Wish stories would not even be aired until the case is pretty much solved as the stories vary before knowing for sure the facts.

That's why it isn't fair to assume he fell asleep. I heard that the controls required a different response from him every two seconds so it would be of my opinion that he'd have to be alert.

Here you go http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/...51a_story.html

Thanks, Bob. That's the most info I've been able to take in now that the twins finally went to sleep. Lord how well they are at fighting it.

I saw the head of the FRA on PBS Newshour last evening and she is thick as a brick. When asked why there were not two people at the controls she replied that they believed they might distract each other. Really? So why do we have two in the cockpit and sometimes three if there is a flight engineer?

That extra salary and benefits cuts into CEO and upper management bonus'

Not really imo, with Amtrak they are in a no win situation with continuing budget cuts. Believe the cut was $250 mil for this year.

Ridership is way up but the repugnicans want to kill Amtrak.

The 1% never take trains....

They just take everything else that is not nailed down.:)