Major derailment @ Spuyten Duyvil

railfan365 wrote:it takes at least 30 - 60 seconds for an alerter system to make a train stop.

Not to mention the amount of time prior to the alerter activating.

DutchRailnut wrote:with media quoting snozing, let it be known the engineer told investigators he zoned out, he did not say he was sleeping.
zoning out can be anything from having your thoughts on other than what your doing to having a brain fart.
ever watch someone do something, next it seems like he pauses for minute or so ??

I can testify to that being true. I was once running a train into GCT fully awake and well rested, yet somehow I did not see a stop signal I was coming up on (at only 10 MPH) and I did not react in time. I dumped it but still slid by the signal by 25 feet. I attribute it to a "brain fart".

Ken W2KB wrote:Cellphones are not strictly prohibited by the FRA rule. It is OK under the FRA rule for the conductor to utilize a railroad supplied electronic device (which includes cellphones) within the passenger cars for railroad business providing it does not interfere with the conductor's safety related duties. In the case of the suggested transmission of the alert to the conductor's railroad supplied device, that would appear to become if implemented a part of the conductor's safety duties. Engineer use of cellphones is much more restrictive.

As a volunteer conductor on the BR&W passenger service, I am required to carry a cellphone to be able to contact police/fire/rescue if needed and to contact or be contacted by the trainmaster if necessary for operations purposes. Not wishing to be found in violation of railroad or FRA rules with the resultant enforcement action, I am very familiar with the rules.

My question (apologies if it's a dumb one) is; at what point do the various comms start "stepping on each other" either on the device or in the Conductor's mind (overload in some way) especially during critical moments, or become routine enough to be ignored (the cry wolf effect)?

how did Conductor get in conversation ?

scoostraw wrote: Yes it is debatable. But there is a decent chance it would have prevented it.

Can you support that statement?

At 82 mph you are traveling 1 mile in approximately 45 seconds. Being it could upward of 2 minutes between an alerter being acknowledged and the time for the the next alerter activation and if not acknowledged, getting a penalty brake application a train could have traveled upwards of 1 1/2 miles.

Granted I'm am not an engineer and I do not know the braking points approaching the curve, I do know there is a good possibility of a penalty brake application may not have been enough to prevent this from happening. Even if I'm wrong with the time from the last alerter acknowledgement and a penalty brake application and it takes 60 seconds, your traveling well over a mile.

truck6018 wrote:

scoostraw wrote: Yes it is debatable. But there is a decent chance it would have prevented it.

Can you support that statement?

At 82 mph you are traveling 1 mile in approximately 45 seconds. Being it could upward of 2 minutes between an alerter being acknowledged and the time for the the next alerter activation and if not acknowledged, getting a penalty brake application a train could have traveled upwards of 1 1/2 miles.

Granted I'm am not an engineer and I do not know the braking points approaching the curve, I do know there is a good possibility of a penalty brake application may not have been enough to prevent this from happening. Even if I'm half wrong with the time from the last alerter acknowledgement and a penalty brake application your traveling well over a mile.

My experience was to make a 10 pound brake application passing Riverdale Station (MP 13.0) doing 70 (it was 75), then do another 5 to 10 pound reduction entering CP 12. If I waited just one minute without applying any brake, I'd be flying into CP 12 and have a very hard time getting my train under speed for the 30 MPH curve at MP 11.5.

DutchRailnut wrote:with media quoting snozing, let it be known the engineer told investigators he zoned out, he did not say he was sleeping.
zoning out can be anything from having your thoughts on other than what your doing to having a brain fart.
ever watch someone do something, next it seems like he pauses for minute or so ??

Exactly true, but even railroaders now are repeating that he was "sleeping" when he never actually said so and when there is no other way to know exactly what happened.

First the Huff Post said "sleeping" in a headline, then other media repeated it, then it made it's way into stories and now it's railroad gospel. But it has not been at all established that sleeping was involved. The Huff made it up. Keep that in mind when you read other stories about this incident, and in fact when you read other stories about anything.

WestfieldCommuter wrote:

Jersey_Mike wrote:Were any fatalities in the first car?

I think the large red streak on the side of the first car gives that one away.

I had read that the person who was killed in the first car was not ejected.

Looks like Positive Train Control is coming. At the last Metro-North/LIRR committee meetings in November the boards accepted a joint proposal by Bombardier Transportation and Siemens to provide a PTC system. The two boards have asked the MTA to approve the purchase.

[As lead agency the] LIRR requests MTA Board approval to authorize LIRR and MNR (the Railroads) to award contracts to a joint venture of Bombardier Transportation/Siemens Rail Automation (formerly known as Invensys Rail) in the not-to-exceed amount, inclusive of phases and options, of $218,015,977 for LIRR and $210,461,270 for MNR to design, integrate and furnish Positive Train Control ("PTC") systems. Board Meeting November 12, 2013 Link search keyword "PTC"

It's amazing how the MTA has kept its failures of PTC/CBTC out of the media in years past. The media is misinforming people that this is a simple plug and play installation, which it is not.

I'm not sure if anyone has heard this on the news yet, but Mr. Rockefeller has been suspended without pay. My thoughts go out to him and everyone who has been affected by this accident during this Holiday season.

RearOfSignal wrote:It's amazing how the MTA has kept its failures of PTC/CBTC out of the media in years past. The media is misinforming people that this is a simple plug and play installation, which it is not.

I agree and I think the FRA (and Congress) are equally guilty of misleading the public. They make it sound like the hardware is on-the-shelf and ready-to-install if only the railroads would spend the cash. My impression is, there is no proven system yet.

I think part of the problem is, none of the carriers want to go first. They want to see it installed and working someplace else before they sign on the dotted line. I can't say as I blame them.

DutchRailnut wrote:again there is plenty of trains with no alerters, M-3a's , NJT's arrows, GP35's
alerters don't guarantee a thing

Nope no guarantees ever for sure. It just seems weird (at best) to me to have different levels of protection in place depending on which direction the trainset is moving.

I would have thought this even outside of the context of the accident.

The two pieces of equipment were designed and built years apart. Dead man's pedals were the best they could do in the 80's, and by time the P32's came along, alerters were "in".

This is reportedly from the engineer's lawyer:

William Rockefeller told NTSB investigators that he essentially zoned out -- "an autopilot kind of thing" -- before Sunday’s crash in the Bronx, his lawyer, Jeffrey Chartier, told NBC News.

The engineer in the fatal Metro-North train derailment tearfully told the National Transportation Safety Board on Tuesday that he was in “a daze situation" when he took a curve at almost three times the speed limit, his lawyer said....The 15-year veteran was then "jolted by a feeling that something was wrong" and eased up on the throttle and hit the brakes -- but it was too late, the attorney said.

"Billy has been fully cooperative. He has not held anything back," Chartier said. "He is devastated. There are no words for how he is feeling. He was emotional today [at his NTSB interview], crying while he talked. He feels terribly for the families." Link

I have a lot of admiration for the way Rockefeller has been forthright, no excuses or alibis. I can't imagine what he's going through.