South African Luxotrain Derailment

It appears that there was a serious derailment incident during April involving a "luxotrain" operation in South Africa.

http://www.luxury-insider.com/Current_A ... -Dead.aspx

Brief passage:

• A luxury, tourist train has crashed near the South African capital of Pretoria, leaving at least two people dead and injuring at least 25 more.
  
  Tragically, the two dead include a woman and her baby who was born just moments after the train derailed.
  
  The company that owns and operates the route, Rovos Rail, offers "unique train safaris" on restored antique trains. The unfortunate one in question was making its way from Cape Town.

another link .
http://timelinetranscription.blogspot.c ... rific.html

they sure piled them up , for what appears to be a low speed crash .

More information:

The regulator's initial finding stated that the train's handbrake system had not been activated when it was waiting to be coupled to a locomotive that would take it to Capital Park station in Pretoria. The train rolled backwards and eventually derailed on April 21, leaving three people dead

Source:
http://www.thestar.co.za/?fArticleId=5484130

Looks like it. No locomotive is showing at the wreck site and that train was moving fast at the time of the derailment (supported by car's final position and witness testimony). I'm surprised that a crew member wasn't able to use a hand brake to slow or stop the cars. Inoperable or perhaps few crew members on board ? Freak accident.

Handbrakes are very good at holding equipment in place (well, kinda ... has to be a pretty shallow slope) ... Handbrakes are NOT very good at stopping rolling equipment.

Most handbrakes apply against only 1 axle, or at most, 1 truck.

That's just not going to stop that amount of mass when it's on the move.

A better question is - what was the status of the trainline brake (air brake) while this was going on?

If the airline was left pressurized (even with brakes applied), an emergency braking application should have been possible from inside the railcars.

If left nonpressurized, the railcars should have been left with emergency brakes applied and shouldn't have gone anywhere.

(this is, of course, presuming South African rail uses a similar braking system to that used here in the US)

Setting all that aside, where were the rules? As an example, our rulebook requires us to 1) set a handbrake (or handbrakes) and 2) blow the air when we are leaving standing passenger rail equipment behind during a switching move.

It also does not allow us to do switching on equipment w/passengers aboard.

I wonder what their rules say ....

- litz

I know some South African equipment is still vacuum braked, not sure about these cars.

i have a dvd on the rovos rail operation , all the rolling stock is older refurbished carriages . Can't remember any details re the brakes .

Re , switching with passengers onboard , surely that is done at Albany and Spokane , at least 2 locatiob in the usa i can think of . Also , change from electric to diesel at Washington .

David Benton wrote:i have a dvd on the rovos rail operation , all the rolling stock is older refurbished carriages . Can't remember any details re the brakes .

Re , switching with passengers onboard , surely that is done at Albany and Spokane , at least 2 locatiob in the usa i can think of . Also , change from electric to diesel at Washington .

I have a VHS of that promotion. I find the oleagenous style of the commentary rather hard to take, and the video of the trains running looks fake (switches from steam to diesel unannounced).

The Rovos Rail coaches are vacuum braked, as is almost all passenger stock in South Africa. The train ran away while the motive power was being changed, from electric to steam, so there was no locomotive on the train. Not sure what the crash speed was, but it's about 10 km downhill all the way from Centurion Station (where the train ran away) to Pretoria, where it derailed, so it was going fairly fast.

I'm told the crash investigation report should be out very soon. It appears that handbrakes were not applied when the electric loco uncoupled.

There's quite a lot of discussion about the crash, right from the beginning, on the South African Friends of the Rail Forum at http://www.friendsoftherail.com/phpBB2/ ... 109&t=6769

Cheers!
John

David Benton wrote:switching with passengers onboard , surely that is done at Albany and Spokane , at least 2 locatiob in the usa i can think of . Also , change from electric to diesel at Washington .

Right ... many commuter railroads do indeed switch w/passengers aboard. Our railroad, however, does not permit that. Just different rules.

(In truth, we shouldn't ever need to ... we go 13 miles ... and we're the only thing on the track ...)

As for this accident ... I tried counting the number of rules in our rulebook broken if what we suspect happened, happened ... I ran out of fingers.

I suspect if I'd kept going, I'd run out of toes, too.

Just amazing. It's like steaming into an iceberg.

- litz

I was meaning that Amtrak performs switching operations with passengers onboard in a few locations , so it must be permitted in the USA .

David Benton wrote:I was meaning that Amtrak performs switching operations with passengers onboard in a few locations , so it must be permitted in the USA .

It happens in Britasin, too. Many trains of EMUs are made up of several units which can join together. For example from Victoria to Brighton the trains often split into at least three parts at Haywards Heath. And going north three parts come together.

Hallo my name is ....well everybody calls me Smitie and I work for Transnet in Pretoria in the Safety Department, I am a trained incident investigator for the company with 30 year service
On the day in question I was called out to do the investigation for the incident I was called out to assist in the investigation, I did and from what I saw there was more than one cause for the incident, all parties must share the blame on the day I did some video and you can see for yourself at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJHV76EAk_M

smitcj1 wrote:Hallo my name is ....well everybody calls me Smitie and I work for Transnet in Pretoria in the Safety Department, I am a trained incident investigator for the company with 30 year service
On the day in question I was called out to do the investigation for the incident I was called out to assist in the investigation, I did and from what I saw there was more than one cause for the incident, all parties must share the blame on the day I did some video and you can see for yourself at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJHV76EAk_M

Was that the conclusion that your incident investigation came to, that "all parties must share the blame" ? How much did that investigation cost the company ?

3rdrail wrote:

smitcj1 wrote:Hallo my name is ....well everybody calls me Smitie and I work for Transnet in Pretoria in the Safety Department, I am a trained incident investigator for the company with 30 year service
On the day in question I was called out to do the investigation for the incident I was called out to assist in the investigation, I did and from what I saw there was more than one cause for the incident, all parties must share the blame on the day I did some video and you can see for yourself at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJHV76EAk_M

Was that the conclusion that your incident investigation came to, that "all parties must share the blame" ? How much did that investigation cost the company ?

This is one of the incidents that will spend year in court, there is no official report out at moment but as you know it can take years for that to happen...even in a first world country