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| Re: PHOTOS: MNR Derailment (1261611) | |||
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Re: PHOTOS: MNR Derailment |
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Posted by 600vdc on Sun Dec 1 21:35:53 2013, in response to PHOTOS: MNR Derailment, posted by Train Man Paul : Metro-North's Best Conductor FOR ALL 3 LINES!!! on Sun Dec 1 08:56:20 2013. Seeing the accident videos today sent shudders down my spine. When I lived in Croton and commuted into the city daily on the Hudson Line, I got used to knowing when the train operators would begin breaking for the Spuyten Duyvil curve, normally just after passing Riverdale station. Every once in a great while the t/o would not begin braking as normal, but would wait and then apply the brakes a bit later and at a harder rate. When that would happen there was always that short period of several seconds before the brakes were applied that the "something's wrong" feeling came over me. I hadn't thought about that in years...until today when I saw the train off the tracks.My first thought was he hit the curve too fast. (Operator error or equipment failure???) My second thought was to question if the accident was made worse because the train was being pushed rather than pulled. It would seem technically logical that, if the loco was the last vehicle to leave the track and was still under power, it may have conceivably kept pushing - forcing the cars in front of it further onto the ground. If the train had been pulled, it seems that power would have been lost sooner, lessening the impact. The other question I had was, are the Gennies on diesel power or third rail power at that point? When I was commuting with an earlier generation of locos, including FL9s, they would not always switch to third rail power until the train got below 125th Street (that is, if they switched at all). I seem to remember that the FL9s did not like running on third rail power, even after their rebuilds, from what a couple of engineers told me; and that they wouldn't even bother to switch from diesel power. |
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