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| Re: How Railroad Could Have Avoided / Ameliorated Fiery Crash (1338204) | |||
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Re: How Railroad Could Have Avoided / Ameliorated Fiery Crash |
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Posted by ElectricTraction on Thu Feb 5 21:56:26 2015, in response to How Railroad Could Have Avoided / Ameliorated Fiery Crash, posted by SLRT on Thu Feb 5 09:14:04 2015. One other aspect that will be investigated is whether the under-running third rail contributed to this more than over-running third rail would have. I've also seen a lot of discussion about third rail and grade crossings. It's more than just that. Any line that has the traffic levels to have electrified dual track shouldn't have crossings on it in the first place. When you're talking about 60-100+ trains a day, there just shouldn't be crossings, especially in a populated area, especially with MU trains, especially with third rail.1. This is the correct solution. Lines like this shouldn't have grade crossings. Some could be closed, some could be bridged, and others would need alternate access provided in one way or another. This one would also get grade separated from the Taconic Parkway, which would probably save more lives than the rail separation. It would be a much tougher situation on LIRR, where there are a gazillion crossings. 2. Not going to happen. There are all sorts of clearance issues, not to mention hundreds of million of dollars of equipment that would have to be replaced after you spend tens or hundreds of millions on the wire. And the NIMBYs with the visual impact. 3, 4, and 5. Totally impractical. MN is already having schedule and speed issues and speed restrictions. This type of thing would cause massive slowdowns in service. 6. Interesting idea, but it would be hard to make foolproof, and I can imagine various failure modes for it no matter what you do. I think the NTSB may take action, banning the lead car from being occupied while a train operates above restricted speed over a grade crossing with third rail. Railroads would have a few options of how to comply with this: 1. Grade separate crossings. Not going to happen tomorrow, or next year. It would take several years even if the funding were all available today. Some may just able to be closed completely. 2. Go through crossings at restricted speed. Not going to work, as there are crossings that aren't near stations. 3. Put extra cars on the train. May or may not be practical, may run out of siding space, available power, etc. Also, they may not have that many extra cars, and it would cost a lot over time. 4. For MN on the Harlem, make everyone on the lead car get off at WP/NWP outbound before continuing into grade crossing territory, and don't load it until WP/NWP inbound. LIRR would be screwed if something like this applied to them, as they already have worse capacity issues, and way more grade crossings. |
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