I'm not talking about "we gotta get home to catch the kickoff", I'm talking about genuine (fictional) emergencies in which it would be advisable to make all due speed.
The last thing I want is to portray anyone getting away with rules-murder, but is there some leeway possible if, say, an engineer realizes there's a landslide about to hit his train, or he may be trapped by rising water if he doesn't get out of Dodge in a hurry? I'd imagine it would be common practice to do what seemed like the safest and most practical thing and take the suspension if that's what it came down to, but is there any stretch in the regulations for dire situations?

As always, all advice appreciated, all opinions considered, and there's a basket of rotten tomatoes to your right for your flinging pleasure.

--Becky

It sounds like you might be a fiction author looking for authentic examples of something planned in your narrative. As a fiction author myself (http://www.rcleonard.com) I would be glad to help, if I could.

I recall only one relevant incident, which occurred when I was a child in Michigan. A New York Central passenger train hit a gasoline truck that was proceeding over a grade crossing (the driver mistakenly thought another train that had just cleared the crossing had been the one activating the crossing signals). The engineer, though badly burned himself in the explosion, pulled the entire train through the flames before stopping to avoid injury to the passengers.

That doesn't exactly fit your question, because I don't think the engineer accelerated the train, he just kept it from stopping so soon. I have no knowledge of what regulations might have been applicable. My family knew this engineer previously, and saw him again a few years later after he had been forced to retire due to his injuries.

The FRA actually has some common sense, and will overlook things if they are absolutely necessary.

Example:

A train stops on single track due to a disabled train ahead. They are 2 miles from the siding and the nearest road crossing when they hit 12 hours on duty. The FRA has no issues for the crew of the train to operate the train up to the siding and the road crossing after 12 hours. They may not pat you on the back for it, but it's very unlikely they would fine the crew for making that move.

The two big things here are getting a train clear of the mainline and (the most important) getting a crew where is can safely change crews. If the crew operated over several crossings after 12 hours, the FRA would have an issue.

And, as a former conductor on a class 1, I can say that the above scenario may or may not have happened at one time or another.

Becky, I can recall a couple of incidents that may or may not quite help out, but here goes anyway. . .

A fairly well-known incident was on the famous Virginia & Truckee, in the 19th century. A passenger train was rolling along, and was approaching a tunnel. This tunnel had wooden bracing and a timber lining, and this wood had caught fire. The engineer of one of the V&T's 4-4-0s, in a split second decision, had to decide whether to "big hole" the train (and risk stopping in the middle of the tunnel), or run through the burning bore (and risk being caught in a cave-in). He ran the bore, and was considered quite a hero afterward.

I don't have the book in front of me to look up the names involved, but in the late H. Reid's "The Virginian Railway," he recounts an incident where a person--a station agent or a telegraph operator, someone who wouldn't normally be on a locomotive--was in the habit of hitching rides with the engine crew on a mixed train. This was early in the era of the VGN, and there were portions of the line, with new cuts, where things weren't always well settled. The crew and their guest were running along in their MB 2-8-2, and running about a curve to the left. Ahead was a slide. The engineer was on the right, of course, and couldn't see it, while the fireman was throwing in some coal at that moment. The only one who could see it was the agent/operator who wasn't supposed to be there. He told the engineer of the slide, and the train got stopped.

The interesting thing was the aftermath. The agent got a letter from the superintendent, telling him he was unauthorized to be on the locomotive, that this was against railroad rules, and that he was warned not to repeat this offense--but the official added a PS to the effect that he was glad the operator had been there that day to prevent a much more serious outcome.

I also recall another incident, too foggy for the details, in which an engine crew saw some sort of an emergency--I think it was a slide in progress, coming right at the train, or it might have been a wooden trestle on fire--and they deliberately broke their freight train in two by first hitting the independent brakes on the engine (and bunching the slack), then yanking the throttle open to break a coupling behind the tender. This allowed the locomotive to race ahead and get out of the way of the slide or cross the bridge (how I wish I had the account in front of me!), while the following train went into emergency. The slide came down behind the locomotive and took the track with it (or the bridge collapsed, take your pick on this). Part of the train went into the gap, but the applied emergency air stopped the rest of it, and kept the caboose and its rear-end crew on solid ground.

Hope this helps out a bit.

Where can we read or see some of this?

Oh, a slight reminder--if this incident takes place prior to about 1980 or so, the regulating body will not be the Federal Railroad Administration, but the old Interstate Commerce Commission.

Thanks, everyone!
I've put up a short story on TrainNet every year around Christmas, but this particular question is for the novel that's been sitting around for a while. If anybody's interested in seeing some of the stories, I'll be glad to e-mail them (we lost a lot of the files online when TrainNet changed servers and things didn't go as they should have.) The short stories start in 1879, with the fictional version of the Bellaire, Zanesville and Cincinatti, later the Ohio River and Western. I couldn't make up anything as weird as the stuff the OR&W actually got into, so the JB&S is a much tamer version.

The novel takes place in roughly 2004-05, so the FRA would indeed be the governing body. I still haven't made up my mind about the yanking a locomotive out of a burning shed part. I thought I was being so darned clever, and here somebody actually did it...oh, well, art can imitate life. For that matter, some of these stories might come in handy if no one minds. At the very least, they're giving me something to think about.

Mainly, I want to try to get rid of a lot of the Hollywood mistakes I know will creep in because, railfan that I am, I've never worked on the railroad. If the engineer taking off ahead of the flooding from Hurricane Ivan was going to give said engineer an extended unpaid vacation courtesy of the Feds, the train was going to have to get its feet wet or find a high siding. I can't go into the kind of fine rules detail the old Railroad Man's Magazine short stories did, but that may not be a terrible thing if it makes the stories more readable.

Of course there is. The rulebook doesn't REPLACE common sense, though there are some rule dweebs who would have you think it does.

There's a railroader who got a burned bearing on his train. He stopped as soon as he could, unfortunately with the burning car on a trestle. He begged the dispatcher for authority to move the train off the trestle but was told to stay put because of the burning bearing. This burned the trestle down.

I'll reach into aviation history because it's so much better documented.

During the takeoff rotation, a DC-10 lost an engine; as in, the engine flew off, because its mounting point was damaged by using a forklift to change an engine. The airplane got off the ground and gained airspeed, enough to safely fly. They started the single-engine failure procedure, which said climb and reduce speed to 153 kts. This speed presumed a healthy wing, and the wing had taken some damage. The procedure made assumptions which were wrong. There are a number of such incidents. Don't even start me on fly-by-wire.

Another example: Here's how you start a jetliner. You use its battery to start a tiny engine in the tail called an "APU" or Auxiliary Power Unit. That gives you enough power to turn on flight controls and start a main engine, or run cabin lighting and air conditioning etc.

Well, this one pilot was taking off out of LaGuardia, and BLAM - he lost all engine thrust. He could feel the airplane just sag. The pilot instantly flipped on the APU and the copilot started working the 4-page "both engines out" checklist. The checklist said nothing about starting the APU. It did, however, instruct to shut off the engine and wait 30 seconds to restart it. But engine #1, set for climb power, was still spinning just enough to provide power for the flight controls. This was a fly-by-wire Airbus. Losing power means the instruments go blank and the stick stops working and you must use different, unfamiliar flight controls. Learn them and ditch in the Hudson in 2 minutes? Good thing the APU was running.

They have procedure lists for such situations, and none of them say "start the APU". The NTSB was thus quite interested: "Mr. Sullenberger, what on earth possessed you to start the APU?" He had no idea. It just seemed like the good thing to do at the time.

Of course one thing you notice is that pilots are treated like rock stars, and engine crews are treated like misbehaving children.

This one seems fishy to me. Wouldn't the same action that applied the emergency brakes on the cars have applied the emergency brakes on the locomotive? The only way around that would be if they somehow cut the air out behind the tender.

I can't speak about the FRA but I know about a similar situation in the FCC (Federal Communication Commission), one of their big jobs is to protect frequencies from interference, with licensing and whatnot, enforced by penalties. They have a rule that says you may use ANY form of communication on ANY frequency, yes that means you can break into Mr. Obama's private channel, in a real emergency (generally defined as a risk to life, limb, or property). However, this is NOT to be used as an excuse to transmit on frequencies not normally allowed-for instance, there is an equivalent to a foamer for the EMS/fire/police crowd called a 'whacker'. These are the ones who show up at an accident with an orange vest in a surplus police crown vic and get in the way kinds of folks. They have been known to get a police radio and call on police frequencies when they find something they want to report under the umbrella that it is an 'emergency', but the FCC has let them known that is NOT acceptable for instance, if they have a working cell phone with them or had a working payphone and 35 cents in their pocket. Not always the easiest to enforce, but there ya go lol.

Robert

Here you go this was a real throw the hammer down or big hole it moment, the train operator decided to put the hammer down.
http://youtu.be/PgYzCma2q2g

And here is another one where the crew didn't wait for dispatcher permission to start there train
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zc4WPbmtK-o

"I also recall another incident, too foggy for the details, in which an engine crew saw some sort of an emergency--I think it was a slide in progress, coming right at the train, or it might have been a wooden trestle on fire--and they deliberately broke their freight train in two by first hitting the independent brakes on the engine (and bunching the slack), then yanking the throttle open to break a coupling behind the tender. This allowed the locomotive to race ahead and get out of the way of the slide or cross the bridge (how I wish I had the account in front of me!), while the following train went into emergency. The slide came down behind the locomotive and took the track with it (or the bridge collapsed, take your pick on this). Part of the train went into the gap, but the applied emergency air stopped the rest of it, and kept the caboose and its rear-end crew on solid ground."--J3a-614

"This one seems fishy to me. Wouldn't the same action that applied the emergency brakes on the cars have applied the emergency brakes on the locomotive? The only way around that would be if they somehow cut the air out behind the tender."--Zak Lybrand

Not necessarily. Keep in mind that locomotives have independent brakes that can be "bailed off" simply be depressing the independent air handle. In fact, it's my understanding that steam men do this regularly, almost habitually, to keep the air from applying on the locomotive during braking. Part of this is to help keep the train stretched, and part of it is to prevent excessive tire heating; remember that steam locomotives have tires that are a shrink fit, and too much heat will expand them again, and cause them to come loose.

In addition to that, there are stories of steam locomotives that were powerful enough to overcome their brakes. The example I'm familiar with involved a New Haven passenger train that was caught on a causeway during the terrible hurricane of 1938. The train was stopped on the causeway by a signal, but was in a dangerous position as waves driven by the wind lashed at it, and began to undermine the track. The engineer waded to the interlocking tower, and got the permission to bring his train to that point. By the time he got back, the water was undermining the cars bad enough that some were about to topple into the sea. The conductor attempted to bring all the passengers and the rest of the train crew into the first car, which was uncoupled from the rest of the train.

As the engineer attempted to start, there was a loud crash; a floating piece of wreckage had fouled the brake gear, and the brakes could not release. With the grit that represented the best of old New England, the engineer opened the throttle wide, and the locomotive began to blast its way to solid ground, working against its own brakes and dragging the lone car with the surviving passengers from the train. The wind knocked down wires which attempted to tangle the locomotive, waves placed all manner of debris in front of the locomotive, including a small house and a boat, but the engine, "bellowing like a bull," pushed its way through all that to bring itself and its human cargo to safety.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1938_New_England_hurricane

http://www.catskillarchive.com/rrextra/mothnat1.Html

http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/science ... e-of-1938/

I feel kinda dumb for not realizing that. I know that a railroad I previously worked at taught engineers to do this from day one because a stretched out train meant smoother rides for the passengers. The trains weren't ever heavy enough to worry about popping knuckles, so it was okay.

Becky, I'm not a railroader, so I can't speak to the FRA Rulebook, but I have been flying airplanes for 30+ years and I can speak to the Federal Air Regulations (FAR).

Here's what it says:

§ 91.3 Responsibility and authority of the pilot in command.

(a) The pilot in command of an aircraft is directly responsible for, and is the final authority as to, the operation of that aircraft.

(b) In an in-flight emergency requiring immediate action, the pilot in command may deviate from any rule of this part to the extent required to meet that emergency.

(c) Each pilot in command who deviates from a rule under paragraph (b) of this section shall, upon the request of the Administrator, send a written report of that deviation to the Administrator.

Bottom line: As Pilot In Command (PIC), I can take whatever action is necessary to safely conclude the flight. The only repercussions that are likely to result would be associated with any careless or reckless actions that I may have taken beforehand to place myself in that emergency situation.

I suspect that FRA would view things in a similar fashion.

/Kevin

That is correct. Bailing is done most of the time, unless you have a reason to keep the engine brakes on and so it does become a habit. The engineer probably would have done it without even thinking about it.

In any case, it doesn't really matter. If the engineer yanked the throttle wide open, which is a reasonable assumption in this situation, he'd over power the engine brakes. It's quite easy to get a locomotive to move under power even with the brakes set, and for one that's already rolling it doesn't even have to overcome the initial friction and break things loose. So even with the brakes in emergency, a wide open throttle will result in the engine continuing to move. Granted, it's not good for the machinery, but if you're in a landslide, wash out, forest fire or whatever, you have other priorities.

I love the New Mexico train through a fire... I believe there are similar stories from Minnesota and Idaho from 100 years ago of similar experiences... in both cases trains that rescued the threatened...

About 5 years ago my wife and I were driving east bound on I-30 in southern Idaho headed for Yellowstone. It seemed like most of the west was burning that year. There were a couple of big brush fires in the Battle Mt (Nevada) area that burned up to I 80 Fire fighting helicopters were refueling alongside the freeway… there was a separate 100,000 acre fire on the Nevada/Idaho boarder… There was a smoke cloud covering 4 or 5 states…

Back on I 30, As we drove, we could see smoke ahead… as we got nearer it was clear that it was next to the road… It turned out to be a west bound hay truck on fire, pretty well involved, and had spread to the grass on the north side of the road (the other side from us…) with heavy smoke blowing over the road.

An Idaho state trooper was in the median waving us on… we entered the smoke cloud with near zero visibility (slowly), only to find the fire had spread to the median and far side… I put the proverbial peddle to the metal, and drove through a tunnel of fire. I stopped on the other side to check the car for scorch marks… none found.

It was memorable…

I know for sure that a friend of mine was the hogger on a freight in the midwest a few years ago (the location/date/name not revelead because he never reported doing this and still hogs for said RR). He heard on the radio that a twister was bearing down from behind him, he looked back saw it coming right for the end of his train. He threw the engine into run 8 and went way beyond posted speeds, knowing the back end was going to be thrown all over the place. He made the right call because the structures along the track where the tail end of his train had been sitting were demolished and signs were pulled right out of the ground. He told me later it made more sense to risk a chewing out for disobeying speeds that have the last dozen cars thrown all over the place...