One word Counter suit for the irreversible harm caused to the train crew for such a devastating indecent caused by a selfish reckless ATV driver, who endangered the crew and the people on the train. As for the limited visibility how many railroads even today run high nose locomotives how many decades have railroads been running bring that up.

Just today, the 15" gauge Tiny Town train, in suburban Denver, rolled over on a curve.
The engine, (live steam), tender and five cars rolled down a small embankment, Initial reports says 20 injured, none life threatening.
The cause is unknown at this point.

So where can museums and other organizations go to learn about and discuss the safety issues related to running a railroad?

Start where I did: with the safety rule book of ANY major railroad.

One example: The New Hope & Ivyland, decades ago, issued their own safety rule books which were basically reprinted word-for-word and page-for-page editions of the Reading RR safety rule booklet. I've seen a couple short lines that did the same thing, varying for the host railroad.

A lot of the other stuff gets "beaten" into you. The first time I showed up at one railroad asking how to volunteer, the first thing one gruff and dour individual (who turned out to be the president at that time) said "Come back after you get steel toe safety boots, and we'll talk."

If you're looking for detailed specifics on, for example, how to set brakes with a mix of brake types or whatnot or how to prevent head-on collisions on trolley lines, that's where you want to appeal to the specialists at the Tourist Railway Association, the Association of RR Museums, etc.

What Andy is saying is that RYPN is not the place to go to find real world practical knowledge about tourist railroad safety. You are not to learn about past accidents, plain and simple. Just go out and fly blind. They would rather have that happen then educate you and possibly avoid an accident.

Right? Isn't that the feeling being conveyed here?

If you want to learn from others experience and learn "best practices," The best place is at the meetings of TRAIN (Tourist Railway Association, Inc.) and ARM (Association of Railway Museums). Various elements of what to do and how to avoid problems is often included in the sessions at these meetings.

There can be actual sessions about these topics and then there are the contacts and learning brought about by just networking at the these meetings.

If you don't see the depth of coverage of "best practice", etc. that you would like at these meetings, then contact the various national offices and suggest appropriate topics that they can try to cover.

Listing tourist train accidents in this forum is the equivalent of little boys telling ghost stories at night. Such discussion tarnishes the image of the tourist railroad industry more than it advances railway safety. If you want to learn how to operate safely, get the General Code of Operating Rules and study the book and then volunteer or get a job at a tourist railroad that develops and monitors your ability to comply.

If I were to use your same degree of hyperbole, I would say that you and the original poster want to watch a video of "World's Wildest Train Crashes." Isn't that the feeling being conveyed here?

Race car drivers that live can tell the gory stories of their cars flipping upside down several times, or their race car skidding down the drag strip on its roof while the driver does his best to impersonate a turtle...... They own their cars, and they don't have passengers. Indeed, it could be argued that a few of their "patrons" come to the track in hopes of seeing the occasional wreck.

We have patrons that have the not-unrealistic expectation of riding a passenger train or trolley incident-free, with no chance of injury or danger. That perfectly reasonable expectation is dashed if and when we start rehashing stuff like the Amtrak-Conrail collision in Maryland in 1987, the Amtrak train that ran off a bridge that was hit by a barge down in Louisiana, the zoo train ride flipping over, etc.

I spoke over a pint of real ale last night with an off-duty Amtrak official, and told him about this forum discussion and how a couple folks say that we need to "talk about" accidents and safety on a publicly accessible web forum. He was reduced to gales of laughter. Then he said "Wait--are you SERIOUS?!?!?!?!?! NO &$(/>*#!@ WAY!!!!!! NEVER, NEVER, NEVER on a public forum!!!!!!" As an example, he cited the 1987 crash at Chase, Md.--caused by an engineer of a Conrail trio of locomotives, high on marijuana, blowing through a stop signal into the path of an Amtrak train at full speed. "We as railroaders and workers on the Northeast Corridor are STILL paying for that [many expletives deleted] Ricky Gates! We're regarded as guilty until proven innocent!"

Now, I'm not saying that the cause of such a tragic accident should be covered up. But the reputations of every railroader in the Northeast suffered for a decade or more as a result of one (or two, if you count the fellow crew member) asinine guy who arguably should never have been in the cab of any locomotive. If someone should "slip up" on your operation, do you want the entire operation portrayed as being run by, say, a bunch of drunks, "potheads," or senile old fools? Even if, say, the motorman has his first-ever epileptic seizure at the controller and the car bashes the buffers, that's still what people are going to think.

Say Alex,

Just for my own future reference is there like a list of subjects somewhere you don't like having on -your- PUBLIC forum here??

BTW I do run my own public minature railroad business in which I operate easily within the confines of my states safety regulations and practices. My point in this post being that while yes you shouldn't rehash who did what to whom arguments people should know when accidents occured out of pure negligence.

I.E. here in my own home state of Kentucky the Louisville Zoo accident was a result of pure negligence on the operators part and people should know about those things. On the other hand it's also operators like myself who have the responcibility to prove we're capable of operating a safe operation by having clean safety records.

Also by rehashing the "pothead harry" conrail story you just rolled right over your own little "google" argument. Not to mention posting that you spent the night drinking with a railroad engineer laughing about people wanting to learn about accidents really helps your argument.

So Boilerwash, let's say you or someone associated with your operation makes a mistake causing some incident causing someone to get hurt and they are contemplating a lawsuit (I'm not familiar with your operation, but people can sue for anything). Are you saying you would be shouting to the world how your operation screwed up? How would you feel about others who don't know all the facts doing it for you while the injured party's attorney following everything that's said? Let's forget the lawyers for a second and just look at it from a Public Relations standpoint. Things happen and once the rumor mill takes over it gets blown way out of proportion and you never know who is listening and what they will do with the information. When an incident happens on a railroad or just about any other industry there will be internal meetings/trainings and then an official release to the media if necessary. At the company I work for it is policy to never communicate with the media....we have trained staff to deal with that. If I walk outside and a reporter asks me a question about our company and I do anything other than refer them to the appropriate person I WILL get fired. This is nothing new and has nothing to do with the internet. When a railroad accident happened 100 years ago I doubt that the message from management was "hey guys...you need to take what you've heard in the locker room and go spread it to the world....wouldn't want the other railroads to make the same mistake as us."

Most tourist operations have their own rule books/training programs, etc. There are also TRAIN seminars. They also communicate with various officials and the "who's who" in the tourist railroad industry. Information DOES get around in these circles. I'm sure anyone who has been involved in a recreational railroading operation long enough has more than their fair share of mishap and near miss stories to share during break time many of which are probably 100% factual. I also doubt that those stories, however entertaining, will be told by the car hosts to entertain passengers on the next excursion. Get the point?

I consider this a quasi-public forum in which we participate. And the answer is, Yes, sort of. It appears that this sort of topic lies in the area of a controversial topic, which you seemed to understand at the start of this thread. Those who have been around know which subjects are like walking on thin ice. Perhaps this is another FAQ item which hopefully will be written some day.

I find it useful to reread the RYPN guidelines from time to time, perhaps check it out if you have not done so:

http://server.rypn.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=27206

Case in point:

You just mis-read my carefully-worded post and decided I was talking about an Amtrak engineer.

He is not an engineer; he's an official in another department. I think he's still subject to random testing, but he wasn't going anywhere near the railroad for a day or so. And he had at most two beers over three hours.

Now, when someone on this forum who we presume can tell the difference between an Amtrak engineer and a management official, or track maintenance guy versus PR guy, manages to screw up this important distinction, do you understand why those deep in the proverbial trenches are reluctant to discuss these kind of things amongst the general public? Have we gone a month or two without seeing some media reporter grandly screw up their reporting, calling an Amtrak locomotive a "steam engine" or referring to the "Northern & Southern Railroad" or "Big Northern & San Francisco" Railroad, or whatever?

Boilerwash,
If you are going to use an example please make sure you have it right. The Louisville Zoo Train derailment was not determined to be negligence on the operators part. The ride operator was found to be inadequately trained and combined with poor maintenance practices, caused the excessive speed derailment of the amusement ride train.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/28921637/Loui ... lscreen:on

Mike Tillger

.

I think a constructive discussion could occur in a public forum regarding safety concerns that might be common to most tourist railways and museums. As previously stated tying the concern or query to an incident at a specific named organization is not the way to do this. At the organization I have been most involved with, we hold an annual safety training weekend which has a mandatory attendance requirement (with a little wiggle room on a case by case basis). Incidents that have occurred the previous season or in the distant past are sometimes discussed, but they are discussed without naming names and as generic situations that anyone could encounter. Sometimes safety quizzes describe a scenario similar to something that has happened in the past at our rr or elsewhere and questions are posed for discussion as to how each crew member should best respond to said unexpected situation. This way no one is singled out for public ridicule, yet others may learn from someones mistake. The same could apply to a discussion of safety concerns here, ie: leave off reference to a specific rr or museum and certainly any reference to specific named individuals. Yes in some cases one of us might figure out the where and who, but if that is the case we already know about the incident and probably are not going to blab publicly about the who and where anyway.
Here's a somewhat humorous but kinda serious example that can lead to further discussion and is along the lines of what I am suggesting as to how incidents can be discussed. Yes this really happened many years ago:
You are the engineer of a moonlight ride train. It's after dark, you are up to departure time and are looking back for a lantern signal. You see a back up signal followed by a figure 8, then something resembling a high ball, what should you do? The safety quiz this came from had multiple choice and I don't remember the exact answers, but one was something like (A) you have a crew of idiots, go back and chew them a new one.
(B) you finally got the high ball get moving. (C) The Safest Course Must always be followed, do not move the train until you have confirmed the signal, and you have a crew of idiots...
The best answer is certainly C. The engineer could easily get on the radio and confirm if in fact he received a highball. One way in which a rr solved the problem of multiple crew members carrying lanterns that might be mistaken for a conductors signal was for the conductor only to use an amber lantern for signals to the cab. This would not eliminate the rule that requires any signal given like a washout to be regarded as such whether it came from a white lantern, amber or otherwise.
I have described a problem that occurred somewhere, proper response and a possible solution that was adopted at xyz rr without besmirching anyone or creating a potential liability for someone.