I used to post here quite often, but stopped after the accident at Cleveland Park in Spartanburg, SC on March 19, 2011. 

I wanted to make one final post here as the only contribution I can still make to our hobby. Share this with everyone you know, and feel free to identify me. 

I was experienced with full-sized trains and thought that knowledge translated to miniature ones. Despite all my supposed knowledge, I STILL was involved in a deadly accident. This experience shows that the “it can't happen to me/us” mentality is a DEADLY one. It CAN happen to you, and WILL if you let it.

NONE of you want to experience what my family and I have been through this past year.  It has been 14 months since the accident, and I am still struggling daily with the effects of the traumatic brain injury I suffered in the accident.  We are all still struggling with the emotional aspects of the accident and the subsequent shunning because of the immensely negative (and largely inaccurate) media storm.  

IF IT COULD HAPPEN TO ME, IT CAN HAPPEN TO YOU. DON'T LET IT!!!

Matt,

I followed that story quite closely and watched the public presentation of the investigative findings. However, I was told that the formal report would not be publicly available for a very long time. Since you have indicated that your role was mischaracterized in the media, can you tell us your side of the story?

We would like to learn from your incident. Please provide some details.

Thank you for posting Matt. Myself and I'm sure many others here miss your contributions and posts, but understand that given the situation, you are doing what is best for you and your family. Hope things get better.

Mike Stillwell
Buena Vista, VA.

I searched the name and "Train wreck" and Google and turned up a lot of info. This was the lead story which is about Matt's perspective soon after the incident:
http://www.goupstate.com/article/20110323/ARTICLES/110329900
I agree 100%. Talk with your lawyer before posting anything and let him know you already did post this.

His post included the following:



That seems to indicate he won't be commenting further.

Based on discussions elsewhere, he's well aware of the issue of making comments online, and has limited his comments. If you read the article reference above, you'll see that his blog was part of the investigation, including comments he made regarding repairs to the train and tracks etc.

Without speaking for him, it is my understanding, based on comments made elsewhere on the web, the operators were told the train could not exceed a safe operational speed. That may (or may not) be part of the inaccuracy he references. I don't know for certain, and he almost certainly shouldn't comment on the matter any further at this time, so I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

Whether that statement ("They told us that it can't run at an unsafe speed") is true or not, does it relieve the operator of responsibility, was the governor was working properly, should the operators have been trained to recognize a potential over-speed situation, what other training should they have had, what inspections should have been made, why did the train derail this time when it had been operated in the same manner previously, was there a mechanical failure involved. The list of questions is large, and the lawyers have plenty to chew on.

Much of this has been discussed in various forums. Hopefully at some point some conclusions will be made, and hopefully we can learn from them.

One more comment I'd make, purely on my own. It may make sense to evaluate your own operation, and determine if there are areas where a derailment could be more serious than the usual, due to bridges, tunnels, structures etc. If so, should additional precautions be taken at that location?

Well that is what I would like to learn from this. I'm not concerned with the details of this incident per se, but the lessons that can be learned from the type of accident. From reading the linked news article it appears that a trainset that had not been in revenue service in decades derailed during its first revenue trip after being returned to the railroad. Could it have been a traditional "excessive speed on curve" incident, or perhaps a failure that would only have occurred with the weight of passengers aboard? I guess the investigation and litigation will flush that out.

So perhaps what I gain from this is that more thorough testing of new equipment should be conducted before placing it in service, and that testing be done with the equivalent of a full passenger load.

As for Matt, my wishes are that his physical injuries are not compounded by the addition of financial injuries.

I have not seen the detailed report of the accident investigation. However, I did watch the presentation of the basic findings of cause by the people who had done the investigation. They stated that there were no track defects, and no equipment defects. They computer modeled the train and said they saw it derailing at the same spot every time at the speed it was estimated to be traveling. So they concluded that excessive speed was the sole cause.

They did not say whether the computer model showed an upset or simply a flange climbing derailment. They did not say whether the computer model was capable of demonstrating both of those two types of centrifugal force derailments. A flange-climbing model would be far more complex than an upset model. I also do not know which type actually occurred in the accident.

There is a video on the internet that shows a cab camera view of the ride which reveals several track kinks and a significant locomotive tracking reaction to those kinks. I do not know whether or not that track had been resurfaced and aligned between the time of that video and the time of the accident.

Excessive speed can cause a derailment on a curve. So can track kinks. So can a combination of the two. What I would like to know is whether the track kinks existed at the time of the accident, and if the investigation concluded that the kinks were not defects.

Brother Conrad's advice is sound. If you look at injury rates with in the full size industry, or law enforcement or firefighting or... they are on an inverse bell curve. The people who are injured tend to be either inexperienced or very experienced and overly comfortable. Whatever happened on that park train could have happened to any of us. While this is not a venue where I would normally be found quoting Scripture, it seems that the common condensation of Proverbs 16:18 could easily be the safety rule of day.

While a number us have good solid professional reasons to want to know what happened there I suggest that as a group we are knowledgeable enough to pick our own holes in the reports and to ask the missing questions ourselves.

I too miss Brother Conrad's input here and on various other forums. We should allow him his own good time to heal and assure him that he will not be shunned here.

GME

Thank you, Trainlawyer, for what is the best advice we can have here in this thread.

Let us hope there is healing for all from this incident--and that we watch and be honest with ourselves as well. . .

Take care of yourself Matt. Hope you heal up from everything.

Matt, it was good to hear from you, if only in this one brief post.

I'd like to wish you the very best as you recover physically, and you and your family recover emotionally from this awful experience. Prior to the accident, it was obvious through your posts you are a caring and decent man, and I can only imagine what you have been through.

Please try to forgive yourself- that can be far harder, and take longer than being forgiven by the community at large. Remember that you are among friends here. I hope you will at least continue to visit RyPN, even if you're not comfortable with posting.

Regarding using your accident to help prevent others from happening, I have used (in very generic terms, no need at all to name names) it to impress the never-ending need for caution on other crew members. It illustrates the fact that we can never let our guard down, and that no matter how careful and attentive we are and no matter how well trained we believe we are, bad things can happen to good people in the blink of an eye.

Take care,

Steve Hunter

SELFISH and SHORTSIGHTED.

Guy comes on, testifying to a simple, smart message. You ain't hearing that. You're all "get the widow on the set, we need dirty laundry". (as for needing his story to be safe yourself, baloney.)

Has it occurred to any of you that this person is not an incident? I'm sure he has and will do a lot of things in preservation, and could have a lot to contribute, and ought to be able to talk about them in peace. That's called being a good guest.

robertmacdowell,

Can you please explain what you mean by the above post? I have read it about 20 times, and utterly fail to understand your points.

He set a clear boundary: "This is my final post". Which said clear as a bell that he was NOT willing to talk about the incident further. Given that, it was inappropriate to press him for further details.

It reminded me of reporters shouting questions at the guy who'd already said "no comment" and was just trying to get to his car. "Get the widow on the set, we need dirty laundry" was a reference to this popular 80's song http://www.elyrics.net/read/d/don-henle ... yrics.html
which expresses outrage at the way the media callously exploits real human misery to create shallow meaningless entertainment.

See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15_minutes_of_fame

When I said he's a person not an incident, I mean he has a lifetime of experience in railway preservation, and he ought to be able to share expertise and ask questions, you know, the thing this forum is for. One should not treat him as if the only thing important about him is one event. I'm sure you've had a worst day in your life. How'd you like it if that's all anyone ever wanted to talk about?

Put it another way. Suppose you are the administrator of a forum on gliders. Chelsey Sullenberger joins - specifically to talk about gliding - since that's what the forum is for. However, it's obvious that he's being made uncomfortable by people constantly asking him about The Incident. What do you, as an admin, do about that?

Would your answer be significantly different if the incident was bad -- e.g. Tiger Woods in a golf forum?