Great Central Railway - Catch points doing their job

mldeets · **Joined:** Thu Aug 05, 2010 2:06 am **Posts:** 411

sandiapaul wrote:

and the guy taking the video didn't say anything?

You are assuming the videographer was standing behind the camera and not elsewhere taking stills or otherwise occupied. It will be interesting to see the official results, when released. mld

Chris Salmonson · **Posted:** Tue Apr 30, 2013 8:17 pm

Restricting.

big-bad-2666 · **Posted:** Tue Apr 30, 2013 9:39 pm

And here is the aftermath, courtesy of the same person who recorded the derailment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7ofOJsFRlk
Also, here is another video of the 'engineer's train' being pulled into position for the re-rail of the locomotive, although the lift was not recorded.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qflXYQqbd4M

Nova55 · **Joined:** Thu Apr 12, 2007 8:09 pm **Posts:** 597

I love that the wrecking cranes are still steam as well..

Dave · **Posted:** Tue Apr 30, 2013 11:41 pm

And how many of our operations haven't had our share of OOPS moments?

Once, I dealt with 3 run through switches in one day. I was so pleased once the third one happened - to the roadmaster's speeder as it turns out - since these things do come in threes. Nothing for months before that and nothing for months afterward.

If incidents like this haven't happened to you - just wait.

dave

Rick Rowlands · **Posted:** Wed May 01, 2013 7:46 am

I have always found that experience is the best teacher, and if the crew that derailed are capable of learning from past mistakes I would say that this incident would make them more careful in the future. Time off on suspension and some public humiliation is all that is needed in most cases to turn people around.

The engineer who let loose the CSX 8888 out of Toledo was not banned for life, but got a 30 day unpaid vacation. I am certain that he will never make the same mistake twice.

robertmacdowell · **Posted:** Wed May 01, 2013 5:18 pm

Trevor Heath wrote:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Yr5EztEPJS8#

Meanwhile, in Canada...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?nomobile=1&v=l1q9eBaWY3k

Edit: to update link

sbhunterca · **Joined:** Sun Aug 22, 2004 7:58 am **Posts:** 728

It's hard getting off LRC units even when they're standing still, I'm sure at least four guys needed a change of underwear that day. Lucky those guys didn't end up under the wheels or other serious injury.

This is on the CNR Smiths Falls Sub at Highway 29 in Smiths Falls, near the CP interchange. The CP guy had pulled too far onto CN and VIA came around a curve at speed to find a headlight in their faces... pretty scary close call. RMEO is about a mile west of this point.

Steve Hunter

p51 · **Posted:** Wed May 01, 2013 6:28 pm

robertmacdowell wrote:

Meanwhile, in Canada...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=p ... sxVfSwW2F8

Leapin' lizards, that was a close call, both with the trains and the crewman doing a face plant on the ground like that.
Way back in the 80s when I first became a NRHS member, nobody had VHSs to show videos yet and my chapter often checked out films from the NRHS library to show on a projector. We used to joke that we'd all seen, "How to step onto and off of equipment" films more than any actual RR employees. To this day, I still can't get onto anyt equipment, moving or not, without thinking of those training films...

J3a-614 · **Posted:** Wed May 01, 2013 7:48 pm

Close call indeed! I wonder what the passengers thought after it all, or if they even found out what had happened.

I'm not going to link to them, but there are other YouTube clips of accidents, including collisions, some from event cameras on locomotives, some from things like security cameras on station platforms, and occasionally some by a railfan such as the ones we're looking at here. All are chilling, including at least one collision in which the crew of the other train is seen jumping for their lives, another in which a train is run into a siding filled with covered hoppers (oh, it's so sickening to hear the air go into emergency and see that the train is not going to slow down enough to avoid the crash), several featuring automobiles that attempt to beat trains at crossings, with fatal results (including one in which the car was hit by one train and knocked into the path of another on double track), clips of trains hitting livestock (including at least one on a narrow gauge line in Colorado in steam, you wonder how that steer went under the plow so easily), and a clip of a man on top of a train in electrified territory in India who gets too close to the catenary, with horrifying results.

I wonder how well some of this would play with Operation Lifesaver, despite the sometimes graphic nature of the footage?

sleepermonster · **Joined:** Sat Sep 12, 2009 5:57 pm **Posts:** 100

Probably no passengers will have been directly involved, as the train concerned appears to have been a travelling post office set, which is used during galas to drop and pick up lineside mail bags - quite a sight at 45mph.

The GCR arrangements at Swithland are quite elaborate, with long running loops either side of a double track main line and an extensive and newly commissioned semaphore signalling scheme. If the loops are not classed as passenger lines then this may not be strictly a reportable incident, last time I looked, long ago,
the criteria were: injury, or involving a passenger train or on a passnger line or causing serious delay to a passenger train. I think I'd let the Rail Accident Investigation Board decide that for themselves.

If RAIB do investigate then a report will be published in due course. The GCR are generally reckoned to have a large and well organised loco department, the railway is said to have around 1000 volunteers on its books.

Tim

boilerwash · **Posted:** Thu May 02, 2013 3:33 pm

Meanwhile In Germany - This fun little incident:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_yJ7aZP8x0

Just to stay on topic I've been talking with someone over on deviantart who was at the scene when the catch points incident occured. According to them the engine crew and guy in the signal box have both been supended from the operation.

sleepermonster · **Joined:** Sat Sep 12, 2009 5:57 pm **Posts:** 100

The suspension does not surprise me, fairly standard practice - you do not want people doing safety critical work and worrying about the investigation.

I was involved in the clearup after a similar incident around fifteen years ago, which has a twist you may like. The men involved were suspended pending the investigation, then as they were basically sound people, invited to undergo a little retraining and requalify, which they did.

It took us until late at night to get the loco back on the tracks, which completely wrecked a promising date with a very pretty young lady who worked on the restaurant car, and I didn't get back to her until after midnight. Fortunately she quite understood and forgave me.

I married her fourteen years ago this morning.

Tim

Tim

RSwinnerton · **Joined:** Wed Aug 20, 2008 8:32 pm **Posts:** 198

I got this from my Dad who's a signalman for the North Yorkshire Moors Rwy regarding this incident:

Quote:

Was working today and heard a bit more about all this? It seems that the signalman (40 years experience) was asked by the driver to get him going from the siding. The signalman then pulled over the points, but the wrong ones, not the required ones. Of course as he hadn't changed the right ones he couldn't operate the signal. Rather than look at the lever frame and see what he had done wrong, he assumed the signal had failed and gave the driver verbal authority to pass the signal. The driver, having received permission to pass the signal at danger, proceeded to do just that, with the end result as filmed.......

Who's to blame?

The signal man takes some of the blame for giving authority to pass a signal without proving the route by setting the road. It is my view, that the driver bears the bulk of the blame because, before he sets off, he is supposed to check that the points are set correctly, particularly as he is passing a signal at danger.

Notice that, in the video, none of the train crew look forward as the train sets off. Nobody seems to be paying attention on the footplate. Even when the tender runs out of rails the throttle is still open, compounding it all.

Hopes this explains some of it

We had a memo about incidents during Galas as there have been several high profile problems at other railways. They are all being investigated by the Rail Accident Investigation Bureau (RAIB) as they concern passenger carrying railways and are on running lines (I.e. not sidings or yards). I'll let you know what happens..

PaulWWoodring · **Posted:** Wed May 08, 2013 10:36 am

Interesting difference in terminology here. CSX (and maybe other U. S. Class I's) refers to this as a "split rail" derail, rather than "catch points". Is this a British vs. American terminology difference?

As for consequences to the crew, my guess is that a professional and paid crew would get some "time off", but not outright fired for this, unless it was a repeat offense for the engineer. Depends on a number of factors - which side of the bed the road foreman got up on probably being one of them, not to mention the current upper level management attitude towards crew intimidation, how many crewmen are available to run the railroad, and if they think they are paying too much in guarantee pay (after all, job insurance payouts don't come from the company). Yes, I'm a cynic, but decisions are sometimes made on these basises. Now, running blue flag protection and the derail protecting it, that would be a different story.