Many passengers these days do not know the safe way to step from one passenger car to the next. We painted the fall plates and top of the buffers with Safety Yellow paint.

I am wondering if perhaps we should paint the top of the buffers with bright red paint, reserving yellow for the safer fall plates.

Any suggestions? How does your organization handle this?

Thanks! - Doug Debs
cell 650-704-1487

WRM does not allow passengers to pass between cars while the train is in motion.

Amtrak does permit passengers to pass between cars in motion.
In some accident investigations, the National Transportation
Safety Board has mentioned what happened to people who were
doing that at the time of a wreck, but has not yet placed a ban
of the practice on its Most Wanted List of desired changes.

HI,

Unless I am in error, both the Durango and Silverton and the Cumbres and Toltec allow passengers to walk between cars while the train is in motion.

The one exception I know of was when I rented the caboose in the 1990's on the C&TS. They did not have the proper "bridge" to span the gap between the caboose and the rider gon.

Doug vV

I don't see movement between cars being prohibited, especially if you have service cars on the train (lounge, dining), and you need the ability for passengers to distribute themselves after loading.

On a tourist railway, it is less frequently necessary for passengers to cross between cars, and the older style vestibules (diaphrams?) have more pinch points and hazards. But if you have a food service car (Durango and Silverton), you will need to support movement between cars.

Of course we have no problem with families and little children crossing back and forth between our cars at 44 mph on our Christmas train (health care is free in Denmark).

Neither does the White Pass & Yukon.

Wow, that's a shame. Back in '99 I had no trouble hopping from platform to platform to get pix, even asked the conductor about it and he said "go ahead." That was back when the track was "traditional." Now that they are running the NE Corridor up there, the lawyers must have gotten to them.

How about a general notice... "Passengers are expected to PICK UP THEIR FEET when walking."

NCRy operates closed-platform former mainline passenger cars equipped with standard Adlake rubberized-canvas vestibule diaphragms, spring-loaded buffers, and hinged fall plates for the transition from solid floor to top of the buffer. These were designed to allow passengers to walk from car to car while the train is moving.

Our "Train of Lights" holiday train round trips last 1-1/2 hours, and restrooms and food service are in the mid-train cars, so passenger access is essential.

- Doug Debs

So why do you want to start painting things strange colors? To quote my foreman at the CTA many years ago when I asked why the inspectors didn't mark things to be repaired with chalk, whatever... "If they mark it and someone gets hurt before you fix it, their lawyer will claim we knew about it, and neglected to fix it." Makes sense to me. Keep them maintained, keep them the color they were in service.

The problem is that many passengers, including parents of young children, may not know anything about train travel. Safety Yellow paint highlights where they should look.

- Doug Debs

Unless you are using a chunk of plywood for a transfer plate, have no safety chains (I've witnessed this fault), or have theme park style bench cars, then free roaming throughout the train should be encouraged. One of the biggest perks of traveling by train is the ability to get up, grab a coffee, walk around, check out the lounge...

If you have different levels of ticket services available, you should enforce restrictions between those classes of cars. When you have a huge train of passengers and you need to enforce a form of crowd control, you should restrict movement. If you don't have a recognizable way to cross between cars (maybe the cousin of the car shop foreman invented your unique transfer plates) then maybe you shouldn't allow passengers to move from car to car. At any rate, the biggest rule should be advising passengers to not straddle the middle of the two cars.

When I see railroads restricting travel between cars with fully equipped transfer plates, diaphragms, vestibules, etc., it makes your operation look less professional and more like a physical example of arbitrary political correctness. How seriously will anyone take you if you have fully equipped safety measures but we still need to stand 10 feet behind that line drawn in the sand?

Yes absolutely. I would not ride a train that subjected passengers to that kind of coddling.

Our former mainline passenger cars are equipped same as original, with standard vestibule diaphragms, striker plates, buffers, fall plates, etc.

Some of our open-air passenger cars were rebuilt from gondolas and flatcars; these are equipped with waist-height rubber tube diaphragms, spring buffers, and hinged fall plates, to match the passenger car ends.

- Doug Debs

When I worked for Amtrak, the grab irons between cars had red and white striping, like a barber pole. At the beginning of the trip, a P.A. safety announcement was made, instructing passengers to hold the grab irons as they pass through, to walk and not run, and always to wear sturdy shoes when walking about the train. All diaphragms were maintained in good condition, and the blinds were kept secured to prevent passengers making contact with the joint between diaphragms.

If the diaphragms are not in safe condition, you shouldn't be letting passengers through. The insurance company will have your head on a platter!

Tom

(edited)

I remember when I was riding on an Amtrak train it was going around a tight curve and the diaphragms came apart I wonder to myself what would happened is somebody where to get their hands in that space and the train straighten out and close the diaphragms again probably nothing good.