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The person killed in the truck was a passenger, not the driver. So the driver may be able to shed some light on what happened and why. The engineer in the cab of the front locomotive received minor injuries and will be all right. He might also be able to give details.
The crossing was equipped with signs, flashing lights, bells, and moveable gates. People nearby said that the signals and gates sometimes malfunctioned. It's not known yet if this happened in this instance.
Witnesses are still saying that the impact happened "without warning". No slowing down, no sounding the whistle, no sudden braking?
Authorities have given no details on the cause of the wreck, which took place at a crossing protected by gates, flashing lights, bells and warning signs.
Benny Layne, on whose property the truck landed, said the crossing arms had been known to malfunction, sometimes coming down even though no train was approaching. Sometimes, he said, they stayed down for hours. He said drivers would get out of their vehicles to help guide other motorists around the malfunctioning arms so they could cross the tracks. "A guy was up here just yesterday or the day before taking a look at them,” he said.
Carrie Brown, human resources manager at Buckingham Branch Railroad, which leases the stretch of track and is responsible for maintenance, said she was unaware of any problems with equipment at the crossing.
(snip)
The crash occurred just over an hour into the train ride from Washington to West Virginia, as Republican lawmakers traveling to their annual retreat were settling in for the long excursion.
Without warning, the 10-car chartered train slammed into the white garbage truck.
Latitude and longitude where the crash occurred was 38.077290, -78.716805, the intersection of Lanetown Rd. and Marymart Farm Rd. in Crozet, VA. Apparently the truck was on Lanetown Rd., which crosses the railroad at that point.
The railroad makes a wide curve in that area. The area is wooded, so it's possible that a person in the cab of the locomotive might not have seen the truck until the train had gotten far enough around the curve to have a straight line of sight to the crossing. Likewise, a person on the track at that crossing, might not have seen the train until it was a few hundred yards away.
Did the crossing signals work, and warn that a train was coming?
Even if the engineer didn't see the truck until he was a few hundred yards away, why did he not slow down at all before hitting the truck? Passengers reported no warning at all before the impact, nothing unusual.
People on the train said the crossing was working and that the gates were down. Even if the gates sometimes went down when no train was around, you still have to stop. If you know the crossing malfunctions, you need to be more careful when the crossing is activated if you think a train may not be around. I'm guessing the driver of the truck knew the crossing sometimes malfunctioned -- although that's a leap of faith I'm taking there -- but it is no excuse to go through anyway.
I had heard the other two men were riding the back of the trash truck as if they were on a route picking up trash containers from the side of the road. If I've got two people unprotected like that, I'm erring on the side of caution at every stop I make whether it be a stop sign or a set of train tracks.
You've asked elsewhere why the engineer didn't apply the brakes. I wish someone who worked on trains were here to answer. I just know some people who work on trains and that does not make me an expert by any stretch. But throwing a train into emergency -- as I said elsewhere -- can sometimes cause a train to derail. Trains need way more space to stop, so applying the brakes probably wasn't going to do much good here anyway and could possibly have derailed the train putting the crew and passengers in more harm's way than just hitting a truck on the tracks.
There's apparently some question on when the engineer hit the brakes according to this story. Not to state the obvious, but the train did stop, so the brakes were applied at some point.
Slamming on the brakes of a train going 70mph will derail the train. Train operators know that most obstacles in their way as long as it is not another train, are merely speed bumps. How people don't know this by now amazes me. Even if he saw the truck 1000 yards out and applied the brakes at that very moment the train would have not stopped in time and still hit the truck.
I've been reading up on this some trying to make myself smarter. We keep saying "hit the brakes" as if there is a brake pedal in the locomotive -- it's right beside the gas pedal under the steering wheel, apparently -- just like in our cars and trucks. There is an emergency braking system that you can use, but some railroads strongly urge you not to as stopping a train that quickly can derail it.
Again, no expert here, but as I understand it, when you throw a train into emergency, the whole train basically collapses against itself back to front. The head end takes the brunt, but also every coupler between every car and train engine takes a huge weight. Train cars can stack up against one another and begin derailing. This is why in another thread where the OP asked the same question, I said the engineer probably decided in the split second he had to make up his mind that is was better to hit the truck and not derail than to throw the train into emergency and possibly derail a train full of people on board.
I have to wonder why people here keep jumping to the conclusion that the engineer's only choice was to either slam on the brakes fully (aka "throw the train into emergency"), or to do nothing and maintain the train's speed for the four or five seconds between seeing the truck and hitting it.
Statements that you don't know much about trains, appear justified.
Well, neither do I. But at least I don't draw extraordinarily silly conclusions like that.
I asked why the train didn't slow down at all in the several seconds the engineer had between seeing the truck and hitting it. And why he didn't sound the whistle, to warn the truck to get off the track.
People here seem to feel that if the engineer sees an emergency ahead (which this truck certainly was), it is impossible for him to even begin to apply the brakes, or reduce power, or even blow the whistle in the several seconds he has between seeing the truck and hitting it. At 70mph, the train travels abut 100 feet every second, or three seconds to move the length of a football field. How far ahead could the engineer see a this particular spot, in a wooded area where the track is going around a long, wide curve? How many seconds elapsed at 70mph, between when he could see the truck on the track, and when he hits it?
If the train controls were designed so that the engineer, even if he sees a catastrophic emergency that will likely cause deaths, cannot even begin to slow the train for at least three seconds, that would indicate a GROSS deficiency in the train's design.
And does anybody here know enough about a train engineer's standard training, to definitively say that train engineers are NEVER taught how much braking can be safely applied to slow as much as possible without unnecessarily endangering passengers or derailing the train? I would think that such emergency procedures would form a MAJOR part of an engineer's training, and would be astonished if it didn't.
There are a lot of unanswered questions here, of course. We'll have to wait for the investigation to start producing results.
At Google Maps' normal default scale, a football field would be a little less than an inch long on the map. Even with the trees, I'd be surprised if you couldn't see the crossing from 100 yards down the track at that location. And maybe even twice that distance or more (1-1/2 inches on the map).
The crash happened at 11:00 AM, on a normal day with no rain or fog.
I don't know what happened in the seconds before the crash. But I have a feeling we will eventually find that the engineer wasn't looking ahead of the train for those critical 3 to 6 seconds. Maybe he was checking some important gauges, or maybe dealing with a problem that happened to crop up just at that moment, in the cab. Or maybe he was texting his girlfriend. Whatever the cause, I have a hunch he had no idea there was a truck on the tracks at the crossing in front of his train, until he heard and felt the crash. The cause might be as simple as, he wasn't looking where he was going, for those fatal seconds as the train rounded the curve and approached the crossing.
That's just a guess, of course. I really hope I'm wrong. But then a lot of other questions would need answers, which might be quite difficult.
I have to wonder why people here keep jumping to the conclusion that the engineer's only choice was to either slam on the brakes fully (aka "throw the train into emergency"), or to do nothing and maintain the train's speed for the four or five seconds between seeing the truck and hitting it.
One of the articles I posted a few replies up said he "idled down" is how I believe they put it. I believe they said the tain stopped in 20 seconds, so you're saying he did not slow down before he hit the train, but I don't think that has been determinded yet. If you look at pictures at the scene, the rear of the train has not passed the garbage truck yet indicating a pretty quick stop.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Roboteer
I asked why the train didn't slow down at all in the several seconds the engineer had between seeing the truck and hitting it. And why he didn't sound the whistle, to warn the truck to get off the track.
If you have a link where it says he saw the truck and did nothing for four or five seconds, please share it with me as I have not seen that yet. I suspect he blew the whistle. We'll find out when the event recorder is analyzed.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Roboteer
I don't know what happened in the seconds before the crash. But I have a feeling we will eventually find that the engineer wasn't watching where he was going for those critical 3 to 6 seconds. Maybe he was checking some important gauges, or maybe dealing with a problem that happened to crop up just at that moment, in the cab. Or maybe he was texting his girlfriend. Whatever the cause, I have a hunch he had no idea there was a truck on the tracks at the crossing, until he heard and felt the crash. The cause might be as simple as, he wasn't looking where he was going, for those fatal seconds as the train rounded the curve and approached the crossing.
You're assuming a lot for someone who also wrote we'll have to see what the investigation reveals. I guess we're both assuming a lot. Phones are forbidden by most railroads in locomotives. That's not to say they may get used sometimes. But he also would not have been alone in the cab. There would have been another pair of eyes watching as well.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Roboteer
Statements that you don't know much about trains, appear justified.
I said I wasn't an expert, not that I didn't know much about trains.
Per Capital Police, no one should have been crossing , they shut roads down for that particular train.
Many choppers flying overhead , to watch out for any possible obstructions for that particular train.
If the Capital Police had the road blocked off, a cop with his cop car blocking that road maybe, how did that truck make it to the tracks?
With the choppers, if they were supposed to keep an eye open for any obstructions ... wouldn't the chopper pilots have had radio communications with the train engineer, to warn them if there was an obstruction?
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