Quote:
Originally Posted by Martin
Yea, they should have said fuck the rules and moved the train.. Dumb.
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Might seem like that right thing to do in the situation, but if they had broken operating rules, the entire crew would have lost their jobs. On the railroad the rules are strict, and you best fucking abide by them if you want to keep your job. From what I've read here I doubt anyone received any shit whatsoever.
It's not something that was under their control. Wheels lock up and drag on train cars regularly. It's why the railroad has what's known as a roll-by. Any time a train passes by a ground crew, the ground crew is expected to do a roll-by check, in Canada on CN track it's known as rule 110. The whole point being that you're watching for locked tires or anything dragging beneath the train that could cause problems. Generally you'll hear a bad bearing screaming at you from way down the track and it will make noise for a long time. That being said, bearings can fail and wheels can lock up very quickly.
The article said this happened on mainline track, which leads me to believe that they were probably traveling at fairly high track speeds. That wheels would have gotten hot very fast dragging along at 50-60+ mph. It's just shitty luck that they happened to stop the train for inspection with the hot axle right above a wooden bridge. But moving the train at that point would have broken their operating rules, and on the railroad, those rules are written in stone.
The other thing that should be mentioned is just how easily you can light up a creosote tie. A spark will fizzle on top of a tie for minutes before lighting up. I ran a spiker for a while and yu used to see it all the time. You'd miss a plate hole a little bit and chuck some sparks out. 10-15 minutes later you'd turn around and look back and a tie would be up in flames 200-300 yards behind you
During fire bans we had a guy in a truck follow up behind the crew watching for fires. I just hope nobody failed the ensuing piss test.
Back when I was operating equipment on the track I once missed a day of work. We always had a trained backup for the operators as the machines were pretty specialized. My backup operator was an idiot, and at the end of the day shutdown the machine and didn't know how to get it started again. They wound up barring the machine to another and towing it down the tracks. Well, when the machine is powered down, the brakes autplock as a safety feature to keep things from runnign away when you're gone. Those back wheels got so fucking hot they lit up the floor mats and seats of the machine, and within minutes they entire thing burnt right in the middle of the tracks. I showed up to work the next day and my machine was a charred hunk of shit.
When something like that happens, really all you can do is get everybody out of the way to safety and watch things take their course. Maybe snap a few photos! And I'm glad someone did. Gonna forward these on to some buddies who are still working on the tracks.