Derailment in Iowa 5/9/22

[newbryford]

A bit of a mess - especially where the bridge has collapsed.

 

Notice how there is a "debris field" where they just drag the derailed cars out of the way.

 

 

and part 2:

A replacement bridge within 4 days.........

 

Edited September 10, 2022 by newbryford

[russ p]

Amazing how quickly they are sorting that out. How it should be done. Used to be like that here but nowadays would take weeks if not months to get anywhere near the amount of progress they have made 

[Oldddudders]

2 hours ago, russ p said:

Amazing how quickly they are sorting that out. How it should be done. Used to be like that here but nowadays would take weeks if not months to get anywhere near the amount of progress they have made 

Is this the advantage of vertical integration? UP presumably 'owns' both train and tracks. In the UK, with NR the Infrastructure Authority, the costs are no doubt attributable to one party, and each is gonna make darn sure the examination is forensic, before the evidence is destroyed. 

[mdvle]

17 hours ago, russ p said:

Amazing how quickly they are sorting that out. How it should be done. Used to be like that here but nowadays would take weeks if not months to get anywhere near the amount of progress they have made 

 

Would it?

 

It took them about 4 days to replace a short section of track and put in place a new small bridge - not to knock the effort that it took but that isn't the same as replacing a section of track that has been washed out or seen it's entire sub-base compromised let alone something like Dawlish.

 

But the key point is no investigation into the cause of the derailment so no delays from getting investigators to the site followed by their need to document everything.

 

That apparently is an acceptable trade-off in the US where 1,700 derailments a year (and about 4 deaths per year) is viewed as acceptable. https://thehill.com/homenews/3539221-how-often-do-trains-derail-more-than-you-think/

 

 

[Grovenor]

14 hours ago, mdvle said:

But the key point is no investigation into the cause of the derailment so no delays from getting investigators to the site followed by their need to document everything.

On what do you base that assumption? I would expect UP to have investigators who would have attended. And there were obviously a large work crew there who managed to get to a pretty remote site. Someone pretty senior had to be there to decide on who and what to call out. But certainly a private vertically integrated and fraight only railroad would have a lot less beaurocracy than we have here.

[mdvle]

1 hour ago, Grovenor said:

On what do you base that assumption? I would expect UP to have investigators who would have attended. And there were obviously a large work crew there who managed to get to a pretty remote site. Someone pretty senior had to be there to decide on who and what to call out. But certainly a private vertically integrated and fraight only railroad would have a lot less beaurocracy than we have here.

 

No NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board) investigation - https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/Pages/Investigations.aspx

 

In most cases the biggest impediment to the restoration of service will be an official government investigation into the cause of the incident - no official investigation means the work can start immediately on cleaning up the mess and restoring the track.

 

As for the railroad doing an investigation - maybe?  But when the industry averages 4.6 derailments a day that is a pretty good indicator that they simply view it as part of the cost of doing business.