LU battery electric loco in pile up

[Wheatley]

At least for the next series they won't have to make up the false jeopardy bit just before the ad break. 

 

"Will it topple off the trailer ? Will it go round the corner ? Will the rails line up properly ? Will Eric make a pigs of connecting up the trailer and watch while the whole lot rolls off down a hill, hits two dozen cars and ends up in a tree ? 

[ruggedpeak]

54 minutes ago, Michael Hodgson said:

So they were liable?

Obviously I have no idea what really happened but this could be the result of the road/rail equivalent of an actor falling off the back stage. "Looks tight down there but will mak a great shot...."

 

A primary piece of H&S case law comes from the BBC blowing up Anthea Turner many years ago. TV and movies is fairly notorious for a lax approach to safety, as recent tragedy overseas has highlighted.

 

And of course Allely's may be entirely innocent of any fault. I note the twitter pic I linked to involves a small car on the near side of the rig quite a way along the trailer, when all the other vehicles appear to be offside. One possibility is the truck had to take evasive action to someone else doing something silly, and with that size of kit going downhill and little room due to parking etc there was no margin for error if someone did something unexpected.

[cctransuk]

1 hour ago, Michael Hodgson said:

Likewise it could not have run into any legally parked cars if they had not been there.

 

Logically and morally, I have sympathy for the authorised owners of parked cars - if any; little or none for any unauthorised owners of cars damaged in this incident.

 

..... but since when did the law accord with logic and morality?

 

CJI.

[jjb1970]

I don't know the circumstances of this incident, but what constitutes 'authorized' can be problematic. How many times have people gone to an industrial site and been told to park somewhere which has signage saying no unauthorized parking? My view was that if a representative of the site owners told me it was OK to park then it was authorized, I have successfully appealed parking tickets on that basis.

[admiles]

On the plus side whoever chained the loco to the trailer has done a decent job. Hasn't moved an inch!

 

Pure speculation of course but my money would be on a mechanical failure or a medical incident of some sort. Drivers of that kind of kit (I've spent years around similar vehicles) tend to be top-notch. They don't get jobs like that if they're not!

Edited May 15, 2023 by admiles

[ruggedpeak]

Worth pointing out that there has yet to be any actual evidence of what caused the accident. It is reported in the OP without evidence that the truck ran away but there is no evidence on here that that is what happened. I'd suggest avoiding jumping to conclusions, if only to save Andy and Phil from an expensive chat with members of the legal profession.

 

 

[The Stationmaster]

6 hours ago, jjb1970 said:

I don't know the circumstances of this incident, but what constitutes 'authorized' can be problematic. How many times have people gone to an industrial site and been told to park somewhere which has signage saying no unauthorized parking? My view was that if a representative of the site owners told me it was OK to park then it was authorized, I have successfully appealed parking tickets on that basis.

In BR days it was pretty straightforward but it was dependent on signage being both present and legible.  Thus if an area was marked, by sign, such s 'no unauthorised parking' or 'private' or 'no access without permission', and so on. the Claims Dept would not entertain a claim in respect of an unauthorised etc vehicle.  And in many cases where parking was at owner's risk where it was permitted  that was also used as grounds to reject a claim unless lack of care or similar could be proved against the railway.  

 

But that was back then - now it's all in the hands of insurance companies and their assessors.

[Northmoor]

On 14/05/2023 at 08:52, JeffP said:

Maybe, just maybe, we could start moving RAILWAY rolling stock using the RAILWAY? 

As far as possible anyway.

Instead of huge lorries on our congested, narrow, badly maintained roads?

Who is to say it is fit to travel by rail?  Frequently, locos and rolling stock on lorries wouldn't pass an FTR, or would have to be hauled so slowly that it would cause a great deal of disruption.

[Wheatley]

33 minutes ago, Northmoor said:

Who is to say it is fit to travel by rail?  Frequently, locos and rolling stock on lorries wouldn't pass an FTR, or would have to be hauled so slowly that it would cause a great deal of disruption.

Quite. I was once involved in two scrap movements of redundant DMUs and Class 85s from Cricklewood (I think)  to MC Metals in Glasgow; involved in the sense that Ops and PSB  Supervisors en route were all warned to margin them carefully because they were expected to lose time, and to dyke them without prior permission from Control if they started to get in the way. The fact that they went via the S&C, not the most direct route between those two points, shows you how much they were trusted on the WCML. They did eventually get to Glasgow but the delays were measured in days. 

 

Plenty of roling stock moves between depots and maintainers/overhaulers by rail, Rail Operations Group based its whole business model on that, but with Schedule 8 delays on major routes now measured in hundreds of pounds per minute taking a chance on something a bit mechanically dodgy is no longer financially viable  

[Wickham Green too]

12 hours ago, Wheatley said:

... The fact that they went via the S&C, not the most direct route between those two points, shows you how much they were trusted on the WCML. ...

The DMUs, at least, would have been vacuum braked and there might not have been vac-braked services available over Shap at the time. ( When we moved DM395801 'south' from Warrington to the Mad-Hints it had to go via Carlisle .....delays were also measured in days.)

[Wheatley]

All hauled as unfitted with an air pipe from the loco through the windscreens of the various dead locos/DMUs to three Mk2 brake force runners at the back. The DMUs were 101s and some others in NSE livery, no doors (they had boards secure across the gaps) and very few windows left. With hindsight they must have been running as Class 8s which would be another reason to keep then off the WCML. 

 

They had originally been booked to do the trip in one day with a couple of stops for C&W examination, in the event it took them several days with the C&W fitters more or less following them. 

 

A Pete Shaw or Tony Walton photo of one of the movements appeared in a S&C calendar in the early 90s.   

[billbedford]

14 hours ago, Northmoor said:

Who is to say it is fit to travel by rail?  Frequently, locos and rolling stock on lorries wouldn't pass an FTR, or would have to be hauled so slowly that it would cause a great deal of disruption.

 

Was this the loco that recently derailed at Hainault depot?

[Bucoops]

As the loco goes underground, does this make it a genuine runaway mine train?

[decauville1126]

Just wondering if there was any further information on this, such as how did they extract and clear?

[john new]

On 13/05/2023 at 12:21, Talltim said:

Yesterday, an Allelys lorry with a London Underground battery electric loco ran away at Wembley and wiped out loads of cars.

 

Slightly weird YouTube video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7I2cq7zx0s implying it had just occurred. The fact people were videoing the incident on their phone in the modern era isn't the weird bit, the puzzle is that no one appears rushing down from where the truck had come from in orange jackets etc., to do anything about it. I guess any official comments as to what happened are off the table as with that much bent car mess a court case is likely. Weird one though.

 

[RFS]

 

Deleted due to my error .....

Edited June 8, 2023 by RFS

[Peter749]

On 14/05/2023 at 08:52, JeffP said:

Maybe, just maybe, we could start moving RAILWAY rolling stock using the RAILWAY? 

As far as possible anyway.

Instead of huge lorries on our congested, narrow, badly maintained roads?

A brilliant suggestion with just a few problems

 

[1] The London Transport Battery Loco might not be passed to run on Network Rail track

[2] if it was it might not go more than 30mph - that would keep the railway running smoothly

[3] where would you recharge the batteries?

[Peter749]

There is a clip on youtube

 

One of the comments is this

 

"It was Airbag / handbrake failure

I know 1 of the recovery drivers that recovered the lorry, moving the train somehow damaged 1 of the Airbags and when the driver went to get his paperwork signed he looked out the window and just saw his truck take off and the injured person was the truck driver running after it trying to stop it luckily he hit the side of the truck and didn't land underneath it. The story was also in the paper."

 

 

Edited August 24, 2023 by Peter749

[JeffP]

11 hours ago, Peter749 said:

A brilliant suggestion with just a few problems

 

[1] The London Transport Battery Loco might not be passed to run on Network Rail track

[2] if it was it might not go more than 30mph - that would keep the railway running smoothly

[3] where would you recharge the batteries?

I'd not thought of 1), 2) is supposition, and for 3) I'd assumed it towed.

But I accept the point.

[F-UnitMad]

13 hours ago, Peter749 said:

There is a clip on youtube

 

One of the comments is this

 

"It was Airbag / handbrake failure

I know 1 of the recovery drivers that recovered the lorry, moving the train somehow damaged 1 of the Airbags and when the driver went to get his paperwork signed he looked out the window and just saw his truck take off and the injured person was the truck driver running after it trying to stop it luckily he hit the side of the truck and didn't land underneath it. The story was also in the paper."

 

 

Assuming this is one of the suspension airbags, not the crash one in the steering wheel, I still fail to see how that is linked to the brakes coming off & the truck rolling away. The only link between the suspension airbags and the brakes is the supply of compressed air; any reduction in air pressure below a certain level would result in all the brakes locking on.

The tractor unit handbrake only works on the unit itself, not the trailer. How that failed so that it's brakes were released, instead of locked on, would be the first subject of investigation, I'd have thought. Obviously the trailer's own parking brake valve was off, or else the rig wouldn't have moved an inch even without the unit's handbrake applied.

It might just be that the driver simply forgot to apply it, but this Company is a highly experienced outfit, & such a rookie mistake would seem unlikely.

[Wickham Green too]

Are truck brakes failsafe in the same way as train brakes are ? ............ it was common practise to refer to hoses as 'bags' on the railways - certainly in some areas.

[F-UnitMad]

19 minutes ago, Wickham Green too said:

Are truck brakes failsafe in the same way as train brakes are ? ............ it was common practise to refer to hoses as 'bags' on the railways - certainly in some areas.

Yes, they are. Loss of air pressure locks the brakes on. That's why this runaway is a bit of a mystery at the moment.

The air lines between unit & trailer are called 'susies', although I never found out why. 'Bags' or airbags are the big black rubber things that form part of a truck's air suspension.

[Jeremy Cumberland]

I know little about lorry brakes, but I have worked with quite a lot of elderly rolling stock. I have encountered train brakes (both air and vacuum) leaking off in remarkably short periods of time, such as five or ten minutes, with no obvious indication of this happening. The leaks might be from the brake cylinder to atmosphere, or past the brake valve and back into the train pipe.

 

In general, air and vacuum brakes on trains are not intended as parking brakes. That's what handbrakes are for, or if you want a failsafe version, use spring-applied parking brakes.

[The Stationmaster]

At a vintage transport event yesterday I was looking ar a large Sentinel steam lorry - still in regular use asa tar sprayer until 1984 - and it has steam brakes!

[Northmoor]

On 25/08/2023 at 09:14, JeffP said:

I'd not thought of 1), 2) is supposition, and for 3) I'd assumed it towed.

But I accept the point.

I think the maximum operating speed of the LU battery locos is less than 30mph; they have no need to go any faster.  Electric (or diesel-electric) locomotives, when towed, cannot exceed that speed.  This is why specials with 100mph (or greater) electric haulage are still limited to 95mph if there is a Class 47 being towed in the formation.