Repairing and rerailing infrastucture catastrophies

[ERIC ALLTORQUE]

Just astounding how quick major rail infrastructure is repaired and opened for traffic in the USA, we used to be able to do this kind of thing.......

 

[ERIC ALLTORQUE]

 

[adb968008]

11 minutes ago, ERIC ALLTORQUE said:

Just astounding how quick major rail infrastructure is repaired and opened for traffic in the USA, we used to be able to do this kind of thing.......

 

I think it really took longer than 12min, 12 seconds myself

 

😀

[ERIC ALLTORQUE]

6 minutes ago, adb968008 said:

I think it really took longer than 12min, 12 seconds myself

 

😀

Takes us weeks now to hire consultants to work out what to do in the first place John,only happened yesterday

 

Edited March 4 by ERIC ALLTORQUE

[Michael Hodgson]

22 minutes ago, ERIC ALLTORQUE said:

Just astounding how quick major rail infrastructure is repaired and opened for traffic in the USA, we used to be able to do this kind of thing.......

 

Perhaps because we've stopped driving our locos into the river?

[ERIC ALLTORQUE]

1 minute ago, Michael Hodgson said:

Perhaps because we've stopped driving our locos into the river?

We tend to cut them up on site rather than bother.

[adb968008]

1 hour ago, ERIC ALLTORQUE said:

Takes us weeks now to hire consultants to work out what to do in the first place John,only happened yesterday

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99Gu-odw5ig&t

 

I think the difference is the track and operator are same owner, and regulation of private trains on private land on what is non-passenger operation is somewhat less regulated.

 

see regulation 3 here in the Uk

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2005/1992/regulation/3/made

private lines, on private land, not controlled by the outside railway and not carrying passengers is also exempt from RAIB…

so some industrial derailment in a yard here may not be reported either.

 

 

Edited March 4 by adb968008

[dave1905]

Major US railroads have cars of track panels and ballast standing by at strategic locations and are dispatched as soon as possible.  In addition  within the first couple hours they are locating track equipment to work on the track.  The derailment contractors are ordered generally by "divisions", each division is two sidebooms and a front end loader.  They also come in "steel" and "padded" varieties.  Steel sidebooms have regular steel tracks and are best on wet or rugged terrain where traction is required.  Padded sidebooms have rubber pads bolted to the tracks and are best in yards.  They can crawl over tracks without damaging them.
 A lot of rerailing contractors also use roadable heavy duty cranes to rerail equipment.  The cool thing about sidebooms is that two sidebooms can pick up a rail car and walk away with it, 4 sidebooms can pick up and engine and walk away with it.

[adb968008]

All comes with accountancy, not based of the lowest minimum cost, but the basis of “what does it cost my business by not having it when I need it”.

 

 

Edited March 4 by adb968008

[z4driver]

I think that they probably have more practice given, what I understand, is the poor state of railroad infrastucture in the States.

[Glorious NSE]

In other news, 

17 hours ago, adb968008 said:

All comes with accountancy, not based of the lowest minimum cost, but the basis of “what does it cost my business by not having it when I need it”.

 

 

Alternate view - it's cheaper to provision having outside contractors around to pick stuff up quickly with no independant investigation needed or wanted than it is to resource your railway so that you don't have multi train collisions that drop loco's in the river in the first place.... 

[dave1905]

2 hours ago, z4driver said:

I think that they probably have more practice given, what I understand, is the poor state of railroad infrastucture in the States.

You do realize that the UP alone has roughly 3 times as much track mileage as the entire British national rail system and it is one of 6 major railroads in the US. 

 

In the US there are different classes of track based on the speed and operating conditions.  Much of that "poor infrastructure" is in reality low grade lines that aren't going to be operated at high speeds regardless of track quality.  There isn't any point to maintaining a line to 125 mph standards when you are only going to operate one freight train a day at 20 mph over the line.

 

By all indications, this derailment had absolutely nothing to do with track quality.

[dave1905]

35 minutes ago, Glorious NSE said:

Alternate view - it's cheaper to provision having outside contractors around to pick stuff up quickly with no independant investigation needed or wanted than it is to resource your railway so that you don't have multi train collisions that drop loco's in the river in the first place.... 

Having equipment to resolve a problem and having the line shut down to investigate a problem are two separate things.  Having to wait for an investigation is a purely bureaucracy thing.  This isn't rocket science, it doesn't take that long to gather relevant information to determine the cause of a derailment and a lot of that can be undertaken while the recovery response is being organized or even while some repairs are being made.

 

Ironically, the fact that US roads are predominately freight may make the repairs of the lines and restoration of service more time sensitive than if the lines were mostly passenger.  You can bus passengers around an outage, you don't have those same options with 50-100 thousand tons of coal.

 

Railroad wrecking equipment is very expensive to own and maintain.  And despite what y'all think, it isn't used that often.  Rather than one railroad owning equipment and only using it once a month (or less), it is waaaaaaaaay more cost effective for a contractor to own a set of equipment and then it be used by multiple railroads.  The contractors can disperse the equipment better.

[adb968008]

1 hour ago, Glorious NSE said:

In other news, 

Alternate view - it's cheaper to provision having outside contractors around to pick stuff up quickly with no independant investigation needed or wanted than it is to resource your railway so that you don't have multi train collisions that drop loco's in the river in the first place.... 

in house is better than out of house.

 

Contractors have noloyalty, if coralling adhoc they have less localised domain knowledge and hence the risk profile goes up as everyone covers everyone elses back in in-familiar territory as they rely more on skills, rather than localised knowledge.

of course, they come with cost, and if they arrive in bulk from differing houses, coming to a consensus takes time and money too, especially if when positioned they become entrenched between differing contractor parties with their own biases, procedures and preferences to do things… then you need an even more qualified pm to corall them into order, and sub-order….

 

Thats before you start picking apart costs, apportioning blame for invariable results…

 

get past that you can get hardware in place to do the job, but expect the estimated timelines to prove unrealistic, require additional funds.. each one has a queue for the hand out… then you find the cheapest hired tool wasnt the best one afterall…

 

so more meetings…

At that point someone declares scrapping on the spot is now cheaper than recovery due to costs….

50% agree.. so you comission a study to do the math…

They return suggesting closing the line and doing a full rebuild with a tunnel, but that some newts were seen flying northwards yesterday and may decide to settle.

 

After all that, youve lost millions in revenue, paid millions in fees, lots of meal expenses and still left with locos in the dirt.. so you get some locals to drag em out and a whole bunch of contractors say “we told you that at the start”… which was the best advice they gave and happened to be free.

 

😄

 

i am a cynic. Ive made money out of consulting too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited March 5 by adb968008

[dave1905]

1 hour ago, adb968008 said:

After all that, youve lost millions in revenue, paid millions in fees, lots of meal expenses and still left with locos in the dirt.. so you get some locals to drag em out and a whole bunch of contractors say “we told you that at the start”… which was the best advice they gave and happened to be free.

 

Not how it works here in the states at all.

[z4driver]

2 hours ago, dave1905 said:

You do realize that the UP alone has roughly 3 times as much track mileage as the entire British national rail system and it is one of 6 major railroads in the US. 

 

In the US there are different classes of track based on the speed and operating conditions.  Much of that "poor infrastructure" is in reality low grade lines that aren't going to be operated at high speeds regardless of track quality.  There isn't any point to maintaining a line to 125 mph standards when you are only going to operate one freight train a day at 20 mph over the line.

 

By all indications, this derailment had absolutely nothing to do with track quality.

 

I have pondered long and hard about how to reply to this or whether, indeed, to reply at all. Firstly, I was not trying to make a funny, political, anti-US or any other sort of derogatory remark. Also I never said that this derailment had anything to do with track quality. I was merely stating that the more practice that you have at something, usually the more efficient you get at it. Maybe, "poor infrastructure" was a poor choice of words. If you have low(er) grade lines then the likelihood is that at they may fail, the more line you have the more failures there will be, statistically.

 

However, what I really objected to was being talked down to. I'm a railroad enthusiast who models US railroads. Of course, I know that UP is larger that the British rail network. Of course, I know that there are 6 major railroads in the USA. I model CSX. The fact that the US has different types of operators, from short-line to Class 1, the fact that it operates on such a variety of trackage, over such differing conditions is what makes US railroads so enthralling. From street running to two mile long trains to two CSX ET44's pulling three freight cars, who could not like it.

[adb968008]

46 minutes ago, dave1905 said:

 

Not how it works here in the states at all.

British humour doesnt always cross the pond.

Then again US humour doesnt always work the other way either.

[dave1905]

22 hours ago, z4driver said:

However, what I really objected to was being talked down to.

I apologize for my tone.

 

Knowing from first hand experience that we can run hundreds of 8,000-15,000 ft, 10,000-20,000 ton trains at 40-60 mph across thousands of miles of track every day, I was reacting to the comment that US railroads are in terrible shape.

[ERIC ALLTORQUE]

Anyone watch Dave........

 

[ERIC ALLTORQUE]

 

[ERIC ALLTORQUE]

I like to watch Danny too

 

[dave1905]

Those Mantis cranes are really cool pieces of equipment.  The neat thing about them over sidebooms is if you have a derailed double stack, they can pick the containers off the top level of double stack quite easily.

 

On that black material under the tracks, I wonder how much of that is cinders from countless camelback steam engines, since this is the former LV or CNJ.

Edited March 6 by dave1905

[ERIC ALLTORQUE]

 

[F-UnitMad]

On 11/03/2024 at 01:24, ERIC ALLTORQUE said:

 

How come it didn't explode in a massive fireball, like the locos in the film "Unstoppable"..??!! 😱🤣🤣👍

 

Don't worry, British humour again - I tend to count "Unstoppable" as a comedy.

[ERIC ALLTORQUE]