PSA from Wilgrove: You can't beat the train....EVER!
Wilgrove
16-09-2007, 07:44
The "Pet Peeve about driving" threads made me think back to when I rode along on a Norfolk Southern freight train run. During that run we saw several people try to beat the train. Let me just go ahead and say, You cannot beat the train! The train is riding on smooth rails, and it has smooth wheels. It's basically riding on ice. For a several TON (that's right I said TON) train to stop, it would take several miles, depending on the length and weight of the train. do not ever kid yourself into believing that you can beat the train.
and now a video of several crossing grade accidents.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=p3QHZdnR3-k
Thank you for your time.
The Loyal Opposition
16-09-2007, 08:03
For a several TON (that's right I said TON) train to stop, it would take several miles, depending on the length and weight of the train.
"Several tons" is a huge understatement. A Google search seems to confirm that a locomotive alone is in the hundreds of tons, while an entire freight train is in the 8,000 to 13,000 ton range.
"Several tons" just isn't a big deal. 13,000 tons is :eek:!
Trollgaard
16-09-2007, 08:30
Hmm, I don't think I've ever tried to beat a train across a track, but I did beat a train in a car on the road running parallel to the tracks once.
Pirated Corsairs
16-09-2007, 08:32
Honestly, I think anybody who tries it deserves what they get... I'm more concerned about the passengers in the car with the idiot drivers.
Alexandrian Ptolemais
16-09-2007, 08:50
The "Pet Peeve about driving" threads made me think back to when I rode along on a Norfolk Southern freight train run. During that run we saw several people try to beat the train. Let me just go ahead and say, You cannot beat the train! The train is riding on smooth rails, and it has smooth wheels. It's basically riding on ice. For a several TON (that's right I said TON) train to stop, it would take several miles, depending on the length and weight of the train. do not ever kid yourself into believing that you can beat the train.
and now a video of several crossing grade accidents.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=p3QHZdnR3-k
Thank you for your time.
Oh, yes, you can beat the train. Look at Auckland's Southern Motorway, which runs parallel to the North Auckland Line. There are thousands of vehicles which beat the train every day, all you need is off peak conditions and of course heavy grades (that section of track is one of the steepest graded in New Zealand with an average grade of 1 in 40).
Thumbless Pete Crabbe
16-09-2007, 09:36
"Several tons" is a huge understatement. A Google search seems to confirm that a locomotive alone is in the hundreds of tons, while an entire freight train is in the 8,000 to 13,000 ton range.
"Several tons" just isn't a big deal. 13,000 tons is :eek:!
I was going to say the same thing. :p
To the OP though: yeah, don't mess with trains.
I remember my first-grade teacher, way back when, telling us that we'd be killed if we even approached within a few feet of a moving train because it would kick up tiny bits of lethal shrapnel from the rails. I'm not sure why she had to lie to us like that, but at least it created a healthy paranoia of coming to close. Heh.
Wilgrove
16-09-2007, 09:53
I was going to say the same thing. :p
To the OP though: yeah, don't mess with trains.
I remember my first-grade teacher, way back when, telling us that we'd be killed if we even approached within a few feet of a moving train because it would kick up tiny bits of lethal shrapnel from the rails. I'm not sure why she had to lie to us like that, but at least it created a healthy paranoia of coming to close. Heh.
Well Steam trains has been known to pump out metal fragments from it's piston and smoke stacks that could hurt your eyes.
the book of rules for the railroad i, for a short while, and my dad, for more then 30 years, worked for, required all employees to stand no closer then 8 feet from the nearest rail (with one or two circumstantially listed exceptions, probably handing up train orders or boarding, and of course pulling the cut lever to uncouple cars). one thing that can happen and be deadly, even at that range is those metal straps that are sometimes used to tie down loads on open cars, particularly those center beam cars of milled lumber, if one of those comes loose, as sometimes happens, and gets to wipping arround in the breeze, yah, that can be seriously bad news.
and of course rule a, of the icc prefix to all railroad books of rules in the u.s. is "safty is of the first ... in the discharge of duty". (dam i forgot the exact word, my book of rules from the old s.p. is in the other room where my wife is asleep and i don't want to go in there and wake her up, but anyway it's something like priority or concern or something like that).
oh yes, and an automobile weighs "several tons". a freight train weighs several HUNDREDS (if not thousands) of tons. and stopping in their own lenght means, well, their own length, at least in north america can sometimes be as much as a quarter of a mile or more, which it generally takes close to 2/3 of a mile, at least, to stop one safely without dumping it all over the ground.
that in its own length bussiness is for big holing which almost invariably resaults in derailments.
=^^=
.../\...