Actual date/time of the derailment, 7/5/2019, 8:40 pm EDT. This is the video AFTER the derailment in case you were not watching and have notifications on! Please go to our Website, RU-vid or our Facebook Group sites for more. Thank You.
Thanks to Precision Scheduled Railroading, long trains are put together without any regard to car type, weight, and load. The attitude is run as few trains and make them as long as possible just to keep increasing the bottom line, without regard to common sense safety practices, among them that you do not put empties on the front part of the train.
@@TheStefanskoglund1, thankfully Amtrak only runs a single "Pennsylvanian" (New York-Pittsburgh) train in each direction once a day. Plus the Horseshoe Curve has three tracks, whereas most of the line has two (four prior to the old PRR/Penn Central becoming Conrail).
I wasn’t expecting this in my recommended. I’m thankful it looks like nobody was hurt. Oh yeah, *It was time for Thomas to leave, he had seen **_everything_*
Who built that consist? Empty centerbeams ahead of loaded pulpwood gons. That's not too bright. Couple that with a 9° curve and you get a classic stringlining wreck.
@ShadowPBPBC lol, really? Coal, which is a mined mineral, and full of oils and toxins and radioactive elements, is totally different from activated charcoal. Activated charcoal, made from wood and such, like what you find in a campfire, is very useful for absorbing bad stuff. Coal is not, and badly pollutes water when it spills in it.
@Johnny Dee, I agree that you should learn about what you are talking about before commenting. You did good looking up activated charcoal, now go look up "coal", because it is totally different stuff, and vary badly polluting. And if you put some in your aquarium, the fish would flip you off and then die.
Well, it's hot weather and time for welded rail to swell up and pull out spikes. This mess brought to you by the thermal coefficient of expansion and welded rail.
You had me until you said the "rail swelled up". The rail expands with heat. And unless you have some extremely bad cross ties, it doesn't "pull out the spikes". The track will shift out of alinement. My money is on the that this is a string line derailment. The cars were pulled to the low side of the curve. A variety of reasons can cause this. Too much power on the head end, or the trainline separated near the rear of the train and the brakes started setting up from the rear while the head end was still pulling etc.
Unloaded centerbeam cars can be like twigs, this is certainly a bad placement for at the front of the train, there are actually warning signs on the ends of the car that says that says keep the loading weight the same on both sides when loaded. Thus, an unloaded centerbeam car can be lightweight and cause something like this, specifically on tight curves like horseshoe curve. EDIT: I noticed everyone is also talking about hot weather and rail; that can also do something like that. We have had multiple 90 Degree, Mid 70 Dew point days, and 80% humidity days here both where I am in DE and as well as PA.
Maybe but the locomotives up front do not pull the cars in the back. They only pull the first car. That first car pulls the second car, the second car pulls the 3rd car etc. It is weird to think that way but that's how it really goes. But I don't know which cars and where they derailed.
Exactly its called string lining from memory i seen one yrs agi on Cajon from memory rear half heavy frint empty it just pulls the emptys clean off the rail.
You are right about the loco pulling only the first car. However that car is pulling all the others and if the forces are not inline, as on a curve, the forces either vertical or horizontal on that or any other, car can overcome its weight causing it to lift or be rotated off the track.
@@sdrailproductions NS is no where near as bad as CSX. I've never heard of NS having a derailment in my area, where as there have been far to many from CSX in my area for me to have even tried to have keep count in the last 15 years.
Just went to Horseshoe Curve today. It looks like they cleaned most of it up. But some cars are still on the ground. Just heard about this the day before going to HSC.
On my HO Train set, I’d just pick them up and put them back on. There was even a piece of track to help get the wheels on the track properly. It looked like a spot where a road would cross the train tracks. Is here a road near by?
What caused the derailment in Horseshoe Curve? The rails and ties were loose from the moisture and elements there? Fortunately the derailment did not happened during the daytime while the visitors and tourists were at the park in the Horsehoe curve summit and visitors center. Since it happened at twilight no one was at the park and no injuries.
Why didn't they have a second locomotive at the rear to keep the tension constant. I assume that stretch of rail is well used and the risks well known.
I also grew up in Altoona. I graduated from Altoona High School in 1957. I must have been injected with rail buff DNA. I have been a train enthusiast ever since. Last week I rode from Pittsburgh to Harrisburg on #42, the Pennsylvania. Enjoyed going around the Curve for who knows how many times. Always a thrill; I am glad we did not have a derailment thrown into the stew.
Was anyone hurt? And was there anything worst after this like a collision or even worse an explosion! Hopefully there was nothing flammable or poisonous in the tankers and hopefully nothing was leaking after the derailment
Hey virtual railfan crew, if you still have the full feed, you could actually see last night and hear it happen. You hear the squeal of the wheels and then the derailment and the 3 units go right pass right after it happens.
Basicly bulldozers minus the blade, with a cable, hook system mounted to a boom on 1 side, counter weight & cable spool on the other. Put 1 to 2 on each side of the train car and use the cables to lift, and right side up the train cars. Teams working together to either put them back on the track or remove them for scrapping if too badly damaged to repair. I've seen a few videos of it being done and it's a very time consuming, team work oriented skilled job.
Big news in both Johnstown and Altoona, the two cities on either end of that stretch of rail line part of which is still on sections built in the 1830s as part of the Pennsylvania canal. The canal pre dates the curve by 20 years and used a series of inclines to haul boats between the two canal sections between Altoona and Johnstown. Between the 10 inclines were ten planes where trains hauled the boats. When that system was replaced in 1854 by a rail only system, the planes closer to Johnstown was retained as part of the rail line. Thus that section dates to the 1830s.
It's called string lining: when a series of empty or lightweight cars are placed between loaded or heavyweight cars, the lighter cars are pulled into a taut line between the heavies and flip over.
Confusing that American date order. ( i did read the date in the title and description as 7 may 2019) It helped that the date of publishing said "published on 5 jul. 2019" .
As a Washington resident,.... we had a big train derailment last year..... any ideas?.... seems..unlikely. Why?..... these trains have done the same thing for many years. In Washington, it was over a freeway. Many died. ... very curious. Thank you.
I'd guess some of the cars had there brakes on or otherwise were exerting a braking force and as the engine was pulling the train around the corner the force, higher above the rail, pulled some of the cars over. If it was going too fast the cars would have toppled the other way.
Train is going uphill, around a sharp curve with a bunch of empty lightweight cars in front of heavier loaded cars. You don't need brakes involved for those factors to gang up on you and flop the train on its side. Ask any model railroader :D
So the day I get the horseshoe curve on train simulator for a really good discount, a train decide to hop the track on the track with the *lesser* curve radius of all three of them
amazing cleanup effort - 2 lines open by last night - don't know about M2 being up yet since the camera went down last night (only 800 or so watching so not server overload - maybe weather?)
