Hacker News Reader

Comment by rob74 | Hacker News Reader

> Railroad union officials said they have been warning that such an accident could happen because railroad cost-cutting harmed safety measures. [...] The train of three locomotives and 150 freight cars [...] 20 of the cars were carrying hazardous materials, including 10 that derailed. The NTSB said 38 cars in total left the tracks and that the ensuing fire damaged an additional 12.

Maybe put hazardous materials on shorter trains that are in less danger of derailing? But yeah, ok, that wouldn't be as profitable for the railroads...

View on HN

Hey wow remember those rail strikes a couple months back? The ones where none of the media talked about what the workers wanted except for allegedly-dubious demands for "sick days"? The ones where "Amtrak Joe" pulled all the strings he could to shut it down? I wonder what they were so adamant about back then...?

Was this crash related to labor safety or mechanical? I got the impression that this might have happened because the conductor was told not to stop until it hit some sort of secondary wheel/axle temperature check, it had already failed one.

Not that I disagree with the busting of the strike but it is important to not conflate the two issues. If the above is true this could be more related to Trumps repeal of ECP brakes.

They are running on skeleton crews to reduce costs and increased speeds to boost production. If there is no one there to pull the brakes it doesn't matter what kind of brakes they have.

The rail workers have been complaining for years.

There was a conductor though? I am not disagreeing that the labor practices going with rail workers is not right, especially with the ability the federal government has to jump in. Only pointing out that this appears to be a mechanical failure, not a labor safety failure.

The engineer was ordered by dispatch to ignore safety regulations when the warning tripped and did not have the labor protection to tell them no it is unsafe we are stopping and doing a safety inspection.

But he did/does belong to a union? So what are you talking about?

Rail workers work under a completely different set of labor laws than virtually every other industry. They do not have the same protections, workers compensation or union rules than other industries do.

I’m not an expert on the intricacies of it, but the way a guy explained to me is to he union cannot or will not protect members for safety work stoppages.

It's complicated. Rail workers are represented by a union but they are also transportation employees and heavily constrained in how and when they are allowed to strike without pulling jail time for disruption of Federal transit.

As a society, we allow these particular laborers to be forced to labor, even when it is unsafe for them. We are complicit. It will happen to us too, and we will have nobody to complain to.

This is a disingenuous argument. None of what rail workers have requested in their collective negotiations would have prevented this accident.

The engineer was aware of the bearing failure more than 20 miles before the accident site, reported it to management and the railroad’s management ordered him to continue moving. No amount of paid sick days will fix that kind of problem.

You could have 100 staff on every train and it wouldn’t prevent an accident like this one.

You are making exactly the kind of error I was trying to hedge against. If you think the rail workers were not asking for improvements in safety protocols and regulations, you allowed yourself to get duped by the union busters and their evergreen accomplices, corporate news media.

The whole point the union is makings is that the railroad companies are making trains longer and longer.

This is a bad idea. Having more, shorter trains actually increases the odds of derailment/accidents.

No. Because longer (freight) trains with dispersed multiple engine units pulling and pushing freight cars with old braking systems, have different driving physics and characteristics. They are not a good fit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_power

That seems to assume the probability of derailment is independent of the length of the train. If, at a certain size, doubling the length of a train more than doubles the probability of derailment, you are better off with shorter trains.

Sure, but just at a base rate - doubling the amount of trains would double the amount of derailments.

When you add in the amount of coordination each train takes to keep it on its own lines safely, more shorter trains would be worse.

Shorter trains would also mean less severe derailments. Shorter trains also mean that trains are in risky areas for less time, less time decelerating and accelerating, so derailment could be far less than double.

Shorter trains would also make coordination easier, because the current trains are too long for bypass tracks so currently none of these trains can pass each other and it tacks a very long time for a multi-mile train to clear the tracks. Allowing trains to actually overtake each other again would help with congestion, but that mostly helps Amtrack so companies don't care.

No it doesn’t. Doubling the number of trains doesn’t double the number of vehicles if each train is half as long.

You don’t know what you’re talking about here. Longer trains are harder to handle and end up with dynamic forces down their length that are less visible to the drivers. Long enough trains can lead to severe in-train dynamics that the drivers aren’t even aware of which in turn can also produce dangerous vertical wheel-rail contact force scenarios that cause derailment risk to skyrocket.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com