Aerojet
Active Member
Well 7 managed to make a splash by piling up in Montana. Been all over the news. My first reaction was either a switch failure or a crossover failure. I have seen many trains, both 7 and 8 and CP cross over at Duplainville over the years - it sure looked like that for some of the cars which did not flip over - also - the consist and baggage car and the first Amtrak coach were past the point of derailment. What caught my eye - was the double signal heads. This meant that this was either a diverging route, going from two tracks to one track or one track now expanding in two tracks.
Later investigations and releases said this happened at the later, that is single track going into double track territory. Now why did the lead 5 make it thru and the trailing 5 did not? Perhaps as some said a sun kink caused the problem. Could be, welded rail is prone to severe sun kinks - it would really amplify the kink thru a turn out in this case. Looking further at pictures the consist looks just fine. But it seems there was a series of cars going across the cross over which somehow was not locked -- or perhaps the sun kink prevented the switch from locking?
Your thoughts? This is interesting to follow. Hopefully they got trains running again ..
TheAerojet
Later investigations and releases said this happened at the later, that is single track going into double track territory. Now why did the lead 5 make it thru and the trailing 5 did not? Perhaps as some said a sun kink caused the problem. Could be, welded rail is prone to severe sun kinks - it would really amplify the kink thru a turn out in this case. Looking further at pictures the consist looks just fine. But it seems there was a series of cars going across the cross over which somehow was not locked -- or perhaps the sun kink prevented the switch from locking?
Your thoughts? This is interesting to follow. Hopefully they got trains running again ..
TheAerojet