jis
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Some of you may recall that there was a serious accident near Fonda NY on the Water Level Route involving two freight trains on June 27th 2013. See for example....
http://www.gordon-elias.com/blog/6163/railroad-worker-injured-after-csx-train-crashes-and-derails-in-fonda-ny-accident/
I was among those caught up in the ensuing bustitution of the Empire Corridor service and the Lake Shore Limited around the derailment location. The bustitution continued for several days and many wondered why it takes so long to deal with a derailed train. Well it turns out that the level of mayhem was way more than people originally thought.
It is now leaking out that the collision was caused by the westbound train passing a signal with stop indication and crashing into the side of an eastbound train that was crossing over to the other track ahead of it. It also appears that the train following the eastbound train was Amtrak 280. Furthermore it has now been mentioned in some quarters that if the accident took place a few seconds earlier it would been a head on and not a side swipe and most likely there would have been fatalities in that case.
This is exactly the sort of accident that is preventable by PTC. There were two or more people in the cab of the train that missed the stop signal. So all of the additional eyes did not cause them to detect the stop signal any better than one set of eyes.
I passed by the accident site yesterday on the way to Utica and back. There are still remaining mountains of wreckage on the north side of the track. Rt. 5 through there is still closed pending CSX repairing the road at their own expense. There is still a 30mph slow order through the interlocking which is still being reconstructed. It was completely destroyed by the accident.
http://www.gordon-elias.com/blog/6163/railroad-worker-injured-after-csx-train-crashes-and-derails-in-fonda-ny-accident/
I was among those caught up in the ensuing bustitution of the Empire Corridor service and the Lake Shore Limited around the derailment location. The bustitution continued for several days and many wondered why it takes so long to deal with a derailed train. Well it turns out that the level of mayhem was way more than people originally thought.
It is now leaking out that the collision was caused by the westbound train passing a signal with stop indication and crashing into the side of an eastbound train that was crossing over to the other track ahead of it. It also appears that the train following the eastbound train was Amtrak 280. Furthermore it has now been mentioned in some quarters that if the accident took place a few seconds earlier it would been a head on and not a side swipe and most likely there would have been fatalities in that case.
This is exactly the sort of accident that is preventable by PTC. There were two or more people in the cab of the train that missed the stop signal. So all of the additional eyes did not cause them to detect the stop signal any better than one set of eyes.
I passed by the accident site yesterday on the way to Utica and back. There are still remaining mountains of wreckage on the north side of the track. Rt. 5 through there is still closed pending CSX repairing the road at their own expense. There is still a 30mph slow order through the interlocking which is still being reconstructed. It was completely destroyed by the accident.
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