The Dangers of Train Yards, Through the Eyes of Railroad Employees
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Re: The Dangers of Train Yards, Through the Eyes of Railroad Employees
#2I'm involved in a rail transformation project. We're now using AR as part of the railway design process to ensure visibility of signals etc.
Re: The Dangers of Train Yards, Through the Eyes of Railroad Employees
#3Interesting story. In Italy trains still require two engineers, although on modern high speed ones the second engineer has to sit away from the windshield and the controls.
Re: The Dangers of Train Yards, Through the Eyes of Railroad Employees
#4When I worked for BNSF I heard a story about a guy crushed between two cars in the knuckle because he lost line of sight with his engineer and they were using hand signals instead of a radio.
They were able to keep him alive long enough to cover him with a tarp and bring his family in to say goodbye. He died immediately upon separation of the knuckle.
Re: The Dangers of Train Yards, Through the Eyes of Railroad Employees
#5When I worked for BNSF I heard a story about a guy crushed between two cars in the knuckle because he lost line of sight with his engineer and they were using hand signals instead of a radio. They were able to keep him alive long enough to cover him with a tarp and bring his family in to say goodbye. He died immediately upon separation of the knuckle.
This is an old urban legend. Feel free to Google it, and you will see everyone who has worked near trains knows a guy who knows a guy who this exact thing happened to.
Re: The Dangers of Train Yards, Through the Eyes of Railroad Employees
#6Because of signal sighting rules in the UK, we experienced a lot of trouble upgrading lines to higher speed. All of a sudden, that signal that you could see for 10 seconds could now only be seen for 8 due to a bridge or whatever. Muchos dollars relocating signals and in some places not being able to increase the line speed at all.
Boring but very real reasons why we "can't just update things"
Re: The Dangers of Train Yards, Through the Eyes of Railroad Employees
#7When I worked for BNSF I heard a story about a guy crushed between two cars in the knuckle because he lost line of sight with his engineer and they were using hand signals instead of a radio. They were able to keep him alive long enough to cover him with a tarp and bring his family in to say goodbye. He died immediately upon separation of the knuckle.
This is an old urban legend. Feel free to Google it, and you will see everyone who has worked near trains knows a guy who knows a guy who this exact thing happened to. Edit: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/the-last-kiss/
And excavator and backhoe workers too as well as heavy presses.
Re: The Dangers of Train Yards, Through the Eyes of Railroad Employees
#8Because of signal sighting rules in the UK, we experienced a lot of trouble upgrading lines to higher speed. All of a sudden, that signal that you could see for 10 seconds could now only be seen for 8 due to a bridge or whatever. Muchos dollars relocating signals and in some places not being able to increase the line speed at all. Boring but very real reasons why we "can't just update things"
And of course there's the whole discussion in the UK about having a second safety-critical person on the train (e.g. "guard", "train manager" etc.) versus driver-only operation.
Re: The Dangers of Train Yards, Through the Eyes of Railroad Employees
#9I got a chance to drive a couple of different engines at the Plumas rail museum. And one of the things that does is help you internalize the amazing amount of mass and momentum a train carries around all the time. The engineer who was with us spoke of freight trains that were a hundred cars of iron ore that, even though they were travelling at only 5mph would take nearly 1000' to bring to an "emergency" stop. While I don't know how true that is, just driving around the engine gave me some insight into how far ahead in time the engineer has to be thinking if they are operating a full train.
Re: The Dangers of Train Yards, Through the Eyes of Railroad Employees
#10Reminds me of this https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/7xqg0q/whats_the...