I wanted to make this video double the length but I'm physically running out of time before I have to move apartments. There is so much more to say and talk about ECP brakes, their implementation and the insane cost of applying them to every car. Maybe I'll make a second add on video to this one eventually...
Quick reminder that NS *LAID OFF ALL FIVE SIGNAL AND DETECTOR MAINTAINERS* in this NS district in the years before this disaster. The maintenance personell left only have time to perform the federally mandated tests.
@@BoxOfMangoes There's not nearly enough chemicals for that to be a concern. This will be vastly diluted by the time it gets in anything. It's likely going to be even lower measurably than mercury in the air from burning coal. We're talking a single train with 115K gallons of chemicals. That's a lot yeah, but the Ohio River carries more than million 2.6 billion gallons of water at any second. This is less than a millionth a percentage and not even all of it went into the river with a large amount burned away. Also you can't believe the water we have is perfectly clean. I live in a smaller city of 50K people, and wherever the small creeks have rocks, you can seem foam in the water. That's runoff from chemical, motor oil leaking from cars, and soap buds. This will have basically zero effect on people, it's being incredibly overly exaggerated. I don't think people realize how contaminated everything is around us yet we call it "clean".
You're also supposed to stop your freight train if a detector fails to give you a "no defects recording" as that could indicate the detector has failed or your train could be derailed (yet still moving) and ran over the detector and destroyed it. This is what we were taught at the RR I worked at.
For ours, it depends on the type of detector. Talk on entrance only? Keep going. Talk on defect only? Keep going. Talk on exit? Tell dispatcher, they contact detector desk and you follow whatever instructions they give you
@@josephjoestar3275 Admittedly, I've been retired from the railroad industry for nearly five years. But I recall the detectors we had at that time had a recording telling you the location of the detector, your axle count and if your train had a defect and which axle(s). Otherwise, you heard the detector location, your axle count, "no defects" and "think safety ... out."
Sitting 200 yards from a detector right now. All it has said for the last 3 trains is detector and mile post. No direction, no speed, no axle count, no detector out nothing like when you went over them 5 years ago. Yes it is a hotbox and dragging equipment detector.
Thank you for bringing up the hotbox detectors. I seriously don't understand how a clearly burning car wouldn't have been caught by a detector and it was driving me nuts that nobody in the news was bringing them up.
@@Bobrogers99 If the train crew received no response from the detector (as it will also give you a "no defects detected" recording), then the crew should assume the detector has failed and stop the train and report the failure to the train dispatcher. More than likely the conductor will either have to walk the entire length of the rain or inspect the train from the ground while it rolls by at 5 mph.
If there’s a slight bounce on a level crossing it’ll get picked up by a measurement train and then they’ll fix the track next time they do maintenance. Instead of “eh the train is still on the tracks, f it”
@@OumuamuaOumuamua The railroad company I worked 26 years for was in no way "lazy" nor any of the other railroads I would take transfer trains to in the Chicago area. They were very strict with safety so much to the point that we use to say, "this is the only industry that as soon as they hire you, they look for a way to fire you for some rules infraction." Let me give you an example. The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) come up with a rule forbidding the use of cell phones by crew members while operating a train. My company went one step further when it made it against the rules to use a cell phone while inside a locomotive ever if you were on a break. One crew member didn't think this applied to him when he used his cell phone on an engine during the crew's lunch break. He got caught in the act by two trainmasters and the entire crew (three people) were fired that day. Pretty much everyone "got religion" in the railroad with the use of their cell phones after that.
I'm a civil engineer who worked on commuter rail systems for 2+ decades, in addition to another decade+ on other trans modes. That video of the racing freight train starting at 4:09 is just very scary but also very very routine & is a common track bed situation before & after grade crossings, of which there are multiple small ones in that location. The road bed of the roadway is of a different material, thickness, configuration than the base material of the rail bed, thus can lead to differential settlement & even differential "stiffness" in the road bed depending on depth to groundwater, soil type beneath, temperature of soil, temperature & humidity of the air. In this case, you can see the entire train, especially the locomotives, jumping like a set of bucking bronco's, as they navigate the differences in sub base conditions associated with these very simple very basic grade crossings. I see this in "foamer" video's on YT all the time, as they are usually filming at grade crossings. Now, is this "dangerous"? Apparently not that much, considering it's so very very very common everywhere. But given that train speeds are increasing, along with lengths & weight, it's definitely a "problem in waiting". Certainly if an axle or other component was near failure, this extreme cyclical loading could be the "straw that breaks the camel's back".
It looked like it was designed to get air. I bet the crew doesn't go "whee!" as they jank over the transitions. Practical Engineering recently did a video on bridge ramps, transitions, settlement, and load requirements. If such transitions are not properly planned they create added wear on vehicles and infrastructure, and can easily lead to accelerated degradation and potentially catastrophic failure. It's bad enough we let bomb trains roll with little in the way of safety inspections, adding crappy grade and transition planning and maintenance just invites disaster. But, hey, saving on rolling stock and stuff makes the company stock go up, so yay?
Indeed, at major structures, such as bridges, major road grade crossings, "interlockings" (crossovers between multiple tracks), even the approaches to maintenance shops in yards, "transitions" are well planned for via subsurface design. It's these small ones that are problematic, again, depending on subsurface conditions. This is a really extreme example - high speed combined w/a series of little crossings. Good thing it's on a straightaway.
If you don't want to insult railfans then say railfan, don't call them foamers, in quotes. Yes many of them get a bit excited, but most of them know more about trains and railroading than 99% of the population.
@@larrybolhuis1049 I'm a foamer, as well as worked on railroads. I can take a joke. Aimed at myself. Pull the stick out of your ass. I'm also HIgh Functioning Autistic / "Asperger's", so "knowing more than 99% of the population" about just about anything is the story of my life. But no one cares, until their toilet backs up, or a bridge randomly collapses. I'm still a Foamer.
How can they even prevent a strike? Seems pretty difficult to me. Even if it's illegal to strike, you aren't going to get much work out of a man/women that doesn't want to work. ;)
@@Robbedem Congress voted to outlaw the strike, which was an implicit threat that they would send in the cops/other grunts with guns to break a possible strike
A great overview of the incident. It's kind of crazy how big this story blew up that non-train people are talking about it. I hope now the nation's spotlight is on freight railroads, there can be more reforms to improve the system and treat the workers better.
non train people are talking about it because it has been politicized. seems blaming this on Trump is what all the talk has been, and of course blaming this on corporate greed. it's almost as if trains never derail except this one time and it HAS to be blamed on some overarching plot be some evil transgressor. can't be that bearings fail and the results are this. the very same people would have lost their minds in the 1970's with major derailments every week.
According to the NTSB's preliminary report, the hotbox detector in Salem, OH reported that the wheel bearing's temperature was 103 degrees Fahrenheit above the ambient temperature. Norfolk Southern's policy states that you are only required to stop the train and inspect a hot bearing once it is 170 degrees Fahrenheit above the ambient temperature. There's more to these regulations than this, and I encourage everyone to read the preliminary report for more information. However, that's one policy that needs to be looked at in my opinion.
I'm a retired locomotive engineer. In fact, my old route from Mansfield OH to Conway PA went through East Palestine. While I generally agree with your conclusions, I have some serious differences with your take on ECP brakes. You imply that they are new and untested technology. They have been in use safely in more enlightened countries for over twenty years. They are tried and tested technology. As you say, the difference in set up time is just a few to a dozen or so seconds depending on the length of the train, even a few extra seconds can significantly lesson the impact of 10 or 20 thousand tons slamming into those stopped cars. I agree that having shorter trains will lesson that impact too, but you can do both. Engineers are taught to use dynamic brakes first and only use the air brakes when absolutely necessary because air brakes have a tendency to kick, or go into emergency just from normal use. That's not the case with ECP. With ECP engineers could brake the entire train, instead of just the head end, giving them much better control of the train. Another advantage of ECP is that you could add links to sensors to the cable bundle for the brakes. You could put a heat sensor in each set of wheels which would let the engineer know if a wheel was heating up, instead of having to wait twenty miles or so to the next detector. Your worst error was the claim that having a unit in the middle of the train help speed up braking application. Mid-train units are electronically controlled to ease the pulling strain on long and heavy trains, but their brakes are cut out. If their brakes were cut in, you would have to have someone on the engine to bail off the engine brakes every time the engineer ion the lead locomotive used the air brakes. As far as speed of brake application, they are no different than any other car in the consist. So yes, we need to regulate the length and weight of trains and we need have more car and track inspectors. But we also need ECP brakes.
Hey now, if you want a hopper of gravel delivered two weeks late because it was stuck in a yard one city over you're not gonna find it anywhere else than here!
Actually, the Defect Detector in Salem Ohio did go off. According to the NTSB the Salem detector was performing to all specifications. Reportedly the wheel hadn't gotten hot enough yet for it to report a critical alarm, and the crew didn't get one until well after it was too late...
So if the bearing was visibly on fire at the time, it could be a fault in the detector design? If your detector is working as intended and reading low, while the bearing is on fire, that's no bueno.
@@professorspark2361nothing wrong with the detector, the companies just put the critical temperature higher so there is less stoppages, they care more about profit than safety
@@deeznoots6241 I think, that if the temperature set point is high enough that the bearing being actively on fire did not trip it, they may have set it too high. Regardless of if it functioned as intended, it did not stop the accident, and so it failed the intended purpose.
I hope Ohio still lets trains go through them. But if it doesn’t, then we need Conrail to come back from the dead and take over freight. This channel is very Conrail friendly, so we can all agree that Conrail needs to come back to solve the situation
Ohio can't do anything. Rail lines are private land and thus have all the protection the constitution provides for private land. Ohio could try to eminent domain the rail lines but thats going to involve a lengthy and expensive legal fight with NS
@@TheUrbanGaze This is actually being tested in the supreme court right now, including ironically enough Ohio who wants the right to fine trains that block intersections
My cousins are from Casselton, and I remember when the oil train there exploded. That was really my first realization around how bad rail was getting in the US.
Thanks for making this video. I live 45 miles southeast of East Palestine OH. I'm worried that my water and air is contaminated here even though our Local news (Pittsburgh) had said on repeat that only Beaver County PA should be worried.
@@the_retag There is a testing area very close to me by the Allegheny County Health Department and it is normal here so far. The good news is that the water and air is normal. So far.
Yeah, you don't need to be worried about East Palestine if you are outside Beaver and Lawrence counties. Most of the air pollutants ended up going north and they would disipate and dilute by that point. And the Allegheny and Mon are upriver from East Palestine as well. What you do need to be concerned about is Pittsburgh's own problems with at least a dozen polluting sites in its own right and a water system that is broken in many places.
To be honest, I wish you spent more time talking about the policy stuff. This was a very preventable disaster. Yes there were no immediate deaths from the incident, but it has effectively ruined the lives of thousands of people, traumatized them, and more likely than not given them serious long term health complications. You went really easy on the media in my opinion. I don't believe there was a coverup, but it's absolutely worth outrage that it took over a week for mainstream media to actually start giving the disaster major coverage and not even high quality coverage. Also with Buttigieg, even if he is very limited in what he can do, shouldn't we at least expect him to be out talking about the policy changes you propose in this video rather than throwing his hands up and saying there's nothing DOT can do about it?
What do you expect from a liberal, they love the mainstream media. Let's all be honest if this happened under a conservative administration or if it took place in a blue area of the country it would be one of the biggest stories of the year
There us huge danger in listening to those that want to act like they are objective experts who want to ignore policy and politics. As a train person you have to understand your interest IS political and crushing the rail workers strike months back was an example. Just because brakes or workers rights didn't CAUSE this disaster there's huge danger in poo pooing discussion of those reforms too while national and regulatory attention is on the subject
There absolutely was an attempt at a cover up, NS tried their hardest to downplay the situation, say its safe and be the ones responsible for home water testing (with signing a waiver nullifying NS of any liability of the accident), everyone said no to it for good reason. That and they kept fibbing about how much hazardous material actually was on that train, and was found out it was way more than what they originally said. I dunno about the news being in on it but i do think some of the districts absolutely were, railways have a lot of power in Ohio.
Sr Electrical Engineer at [unnamed big passenger railroad]: We tested ECP on literally one train a few years back. Haven't heard much about any other railroads testing ECP, but I think making that the law of the land just adds more complex systems with more failure points for NS to not inspect.
All I can figure as an electrician is also more points of failure as well. Not that I'm nearly as well educated, real world experience says more points of failure, fail more.
I’m so glad you made this video. I live 20 minutes from East Palestine and I was actually in town the night it happened. I wanted to know why it happened and everyone has been hung up on calling it “America’s Chernobyl” or calling it a coverup instead of blaming NS.
Also EOTDs can be used to dump air on the rear of the train in an emergency to apply the brakes faster. They are absolutely necessary on long trains without a DPU on the rear.
All the time I operated freight trains for a class 1 railroad I never had a hind end marker (smart one) that could reduce the air pressure to set the brakes from the rear of the train (versus the front). The end of train markers gave you the brake line air pressure on the rear and you could also "dump" the air for an emergency brake application (in fact, "dumping the rear marker" is part of an air brake test before the train departs the yard.
I think there should be enough support to Nationalise Norfolk Southern just out of spite for what these criminals have done to the workers and the townspeople. at least Ohio should nationalise ALL it's railways just so this doesn't happen again
@@WAL_DC-6B "As the name suggests, false equivalence logical fallacies are a cognitive bias by which events, ideas or situations are compared as if they are the same when the differences are substantial"
Now there are some people that want all trains gone. Imagine if same company had to hire 100 truck drivers to deliver the same load on roads. Not only it would contribute to damage of those roads, we would have so many more accidents like that.
@@kitchin2 there were 150 cars on that train, and idk the frequency it drives (assumed lower tha once a day) or how much each car carries compared to semitrailer (assumed around as much, while it's 5x)... I am perhaps wrong on both, but either way. nobody want's to crash into chemical truck.
One personal experience I had in regards to defect detectors occurred about seven years ago. I was on a train that had already traversed over 600 miles of territory, and had gone over several defect detectors. A conductor standing on the ground doing a roll by reported sparks coming from the wheels of cars just ahead of our cut in DPUs. My conductor went back, and released the hand brake on the cars someone had missed. My conductor mentioned that the wheels had turned dark purple from the heat.
FWIW I worked for NS briefly back in the 2010s and frankly it wasn't a great place to work. They did spend a lot of time talking about safety but perhaps it was mostly just talk. I do remember while I was there there was a sign in the break room saying something like "N days since last fatal accident" and N went to zero at one point. (As a recall, one worker was killed by a mudslide while walking the tracks to check for flood damage.)
“No it wasn’t a coverup, it had media coverage” The only reason it got media coverage is because of the internet blowing up the subject and they were like “oh fuck we can’t hide this anymore”
If anybody wants to learn more about the derailment, and specifically about why people have been so concerned about some of the chemicals (like vinyl chloride) that the train was transporting, I highly recommend That Chemist's video on the derailment (his channel is literally called 'That Chemist'). He does a good job of boiling everything down such that it's concise and easy to understand for those that don't know a lot about chemistry.
I think the first claim about it not seeming newsworthy in the mainstream isn't really entirely correct. A huge explosion of toxic chemicals causing a mushroom cloud in a town is something they'd usually lap up, but it wasn't really clearly politically advantageous for one party and the clear enemy was a huge corporation so it's possible there was very little motivation to cover it. However it already became a huge news story bc of independent media, tons of Americans had heard of it and we're very concerned so MSM was kind of forced in a competitive way to begin covering the story that has gripped the nation
Exactly, that's my read, too. One party is big on railroad and in charge of federal oversight, the other is against regulations and in charge of state government, therefore nobody has an interest to ask the awkward questions that could lead to actual change.
As someone who is currently studying chemistry, it's also been really frustrating to see all the journalists, politicians, and terminally online keyboard warriors suddenly become experts in chemistry when they're criticizing how the officials handled the derailment by setting the vinyl chlorine on fire. There were two big problems with the derailed cars which made the situation extremely dangerous and which demanded their immediate action: number one was that pressure was building up inside the containers, basically turning them into giant bombs. If this pressure built up too much then the containers would've exploded, sending shrapnel and vinyl chlorine everywhere, which easily could've gotten into the water table and into people's lungs. The other problem is the flash point of vinyl chlorine is very low (-78 C, about -108 F). The flash point is used to measure how flammable a chemical is, and it's defined as the temperature where a liquid vaporizes into a flammable gas. I've seen people asking "why didn't they just isolate the tanks and cool them down to prevent the explosion?" and other questions along those lines - it's because there was no time to bring the equipment required to cool VC down to below -78 C out to East Palestine. So to summarize: if the officials hadn't responded the way they did, what most likely would have happened was that the tanks would have exploded, sending shrapnel everywhere and covering East Palestine in a vapor cloud of vinyl chlorine gas, which could have been ignited by any kind of spark, and which would have turned the entire town into a giant fireball of phosgene gas. So yeah, the controlled burn and getting rid of the vinyl chlorine as fast as possible was the best (and basically only) option, regardless of what the discord users are saying in #politics. I'm not trying to claim that I'm an expert, and there could be some information that I'm missing or an alternate solution I don't know about, but this is my take as someone who knows chemistry.
Hey, thanks for explaining that. I wasn't sure whether a controlled burn was necessary, OR if the company just wanted to get rid of a bunch of toxic chemicals (that they may or may not have been 100% honest about at first), in a quick and dirty way. Companies are never forthcoming.
@@grmpEqweer Yeah it could've been the case that Norfolk Southern just wanted to get rid of the chemicals as fast as possible and would've done the burn even if there was a better option, but I'd like to think that at least one person on the team behind the burn knew what they were doing. It'll be interesting to see if NF will try to dodge paying for the cleanup though, that could give some more insight into what they think about the disaster.
@@charliewilson8782 I heard they reopened the line without doing a proper clean-up first. They have to break up the track now to remove all of the contaminated soil.
I was in Miamisburg a few weeks ago and saw a train that was also exceedingly long, about 120 cars, maybe longer. I didn't think about it at the time, but that train was probably under the same conditions for possible failure as the East Palestine derailment, it just hasn't happened yet. Reading more up on derailments, it's obvious the precision railroading thing has been the reason trains derailed so much in the past 30 years.
When you’re able, please elaborate on why you think Buttigieg was “mostly” powerless in doing anything to help prevent or rectify this situation. Thanks!
Thanks for the great work, just wanted to point out a minor detail, when you mention North Dakota's Casselton derailment, at ~11:23 you call them ethanol cars, the cars were carrying crude oil
Thanks for making a video on this, I live in the area and we go to a camp each summer only 20 minutes away from East Palestine. Its kinda scary with all of the stuff that’s been happening, we had to buy a bunch of bottled water in case the tap was contaminated.
I have heard many wrong assumptions in my 40 years of railroading Allan but it does no good to talk down to people when they point to the need for ECP brakes. We developed this at AAR research and test in Chicago back in the 80's and people's frustration in this regard has more to do with how long the industry resists adopting improvements, and this would include ECP brakes that can dramatically reduce stopping distances under many scenarios. Humility is an asset.
Apparently NS only stopped the train when the temperature was around 250f above the ambient temp , so it was detected three times, but they only decided to stop when the temp got REALLY hot, which really isn't good enough.
4:30 if you hadn't told me your friend, Brian, goes by they them I wouldn't have known how to refer to your friend, Brian. Very appreciated, and highly relevant for the video. 👍
Hey Alan, great video coverage on the tragedy in Ohio. I was wondering if you could dedicate a video to the failures in the policy decisions governing the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) service. California seems intent on thinking that gutting it further because a transportation service isn't turning a profit is a good thing and I'm finding it difficult to explain to folks why that logic is incredibly shortsighted (like most things under capitalism :/)
The lesson here is to Never compromise on safety processes. It's necessary to modernize and update them, and don't ever give up on them. If you do, then it will bite back hard at some point. The freight railroad Execs. have been skimping on safety to prioritize profits, and that's now biting back hard. Safety includes inspecting the rails as well as the trains themselves.
It is being covered up, well at least it’s not being taken seriously enough, a mushroom cloud and contaminated water, maybe I’m stupid but it’s at least not being taken seriously enough
It’s hard to cover up something that’s both extremely public, and can be leaked by the average Joe with a camera, or professionals willing to do research on the ground
It's a bit of it's not being taken seriously enough but also it's not as bad as it could be. We've seen worse ecological disasters, and some of them have been from similar incidents. And the emergency response was swift and appropriate; scary as it may look with proper efforts this isn't going to scar the land for long. The issue is there's not much for laypeople to talk about unless they're willing to understand why rail is where it is, and that's no good for capital. This leaves news agencies treading water talking about how often trains derail in the US and how scary the effects of this look without being able to go into detail or meaningful discussion.
I actually haven't read anything on this incident and was waiting for a channel like this to do a video on it to learn what happened. Also you know things are bad when conrail gets praise.
What are you talking about? Conrail was wonderful, it was a golden age of American rail. Granted I only know about Conrail from this channel so watch his videos on Conrail
The Ohio derailment is a carbon copy of the Mississauga derailment of 1979. Read up on that one for the trains, the part that failed, and the toxic chemicals involved. They are completely different in how the media and politicians responded. Even the Canadian rail company handled it better.
It’s not the governments fault (well only partly) it’s the fault of the private companies giving the middle finger to maintenance and normal operations because: “muh profits” and “muh investors”
I was so confused about this story. People acting like its normal or not a big deal. Im Dutch and ive never heard of an incident like this. Especially with these goods on board; this shouldn't have happened
You don't hear about them because Europe doesn't do freight rail. Less than 10% of freight in Europe is transported by train in the US over 40% of freight is moved by train
@@AdamSmith-gs2dv oh wow. I wonder why that is. I know in Europe many warehouses have rail connention. Even some ikeas i believe. Imma look into that. I know freight trains are the cheapest method for transport in the US, but i wonder what explains that difference
@@Joesolo13 it's an illusion. the typical train length in Switzerland is 2,500 feet and they can't run double stacks so this means more short trains on a rather small rail network. the total system is only 3,300 miles; Wisconsin has about the same rail miles. Switzerland hauled 7 billion ton miles by rail, 35% less than by road. in that same year, 2019, the US hauled 1.5 trillion ton miles. i think your understanding of "a lot" is distorted a tad by seeing lots of short trains zipping about.
Reminder just a few months ago when employees want strike and safety being one of them like this? And then the current president somehow didn't help the railroad industry and force them to go back to work?
We disagree on several policy positions, Alan, including electrification and nationalization, but I must commend you on the quality of your railroad videos. You're obviously very knowledgeable about the subject and the sound, graphics, and video footage are excellent. But most impressive is your narration. This video is one of your best. Keep up the good work. And thanks for the effort that goes into every production.
@@utterbullspit No...I do NOT think nationalization is a desirable option. There is no justification for turning an efficient, profitable industry into an inefficient, money losing government entity like the U.S. Postal Service.
@@michaeljones7927 So you think its a bad idea that the government doesn't maintain the rail infrastructure and control who may use it? Alot of disasters are preventable with proper maintence.
@@Mgameing123 I have no confidence in the ability of government to efficiently operate and maintain our national rail system. I was part of the government railroad regulatory apparatus for much of my career and observed widespread mediocrity. I liked my fellow employees, but cannot imagine any of them managing a railroad.
the US post office only loses money because Republicans rewrote policy to lose money in the first place. not to mention services are not supposed to make money if the first place.
Thanks for the video, especially the policy suggestions. The other day, I was on the way to the grocery store here in town, and a Norfolk Southern tanker unit train was going through town, and tankers all had flammable material placards on them. I live about 200 yards from the railroad tracks, and I really hope we don’t have a derailment here. I think I’m going to write my representatives , and urge them to take action to keep these railroads safe. I am a big fan of using railroads to carry both freight and passengers, and even have had friends in the industry. I believe with the proper regulations and safety procedures on the part of the railroads, they can become again one of the safest ways to carry goods.
Very informative..The railroads were the original "robber barons", still are. The class ones should force to divest of their main line ROW....it would could be publicly owned or sold to a non-profit company. The railroads would have to pay tolls to use the system and any operator could go anywhere...Open access. principle.
Train having blown up in Ohio? Did Norfolk Southern take proactive measures after the disaster that occurred, on a train run by a different company, in the 2010s in the small Quebec town of Lac-Mégantic? Apparently not.
In 2020 the entirety of the Netherlands counted 12 derailments. 11 of which occurred at low speeds during shunting. The 12th one (a passenger train) was caused by wheel defect. In this case too, a hotbox detector didn't trigger because no measurements exceeded a critical value. However, that's the single derailment in mainline operation in an entire year. It's easy proof that proper maintenance of tracks and rolling stock lead to fewer accidents.
thank you so much for this video i love 15 minutes away from east palestine and have a lot of friends from the town and the entire event has been blown WAY out of proportion.
Many years ago I was standing next to the PRR mainline that is now part of the NE Corridor Amtrak. I was watching a freight passing and noticed flames and smoke belching from a wheel set of one of the cars. I waited for the caboose to pass, and one of the crew was standing on the rear platform. I waved and yelled "hotbox." He nodded his head in acknowledgement as if he already knew there was a problem.
Alan, thank you so much for making this. I'm from (and currently living in) Ohio and I have several friends from East Palestine. I've super pissed about the derailment mainly because it was preventable by y'know good practice by the railroads. I've been wanting to do more research into the specifics of the policy that let this happen, and you just gave me the directions I needed.
According to the NTSB Preliminary Report, posted on February 23, 2023, the HBD (Hot Bearing Detector) at MP 79.9 read the bearing at 38F above ambient, the HDB in Salem? MP 69.01 detected the bearing temp at 103F above ambient. The HBD in East Palestine at MP 49.81, recorded the temp at 253F. I'm guessing the HBD in Salem was on the west side of town, and something went catastrophic almost exactly at the HBD in Salem. I have no experience with trains, but going from 38F over ambient, to 253F over ambient in a span of 30 miles, seems a bit excessive, when when 170-200F is "non-critical, inspect". The HBD in Salem triggered the alarm, and the train was already on the brakes (manually) when an automatic emergency brake application initiated. So I'm guessing the train derailed very close to the East Palestine HBD. Sounds like this was just a case of "wow, that sucks". Totally acceptable temps at both previous HBD, tripped an alarm at East Palestine, but the train was already in the process of derailing.
Something everyone should keep in mind is that most of the equipment NS pulls is old and in bad condition. Crews have to take what customers give them but NS should do a better job of inspection.
Standardization of Defect Detectors & An investigation into the Defect Detectors along the route after a crash, with an immediate penalty/fine issued for any ones not working.
THe same situation happened before in the movie "White Noise" ... in a place relatively close to "Palestine, Ohio" ... you forgot to mention "Nationalize Mainlines"
Can always count on Norfolk Southern to always find a way to colossally mess things up. Honestly though, if this doesn’t wake up the FRA, NTSB or really anyone in the federal government, than I’m not sure what will
I understand that defect detectors provide warnings 30 miles in advance of the derailment, and that the crew responded accordingly to try and stop the train. If so, I think that the 9300ft train was likely too long and heavy to stop safely. I think we are witnessing the tragic results of PSR taken to its limits.
The number of views speaks to how hungry the public is for intelligent and non-sensationalized information. When I accidentally watch MSM stories on a topic like this, I recoil in disgust as they think great news coverage is 'finding a person to call a hero', 'finding a villain', or interviewing an anguished wife finding out her 'family provider' is safe and broadcasting the reuniting. Thank you for acknowledging the contributors who added expertise when needed and context for what we are hearing from MSM 'experts'. This sounds so basic and fundamental which should make everyone wonder why is the MSM not doing this? Thanks Alan.
Problem is that cable news is mostly run by people who used to run sports coverage…so it’s all about one team vs. the other team and putting the news out in a narrative that your audience and advertisers keep coming back for. And then when something substantive comes up, frame it in terms of what will get your team riled up…because that keeps the eyeballs glued and the advertisers dropping more cash. The truth is often less exciting, but it’s a whole lot more useful. The pandering to advertisers is honestly the worst thing about corporate media…for example BP doesn’t step up advertising because they want to sell more oil-it’s because they want to buy more favorable or less unfavorable coverage. BTW, expect to see more warm & fuzzy Norfolk Southern ads…because it’s cheaper than actually investing in labor or safety.
Why do trains derail so often in the states and why does the attitude to derailments seem to be so casual? I checked the stats for derailments in Finland and there have been a total of 2 derailments (not including derailments after collisions) in the entire 2000s. And anytime there is any accident it gets thoroughly investigated, fixes/upgrades are recommended and then implemented. Actually, even looking at some of the footage shown in this video I can't believe how bouncy some of those tracks look like.
Initial news reports I read said that the engineers of the train were aware the defect detector had gone off and were in the process of bringing the train to a stop when the derailment ocurred.
Regarding the Hot Box Detectors. The NTSB has released their preliminary findings and it seems the HBD’s were in working order however the temperatures being read were not high enough to reach the threshold for triggering an alarm. The follow is an extract from their report: On the Fort Wayne Line of the Keystone Division, NS has equipped their rail network with HBD systems to assess the temperature conditions of wheel bearings while en route. The function of the HBD is to detect overheated bearings and provide audible real-time warnings to train crews. Train 32N passed three HBD systems on its trip before the derailment. At MP 79.9, the suspect bearing from the 23rd car had a recorded temperature of 38°F above ambient temperature. When train 32N passed the next HBD, at MP 69.01, the bearing’s recorded temperature was 103°F above ambient. The third HBD, at MP 49.81, recorded the suspect bearing’s temperature at 253°F above ambient. NS has established the following HBD alarm thresholds (above ambient temperature) and criteria for bearings: • Between 170°F and 200°F, warm bearing (non-critical); stop and inspect • A difference between bearings on the same axle greater than or equal to 115°F (non-critical); stop and inspect • Greater than 200°F (critical); set out railcar. Train 32N was operating with a dynamic brake application as the train passed a wayside defect detector on the east side of Palestine, Ohio, at milepost (MP) 49.81. [4] The wayside defect detector, or hot bearing detector (HBD), transmitted a critical audible alarm message instructing the crew to slow and stop the train to inspect a hot axle. The train engineer increased the dynamic brake application to further slow and stop the train. During this deceleration, an automatic emergency brake application initiated, and train 32N came to a stop. I used to be a Trainmaster out of Conway Terminal where the 32N was headed if anyone has any additional questions about NS and Railroad Practices in general. www.ntsb.gov/investigations/Pages/RRD23MR005.aspx
Is it reasonable to lower the threshold? Or do you think it would be better to increase the frequency of detectors or even switch to something like RailPulse?
@@XenSoc I’m not an mechanical engineer but I think increasing the frequency of detectors would be the way to go. Lowering the temperature could increase false alarms and get people in the bad habit of assuming that all alarms are likely false. I don’t think what Railpulse is currently trying to roll out would be able to detect a hotbox. But maybe in the future.
I would feel better if the regs called for lower thresholds for stop & inspect when the same or an adjacent axle comes up hotter on subsequent detectors. Being 70 degrees hotter in 10 miles and < 15 degrees below the stop & inspect threshold seems like a really bad risk to take. If it’s a bearing problem, even slowing down the train to half speed probably isn’t going to prevent that thing from getting much much hotter, would it?
this is a good example of why worker protections are actually a safety issue. you dont want your train maintenance crews understaffed & you dont want sleep deprived nurses
Hearing Justin certainly was a nice surprise! He is co-host of an amazing podcast on engineering disasters called "Well There's your Problem" right here on UA-cam (with slides!) or on your favorite podcast app, for anyone who is interested!
One thing that caused the derailment was mostly the lack of car men to do maintenance and the PSR 90 second car inspection [rule?], but other then that. I think no one could have predicted that the hot box detectors would fail.
Amazing work. Really appreciate you recognizing areas you don’t know as well yourself and platforming friends of yours who can better speak to certain things… it sure would be cool if journalists did more of that in covering news events involving issues or topics they’re totally unfamiliar with!
Norfolk Southern's primary function is to make money for its holders. Its secondary function is to move freight via rail within the framework laid out by federal laws as enforced by the FRA.
Let's go to the root cause. Bearings are supposed to last millions of km and are always replaced on the same wheelset at the same time-only one side looked to be failing. And they don't just fail in minutes- symptoms will be there for hundreds of hours beforehand. The standard over-temperature for a bearing is max 40 deg above ambient, and should have been picked up a long way before this disaster. I'd be interested in the number of hot boxes detected across the states each day - I'd be concerned if there were none.
Also it sounds like defect detectors need to be placed more often than every 20 miles. According to the NTSB report, 32N passed 3 detectors. The first recorded a temp of 38F above ambient, the second recorded over 100F over ambient, and the third reported 250F over ambient, just before the automatic e-brake kicked on. After the third, the engineer/driver increased the dynamic brake application to stop the train, just before the auto e-brake kicked on. Those are some serious temperature jumps, and it could have been caught sooner with more frequent detectors, everything else notwithstanding.
Because of this disaster, Norfolk Southern railroad is on the verge of filing for bankruptcy. And not only that, they are in general a horrible corporation. They do not treat their employees well; they are not given enough sick/vacation time and they are forced to work unreasonable amounts of consecutive hours at a time. The way I see it, they will be forced to sell off their tracks to passenger carriers such as Amtrak and Brightline for expansion of passenger rail.
This video just confirms a lot of the themes that you have been addressing for a while now, and I am appreciative for the knowledge I've gained from following you. Also, #NATIONALIZETHERAILROADS
The tunnel vision that journalists have gotten with ECP brakes is maddening. It would be like if someone discovered that the tires on the Boeing 737 MAX weren't properly certified, then getting tunnel vision and only focusing on that and somehow blaming that as the cause of the 2 crashes that grounded the entire fleet of them, instead of correctly blaming the MCAS system.
If anyone is a shareholder, please mention this at the meeting. Imagine investing in an operation that straps golden geese to a conveyer belt and dumps them into a furnace to save on heating costs, hour after hour, month after month.
i saw somewhere that NS recently changed a policy to allow help desk radio operators to order crews to ignore defect detectors if they thought they weren’t serious enough? does anyone know if that’s true?
You also forgot to mention dynamic brakes, which the crew was using to slow down their train after the East Palestine DD (Defect Detector) caught the hot bearing.
@@davidty2006the Salem one was working the bearing wasn’t hot enough at that point to trigger it per NTSB Preliminary Data www.ntsb.gov/investigations/Pages/RRD23MR005.aspx
@@davidty2006 the Salem one was. It wasn’t hot enough to trigger it apparently. Idk if that’s a issue with the detector or if NS sets it temperature really high in order to broadcast a defect
I wanted to make this video double the length but I'm physically running out of time before I have to move apartments.
There is so much more to say and talk about ECP brakes, their implementation and the insane cost of applying them to every car. Maybe I'll make a second add on video to this one eventually...
Okay cool Alan Fisher
Okay cool Alan Fisher
If you make it longer the buffers wont be large enough to hold the videos!
@@butuskutyus843 did you seriously copy my comment
Just like with freight trains, sometimes two shorter videos are better than one long one.
Quick reminder that NS *LAID OFF ALL FIVE SIGNAL AND DETECTOR MAINTAINERS* in this NS district in the years before this disaster. The maintenance personell left only have time to perform the federally mandated tests.
Union should be all over the media with this!
Hm who woulda thunk that firing safety inspectors would negatively affect the safety of this operation 🤔
@@dumb_grilbut line go up tho right?
The Ohio river supplies water for over 250,000 farms in the Mid-west. This will affect Americans nationwide with contaminated crops and food.
@@BoxOfMangoes There's not nearly enough chemicals for that to be a concern. This will be vastly diluted by the time it gets in anything. It's likely going to be even lower measurably than mercury in the air from burning coal. We're talking a single train with 115K gallons of chemicals. That's a lot yeah, but the Ohio River carries more than million 2.6 billion gallons of water at any second. This is less than a millionth a percentage and not even all of it went into the river with a large amount burned away.
Also you can't believe the water we have is perfectly clean. I live in a smaller city of 50K people, and wherever the small creeks have rocks, you can seem foam in the water. That's runoff from chemical, motor oil leaking from cars, and soap buds. This will have basically zero effect on people, it's being incredibly overly exaggerated. I don't think people realize how contaminated everything is around us yet we call it "clean".
You're also supposed to stop your freight train if a detector fails to give you a "no defects recording" as that could indicate the detector has failed or your train could be derailed (yet still moving) and ran over the detector and destroyed it. This is what we were taught at the RR I worked at.
For ours, it depends on the type of detector. Talk on entrance only? Keep going. Talk on defect only? Keep going. Talk on exit? Tell dispatcher, they contact detector desk and you follow whatever instructions they give you
@@josephjoestar3275 Admittedly, I've been retired from the railroad industry for nearly five years. But I recall the detectors we had at that time had a recording telling you the location of the detector, your axle count and if your train had a defect and which axle(s). Otherwise, you heard the detector location, your axle count, "no defects" and "think safety ... out."
@@WAL_DC-6B "Safety First, Always. Detector Out."
@@josephjoestar3275 We had "think safety" at the time, but perhaps it's changed to what you hear.
Sitting 200 yards from a detector right now. All it has said for the last 3 trains is detector and mile post. No direction, no speed, no axle count, no detector out nothing like when you went over them 5 years ago. Yes it is a hotbox and dragging equipment detector.
Thank you for bringing up the hotbox detectors. I seriously don't understand how a clearly burning car wouldn't have been caught by a detector and it was driving me nuts that nobody in the news was bringing them up.
Are these detectors ever inspected or tested to make sure they are working? I'll bet that the detectors closest to this derailment were inoperable.
@@Bobrogers99 I have no clue, which is why they need to be a focal point of the investigation.
@@Bobrogers99 Considering it wasn't a yard it passed through thats possible....
@@Bobrogers99 If the train crew received no response from the detector (as it will also give you a "no defects detected" recording), then the crew should assume the detector has failed and stop the train and report the failure to the train dispatcher. More than likely the conductor will either have to walk the entire length of the rain or inspect the train from the ground while it rolls by at 5 mph.
@@WAL_DC-6B I suspect that the railroads are short-handed, and some of these "required" inspections don't happen.
As a European, when I see these shots of trains hobbling over hilly tracks, I'm amazed that trains are still running there at all.
If there’s a slight bounce on a level crossing it’ll get picked up by a measurement train and then they’ll fix the track next time they do maintenance. Instead of “eh the train is still on the tracks, f it”
Railroad companies in America are lazy. They are pretty goofy one might say, they do however have cool looking trains
@@OumuamuaOumuamua The railroad company I worked 26 years for was in no way "lazy" nor any of the other railroads I would take transfer trains to in the Chicago area. They were very strict with safety so much to the point that we use to say, "this is the only industry that as soon as they hire you, they look for a way to fire you for some rules infraction." Let me give you an example. The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) come up with a rule forbidding the use of cell phones by crew members while operating a train. My company went one step further when it made it against the rules to use a cell phone while inside a locomotive ever if you were on a break. One crew member didn't think this applied to him when he used his cell phone on an engine during the crew's lunch break. He got caught in the act by two trainmasters and the entire crew (three people) were fired that day. Pretty much everyone "got religion" in the railroad with the use of their cell phones after that.
@@WAL_DC-6B I will read this message later, however I see you like classic Douglas aircraft so rock on
@@OumuamuaOumuamua This is true and especially the Lockheed Constellation.
I'm a civil engineer who worked on commuter rail systems for 2+ decades, in addition to another decade+ on other trans modes. That video of the racing freight train starting at 4:09 is just very scary but also very very routine & is a common track bed situation before & after grade crossings, of which there are multiple small ones in that location. The road bed of the roadway is of a different material, thickness, configuration than the base material of the rail bed, thus can lead to differential settlement & even differential "stiffness" in the road bed depending on depth to groundwater, soil type beneath, temperature of soil, temperature & humidity of the air. In this case, you can see the entire train, especially the locomotives, jumping like a set of bucking bronco's, as they navigate the differences in sub base conditions associated with these very simple very basic grade crossings. I see this in "foamer" video's on YT all the time, as they are usually filming at grade crossings. Now, is this "dangerous"? Apparently not that much, considering it's so very very very common everywhere. But given that train speeds are increasing, along with lengths & weight, it's definitely a "problem in waiting". Certainly if an axle or other component was near failure, this extreme cyclical loading could be the "straw that breaks the camel's back".
I couldn't help but imagine it making comical "boinnngg" noises.
It looked like it was designed to get air. I bet the crew doesn't go "whee!" as they jank over the transitions.
Practical Engineering recently did a video on bridge ramps, transitions, settlement, and load requirements. If such transitions are not properly planned they create added wear on vehicles and infrastructure, and can easily lead to accelerated degradation and potentially catastrophic failure. It's bad enough we let bomb trains roll with little in the way of safety inspections, adding crappy grade and transition planning and maintenance just invites disaster.
But, hey, saving on rolling stock and stuff makes the company stock go up, so yay?
Indeed, at major structures, such as bridges, major road grade crossings, "interlockings" (crossovers between multiple tracks), even the approaches to maintenance shops in yards, "transitions" are well planned for via subsurface design. It's these small ones that are problematic, again, depending on subsurface conditions. This is a really extreme example - high speed combined w/a series of little crossings. Good thing it's on a straightaway.
If you don't want to insult railfans then say railfan, don't call them foamers, in quotes. Yes many of them get a bit excited, but most of them know more about trains and railroading than 99% of the population.
@@larrybolhuis1049 I'm a foamer, as well as worked on railroads. I can take a joke. Aimed at myself. Pull the stick out of your ass. I'm also HIgh Functioning Autistic / "Asperger's", so "knowing more than 99% of the population" about just about anything is the story of my life. But no one cares, until their toilet backs up, or a bridge randomly collapses. I'm still a Foamer.
you forgot one policy: ALLOWING THEM TO STRIKE
I'm obviously biased but I fully believe this would've been prevented if this country had any respect for organized labour
@@jacobgasque7699
D@mn right.
How can they even prevent a strike?
Seems pretty difficult to me.
Even if it's illegal to strike, you aren't going to get much work out of a man/women that doesn't want to work. ;)
@Robbedem Biden signed a bill that would they be charged under the Espionage act if they strike
@@Robbedem Congress voted to outlaw the strike, which was an implicit threat that they would send in the cops/other grunts with guns to break a possible strike
A great overview of the incident. It's kind of crazy how big this story blew up that non-train people are talking about it. I hope now the nation's spotlight is on freight railroads, there can be more reforms to improve the system and treat the workers better.
Then again, there's a lot of people whose response to this event has been that we should stop using trains. *sigh*
non train people are talking about it because it has been politicized. seems blaming this on Trump is what all the talk has been, and of course blaming this on corporate greed. it's almost as if trains never derail except this one time and it HAS to be blamed on some overarching plot be some evil transgressor. can't be that bearings fail and the results are this.
the very same people would have lost their minds in the 1970's with major derailments every week.
Yeah I agree craftyfox if the railroads take this as a warning to maintain their rail cars then crashes won’t happen again
According to the NTSB's preliminary report, the hotbox detector in Salem, OH reported that the wheel bearing's temperature was 103 degrees Fahrenheit above the ambient temperature. Norfolk Southern's policy states that you are only required to stop the train and inspect a hot bearing once it is 170 degrees Fahrenheit above the ambient temperature. There's more to these regulations than this, and I encourage everyone to read the preliminary report for more information. However, that's one policy that needs to be looked at in my opinion.
I'm a retired locomotive engineer. In fact, my old route from Mansfield OH to Conway PA went through East Palestine. While I generally agree with your conclusions, I have some serious differences with your take on ECP brakes. You imply that they are new and untested technology. They have been in use safely in more enlightened countries for over twenty years. They are tried and tested technology. As you say, the difference in set up time is just a few to a dozen or so seconds depending on the length of the train, even a few extra seconds can significantly lesson the impact of 10 or 20 thousand tons slamming into those stopped cars. I agree that having shorter trains will lesson that impact too, but you can do both. Engineers are taught to use dynamic brakes first and only use the air brakes when absolutely necessary because air brakes have a tendency to kick, or go into emergency just from normal use. That's not the case with ECP. With ECP engineers could brake the entire train, instead of just the head end, giving them much better control of the train. Another advantage of ECP is that you could add links to sensors to the cable bundle for the brakes. You could put a heat sensor in each set of wheels which would let the engineer know if a wheel was heating up, instead of having to wait twenty miles or so to the next detector.
Your worst error was the claim that having a unit in the middle of the train help speed up braking application. Mid-train units are electronically controlled to ease the pulling strain on long and heavy trains, but their brakes are cut out. If their brakes were cut in, you would have to have someone on the engine to bail off the engine brakes every time the engineer ion the lead locomotive used the air brakes. As far as speed of brake application, they are no different than any other car in the consist. So yes, we need to regulate the length and weight of trains and we need have more car and track inspectors. But we also need ECP brakes.
But... But... "ThE uSa HaS tHe MoSt EfFiCiEnT aNd EfFecTiVe RaIl FrEiGhT sYsTeM"
It doesn't...
The swiss are the ones who do.
Hey now, if you want a hopper of gravel delivered two weeks late because it was stuck in a yard one city over you're not gonna find it anywhere else than here!
Nope
Actually, the Defect Detector in Salem Ohio did go off. According to the NTSB the Salem detector was performing to all specifications. Reportedly the wheel hadn't gotten hot enough yet for it to report a critical alarm, and the crew didn't get one until well after it was too late...
So if the bearing was visibly on fire at the time, it could be a fault in the detector design? If your detector is working as intended and reading low, while the bearing is on fire, that's no bueno.
@@professorspark2361 I am not sure myself. All I do know is the defect detector at Salem performed to the specifications that it was designed to do
@@professorspark2361nothing wrong with the detector, the companies just put the critical temperature higher so there is less stoppages, they care more about profit than safety
@@deeznoots6241 I think, that if the temperature set point is high enough that the bearing being actively on fire did not trip it, they may have set it too high.
Regardless of if it functioned as intended, it did not stop the accident, and so it failed the intended purpose.
I hope Ohio still lets trains go through them. But if it doesn’t, then we need Conrail to come back from the dead and take over freight. This channel is very Conrail friendly, so we can all agree that Conrail needs to come back to solve the situation
As NS already has the right of way, I don't think Ohio could stop them, as states can't interfere with interstate commerce
@@chessiesystem613 nice
The whole rail system should be public and turned into Conrail.
Ohio can't do anything. Rail lines are private land and thus have all the protection the constitution provides for private land. Ohio could try to eminent domain the rail lines but thats going to involve a lengthy and expensive legal fight with NS
@@TheUrbanGaze This is actually being tested in the supreme court right now, including ironically enough Ohio who wants the right to fine trains that block intersections
My cousins are from Casselton, and I remember when the oil train there exploded. That was really my first realization around how bad rail was getting in the US.
Where a BNSF oil train Collided with a derailed grain hopper car
Thanks for making this video. I live 45 miles southeast of East Palestine OH. I'm worried that my water and air is contaminated here even though our Local news (Pittsburgh) had said on repeat that only Beaver County PA should be worried.
Check the wind from th days of the accident for where it blew, and where surface and groundwater flows in the area
@@the_retag There is a testing area very close to me by the Allegheny County Health Department and it is normal here so far. The good news is that the water and air is normal. So far.
Yeah, you don't need to be worried about East Palestine if you are outside Beaver and Lawrence counties. Most of the air pollutants ended up going north and they would disipate and dilute by that point. And the Allegheny and Mon are upriver from East Palestine as well.
What you do need to be concerned about is Pittsburgh's own problems with at least a dozen polluting sites in its own right and a water system that is broken in many places.
To be honest, I wish you spent more time talking about the policy stuff. This was a very preventable disaster. Yes there were no immediate deaths from the incident, but it has effectively ruined the lives of thousands of people, traumatized them, and more likely than not given them serious long term health complications. You went really easy on the media in my opinion. I don't believe there was a coverup, but it's absolutely worth outrage that it took over a week for mainstream media to actually start giving the disaster major coverage and not even high quality coverage. Also with Buttigieg, even if he is very limited in what he can do, shouldn't we at least expect him to be out talking about the policy changes you propose in this video rather than throwing his hands up and saying there's nothing DOT can do about it?
What do you expect from a liberal, they love the mainstream media. Let's all be honest if this happened under a conservative administration or if it took place in a blue area of the country it would be one of the biggest stories of the year
There us huge danger in listening to those that want to act like they are objective experts who want to ignore policy and politics. As a train person you have to understand your interest IS political and crushing the rail workers strike months back was an example. Just because brakes or workers rights didn't CAUSE this disaster there's huge danger in poo pooing discussion of those reforms too while national and regulatory attention is on the subject
There absolutely was an attempt at a cover up, NS tried their hardest to downplay the situation, say its safe and be the ones responsible for home water testing (with signing a waiver nullifying NS of any liability of the accident), everyone said no to it for good reason. That and they kept fibbing about how much hazardous material actually was on that train, and was found out it was way more than what they originally said.
I dunno about the news being in on it but i do think some of the districts absolutely were, railways have a lot of power in Ohio.
45000+ animals dead, millions of people affected by their air and water, etc, impact analysis is sorely lacking by these train companies.
Right on
Sr Electrical Engineer at [unnamed big passenger railroad]: We tested ECP on literally one train a few years back. Haven't heard much about any other railroads testing ECP, but I think making that the law of the land just adds more complex systems with more failure points for NS to not inspect.
How did the ECP perform?
All I can figure as an electrician is also more points of failure as well. Not that I'm nearly as well educated, real world experience says more points of failure, fail more.
I’m so glad you made this video. I live 20 minutes from East Palestine and I was actually in town the night it happened. I wanted to know why it happened and everyone has been hung up on calling it “America’s Chernobyl” or calling it a coverup instead of blaming NS.
You forgot that the End of train device can also adjust brake pressure. Coming from a friend who used to work at CSX
Also EOTDs can be used to dump air on the rear of the train in an emergency to apply the brakes faster. They are absolutely necessary on long trains without a DPU on the rear.
All the time I operated freight trains for a class 1 railroad I never had a hind end marker (smart one) that could reduce the air pressure to set the brakes from the rear of the train (versus the front). The end of train markers gave you the brake line air pressure on the rear and you could also "dump" the air for an emergency brake application (in fact, "dumping the rear marker" is part of an air brake test before the train departs the yard.
Bring back the Caboose
Trains fight such an uphill battle even from their own freight companies here it’s insane. And now we have a clear demonstration that it’s also deadly
I think there should be enough support to Nationalise Norfolk Southern just out of spite for what these criminals have done to the workers and the townspeople. at least Ohio should nationalise ALL it's railways just so this doesn't happen again
So, if an airline has a fatal accident through its own fault, it too should be "nationalized?"
@@WAL_DC-6B "As the name suggests, false equivalence logical fallacies are a cognitive bias by which events, ideas or situations are compared as if they are the same when the differences are substantial"
You can't do that. This isn't communist country.
@@titan-x9913 You get my point.
@@LeahK2018 i wish it were
Now there are some people that want all trains gone.
Imagine if same company had to hire 100 truck drivers to deliver the same load on roads. Not only it would contribute to damage of those roads, we would have so many more accidents like that.
Closer to 1000.
@@kitchin2 there were 150 cars on that train, and idk the frequency it drives (assumed lower tha once a day) or how much each car carries compared to semitrailer (assumed around as much, while it's 5x)...
I am perhaps wrong on both, but either way. nobody want's to crash into chemical truck.
I think this can be summed up in this one sentence: "Norfolk Southern put profits before safety, and could have been prevented."
Thanks so much! Finally, some factual based reporting of this problem.
One personal experience I had in regards to defect detectors occurred about seven years ago. I was on a train that had already traversed over 600 miles of territory, and had gone over several defect detectors. A conductor standing on the ground doing a roll by reported sparks coming from the wheels of cars just ahead of our cut in DPUs. My conductor went back, and released the hand brake on the cars someone had missed. My conductor mentioned that the wheels had turned dark purple from the heat.
Man, that clip of mine from 2009 of 8300 really gets some mileage these days LOL
Amazing video! Since this happened I've been trying to learn more about American Rail.
Looks like there's tons to learn!
FWIW I worked for NS briefly back in the 2010s and frankly it wasn't a great place to work. They did spend a lot of time talking about safety but perhaps it was mostly just talk. I do remember while I was there there was a sign in the break room saying something like "N days since last fatal accident" and N went to zero at one point. (As a recall, one worker was killed by a mudslide while walking the tracks to check for flood damage.)
“No it wasn’t a coverup, it had media coverage”
The only reason it got media coverage is because of the internet blowing up the subject and they were like “oh fuck we can’t hide this anymore”
Great video. Can't wait for the four hour WTYPP ep on this and hearing Roz's wonderfully exasperated tone.
If anybody wants to learn more about the derailment, and specifically about why people have been so concerned about some of the chemicals (like vinyl chloride) that the train was transporting, I highly recommend That Chemist's video on the derailment (his channel is literally called 'That Chemist'). He does a good job of boiling everything down such that it's concise and easy to understand for those that don't know a lot about chemistry.
I think the first claim about it not seeming newsworthy in the mainstream isn't really entirely correct. A huge explosion of toxic chemicals causing a mushroom cloud in a town is something they'd usually lap up, but it wasn't really clearly politically advantageous for one party and the clear enemy was a huge corporation so it's possible there was very little motivation to cover it. However it already became a huge news story bc of independent media, tons of Americans had heard of it and we're very concerned so MSM was kind of forced in a competitive way to begin covering the story that has gripped the nation
Exactly, that's my read, too. One party is big on railroad and in charge of federal oversight, the other is against regulations and in charge of state government, therefore nobody has an interest to ask the awkward questions that could lead to actual change.
For what I've read, the train crew actually received an alert of a "hot axle" and brake to stop, but it was too late.
As someone who is currently studying chemistry, it's also been really frustrating to see all the journalists, politicians, and terminally online keyboard warriors suddenly become experts in chemistry when they're criticizing how the officials handled the derailment by setting the vinyl chlorine on fire. There were two big problems with the derailed cars which made the situation extremely dangerous and which demanded their immediate action: number one was that pressure was building up inside the containers, basically turning them into giant bombs. If this pressure built up too much then the containers would've exploded, sending shrapnel and vinyl chlorine everywhere, which easily could've gotten into the water table and into people's lungs. The other problem is the flash point of vinyl chlorine is very low (-78 C, about -108 F). The flash point is used to measure how flammable a chemical is, and it's defined as the temperature where a liquid vaporizes into a flammable gas. I've seen people asking "why didn't they just isolate the tanks and cool them down to prevent the explosion?" and other questions along those lines - it's because there was no time to bring the equipment required to cool VC down to below -78 C out to East Palestine. So to summarize: if the officials hadn't responded the way they did, what most likely would have happened was that the tanks would have exploded, sending shrapnel everywhere and covering East Palestine in a vapor cloud of vinyl chlorine gas, which could have been ignited by any kind of spark, and which would have turned the entire town into a giant fireball of phosgene gas. So yeah, the controlled burn and getting rid of the vinyl chlorine as fast as possible was the best (and basically only) option, regardless of what the discord users are saying in #politics. I'm not trying to claim that I'm an expert, and there could be some information that I'm missing or an alternate solution I don't know about, but this is my take as someone who knows chemistry.
Hey, thanks for explaining that.
I wasn't sure whether a controlled burn was necessary, OR if the company just wanted to get rid of a bunch of toxic chemicals (that they may or may not have been 100% honest about at first), in a quick and dirty way.
Companies are never forthcoming.
@@grmpEqweer Yeah it could've been the case that Norfolk Southern just wanted to get rid of the chemicals as fast as possible and would've done the burn even if there was a better option, but I'd like to think that at least one person on the team behind the burn knew what they were doing. It'll be interesting to see if NF will try to dodge paying for the cleanup though, that could give some more insight into what they think about the disaster.
@@charliewilson8782 I heard they reopened the line without doing a proper clean-up first. They have to break up the track now to remove all of the contaminated soil.
On the other hand, a big phosphene gas fireball over a random town in ohio does sound like it would make for a good album cover...
I was in Miamisburg a few weeks ago and saw a train that was also exceedingly long, about 120 cars, maybe longer. I didn't think about it at the time, but that train was probably under the same conditions for possible failure as the East Palestine derailment, it just hasn't happened yet. Reading more up on derailments, it's obvious the precision railroading thing has been the reason trains derailed so much in the past 30 years.
When you’re able, please elaborate on why you think Buttigieg was “mostly” powerless in doing anything to help prevent or rectify this situation. Thanks!
Hands cuffed by the lobbies the Fed have been bending the knee to since the BN acquisition
Thanks for the great work, just wanted to point out a minor detail, when you mention North Dakota's Casselton derailment, at ~11:23 you call them ethanol cars, the cars were carrying crude oil
Thanks for making a video on this, I live in the area and we go to a camp each summer only 20 minutes away from East Palestine. Its kinda scary with all of the stuff that’s been happening, we had to buy a bunch of bottled water in case the tap was contaminated.
I have heard many wrong assumptions in my 40 years of railroading Allan but it does no good to talk down to people when they point to the need for ECP brakes. We developed this at AAR research and test in Chicago back in the 80's and people's frustration in this regard has more to do with how long the industry resists adopting improvements, and this would include ECP brakes that can dramatically reduce stopping distances under many scenarios. Humility is an asset.
2:10 I didn't know this was turning into a secret episode of WTYP
Nobody ever expects the Rocz.
Apparently NS only stopped the train when the temperature was around 250f above the ambient temp , so it was detected three times, but they only decided to stop when the temp got REALLY hot, which really isn't good enough.
4:30 if you hadn't told me your friend, Brian, goes by they them I wouldn't have known how to refer to your friend, Brian. Very appreciated, and highly relevant for the video. 👍
Hey Alan, great video coverage on the tragedy in Ohio. I was wondering if you could dedicate a video to the failures in the policy decisions governing the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) service.
California seems intent on thinking that gutting it further because a transportation service isn't turning a profit is a good thing and I'm finding it difficult to explain to folks why that logic is incredibly shortsighted (like most things under capitalism :/)
BART needs to go to driverless operation
Nationalized systems are terribly run
The lesson here is to Never compromise on safety processes. It's necessary to modernize and update them, and don't ever give up on them. If you do, then it will bite back hard at some point. The freight railroad Execs. have been skimping on safety to prioritize profits, and that's now biting back hard. Safety includes inspecting the rails as well as the trains themselves.
It is being covered up, well at least it’s not being taken seriously enough, a mushroom cloud and contaminated water, maybe I’m stupid but it’s at least not being taken seriously enough
It’s hard to cover up something that’s both extremely public, and can be leaked by the average Joe with a camera, or professionals willing to do research on the ground
I would say not being taken seriously enough
It's a bit of it's not being taken seriously enough but also it's not as bad as it could be. We've seen worse ecological disasters, and some of them have been from similar incidents. And the emergency response was swift and appropriate; scary as it may look with proper efforts this isn't going to scar the land for long. The issue is there's not much for laypeople to talk about unless they're willing to understand why rail is where it is, and that's no good for capital. This leaves news agencies treading water talking about how often trains derail in the US and how scary the effects of this look without being able to go into detail or meaningful discussion.
@@tonywalters7298 yeah
@@jtgd well at least it’s not being taken seriously
I actually haven't read anything on this incident and was waiting for a channel like this to do a video on it to learn what happened.
Also you know things are bad when conrail gets praise.
What are you talking about? Conrail was wonderful, it was a golden age of American rail.
Granted I only know about Conrail from this channel so watch his videos on Conrail
@@danielscalera6057 Sorry I think I was confusing it with penn central.
The Ohio derailment is a carbon copy of the Mississauga derailment of 1979. Read up on that one for the trains, the part that failed, and the toxic chemicals involved. They are completely different in how the media and politicians responded. Even the Canadian rail company handled it better.
CP rail gigachads
It is not 'normal' that trains derail
Last year were 64 derailments in all of the EU...
Your Infrastructure is awful
And they weren't fatal at all, so that is also a thing.
The background footage of the train bouncing and jumping over the janky rails was fucking terrifying to me
It’s not the governments fault (well only partly) it’s the fault of the private companies giving the middle finger to maintenance and normal operations because: “muh profits” and “muh investors”
Does that 64 include britain?
I know there was atleast 1 cement train that fell down a bank.
I was so confused about this story. People acting like its normal or not a big deal. Im Dutch and ive never heard of an incident like this. Especially with these goods on board; this shouldn't have happened
You don't hear about them because Europe doesn't do freight rail. Less than 10% of freight in Europe is transported by train in the US over 40% of freight is moved by train
@@AdamSmith-gs2dv oh wow. I wonder why that is. I know in Europe many warehouses have rail connention. Even some ikeas i believe. Imma look into that. I know freight trains are the cheapest method for transport in the US, but i wonder what explains that difference
@@tijmen5355 Varies by country. The Swiss have a LOT of freight rail, it's pretty fantastic
@@AdamSmith-gs2dv Switzerland outperforms the US in freight but go on...
@@Joesolo13 it's an illusion. the typical train length in Switzerland is 2,500 feet and they can't run double stacks so this means more short trains on a rather small rail network. the total system is only 3,300 miles; Wisconsin has about the same rail miles. Switzerland hauled 7 billion ton miles by rail, 35% less than by road. in that same year, 2019, the US hauled 1.5 trillion ton miles. i think your understanding of "a lot" is distorted a tad by seeing lots of short trains zipping about.
Reminder just a few months ago when employees want strike and safety being one of them like this? And then the current president somehow didn't help the railroad industry and force them to go back to work?
We disagree on several policy positions, Alan, including electrification and nationalization, but I must commend you on the quality of your railroad videos. You're obviously very knowledgeable about the subject and the sound, graphics, and video footage are excellent. But most impressive is your narration. This video is one of your best. Keep up the good work. And thanks for the effort that goes into every production.
You don't think rail lines need to be nationalized?
@@utterbullspit
No...I do NOT think nationalization is a desirable option. There is no justification for turning an efficient, profitable industry into an inefficient, money losing government entity like the U.S. Postal Service.
@@michaeljones7927 So you think its a bad idea that the government doesn't maintain the rail infrastructure and control who may use it? Alot of disasters are preventable with proper maintence.
@@Mgameing123 I have no confidence in the ability of government to efficiently operate and maintain our national rail system. I was part of the government railroad regulatory apparatus for much of my career and observed widespread mediocrity. I liked my fellow employees, but cannot imagine any of them managing a railroad.
the US post office only loses money because Republicans rewrote policy to lose money in the first place. not to mention services are not supposed to make money if the first place.
Thanks for the video, especially the policy suggestions. The other day, I was on the way to the grocery store here in town, and a Norfolk Southern tanker unit train was going through town, and tankers all had flammable material placards on them. I live about 200 yards from the railroad tracks, and I really hope we don’t have a derailment here. I think I’m going to write my representatives , and urge them to take action to keep these railroads safe. I am a big fan of using railroads to carry both freight and passengers, and even have had friends in the industry. I believe with the proper regulations and safety procedures on the part of the railroads, they can become again one of the safest ways to carry goods.
The fact that no one physically saw the car that was on fire and reported it
Very informative..The railroads were the original "robber barons", still are. The class ones should force to divest of their main line ROW....it would could be publicly owned or sold to a non-profit company. The railroads would have to pay tolls to use the system and any operator could go anywhere...Open access. principle.
The same principle by which the state forces you to take a dick in the ass but makes the dick owner pay them $1.00 for the privilege
Minnesota is currently working on passing a two man crew minimum for class 1 and 2 railroads!
Train having blown up in Ohio? Did Norfolk Southern take proactive measures after the disaster that occurred, on a train run by a different company, in the 2010s in the small Quebec town of Lac-Mégantic? Apparently not.
I love this channel's mix of transportation and old school vulf
In 2020 the entirety of the Netherlands counted 12 derailments. 11 of which occurred at low speeds during shunting. The 12th one (a passenger train) was caused by wheel defect. In this case too, a hotbox detector didn't trigger because no measurements exceeded a critical value. However, that's the single derailment in mainline operation in an entire year. It's easy proof that proper maintenance of tracks and rolling stock lead to fewer accidents.
thank you so much for this video i love 15 minutes away from east palestine and have a lot of friends from the town and the entire event has been blown WAY out of proportion.
Bring back the caboose!
Great video as always!
Thanks for the info and the insight. I learned more here than I did via national news and talk radio. You're doing the job the media SHOULD be doing!
0:39 I love the asthetics of you low pitching the "NS - What's your function" song
I also love the asthetics of how you did the intro for this video as well
Overall that intro was solid
Many years ago I was standing next to the PRR mainline that is now part of the NE Corridor Amtrak. I was watching a freight passing and noticed flames and smoke belching from a wheel set of one of the cars. I waited for the caboose to pass, and one of the crew was standing on the rear platform. I waved and yelled "hotbox." He nodded his head in acknowledgement as if he already knew there was a problem.
Alan, thank you so much for making this. I'm from (and currently living in) Ohio and I have several friends from East Palestine. I've super pissed about the derailment mainly because it was preventable by y'know good practice by the railroads. I've been wanting to do more research into the specifics of the policy that let this happen, and you just gave me the directions I needed.
Remember a few months ago when rail workers weren't legally allowed to go on strike
Yeah
According to the NTSB Preliminary Report, posted on February 23, 2023, the HBD (Hot Bearing Detector) at MP 79.9 read the bearing at 38F above ambient, the HDB in Salem? MP 69.01 detected the bearing temp at 103F above ambient. The HBD in East Palestine at MP 49.81, recorded the temp at 253F.
I'm guessing the HBD in Salem was on the west side of town, and something went catastrophic almost exactly at the HBD in Salem.
I have no experience with trains, but going from 38F over ambient, to 253F over ambient in a span of 30 miles, seems a bit excessive, when when 170-200F is "non-critical, inspect".
The HBD in Salem triggered the alarm, and the train was already on the brakes (manually) when an automatic emergency brake application initiated. So I'm guessing the train derailed very close to the East Palestine HBD.
Sounds like this was just a case of "wow, that sucks". Totally acceptable temps at both previous HBD, tripped an alarm at East Palestine, but the train was already in the process of derailing.
Something everyone should keep in mind is that most of the equipment NS pulls is old and in bad condition. Crews have to take what customers give them but NS should do a better job of inspection.
"Darling, Ohio"
-Zero Two, 2018
Standardization of Defect Detectors & An investigation into the Defect Detectors along the route after a crash, with an immediate penalty/fine issued for any ones not working.
i really wish we had the attitude toward safety for trains and cars that we do for aircraft
THe same situation happened before in the movie "White Noise" ... in a place relatively close to "Palestine, Ohio" ... you forgot to mention "Nationalize Mainlines"
What was wrong with the "1000 derailments a year" article? Asking from ignorance
Can always count on Norfolk Southern to always find a way to colossally mess things up. Honestly though, if this doesn’t wake up the FRA, NTSB or really anyone in the federal government, than I’m not sure what will
So does that they can't say it was RVD rule violation derailment then
Lac Megantic in Chicago is the only thing that'll get the Fed Government to wake up.
I understand that defect detectors provide warnings 30 miles in advance of the derailment, and that the crew responded accordingly to try and stop the train. If so, I think that the 9300ft train was likely too long and heavy to stop safely. I think we are witnessing the tragic results of PSR taken to its limits.
sure would be a shame if someone nationalized those tracks
The rail unions warned about this
The number of views speaks to how hungry the public is for intelligent and non-sensationalized information. When I accidentally watch MSM stories on a topic like this, I recoil in disgust as they think great news coverage is 'finding a person to call a hero', 'finding a villain', or interviewing an anguished wife finding out her 'family provider' is safe and broadcasting the reuniting. Thank you for acknowledging the contributors who added expertise when needed and context for what we are hearing from MSM 'experts'. This sounds so basic and fundamental which should make everyone wonder why is the MSM not doing this? Thanks Alan.
Problem is that cable news is mostly run by people who used to run sports coverage…so it’s all about one team vs. the other team and putting the news out in a narrative that your audience and advertisers keep coming back for. And then when something substantive comes up, frame it in terms of what will get your team riled up…because that keeps the eyeballs glued and the advertisers dropping more cash. The truth is often less exciting, but it’s a whole lot more useful. The pandering to advertisers is honestly the worst thing about corporate media…for example BP doesn’t step up advertising because they want to sell more oil-it’s because they want to buy more favorable or less unfavorable coverage. BTW, expect to see more warm & fuzzy Norfolk Southern ads…because it’s cheaper than actually investing in labor or safety.
Why do trains derail so often in the states and why does the attitude to derailments seem to be so casual?
I checked the stats for derailments in Finland and there have been a total of 2 derailments (not including derailments after collisions) in the entire 2000s. And anytime there is any accident it gets thoroughly investigated, fixes/upgrades are recommended and then implemented.
Actually, even looking at some of the footage shown in this video I can't believe how bouncy some of those tracks look like.
We get Roz, AND a Conrail fancam in the same video! It's a good day!
Initial news reports I read said that the engineers of the train were aware the defect detector had gone off and were in the process of bringing the train to a stop when the derailment ocurred.
Regarding the Hot Box Detectors. The NTSB has released their preliminary findings and it seems the HBD’s were in working order however the temperatures being read were not high enough to reach the threshold for triggering an alarm. The follow is an extract from their report:
On the Fort Wayne Line of the Keystone Division, NS has equipped their rail network with HBD systems to assess the temperature conditions of wheel bearings while en route. The function of the HBD is to detect overheated bearings and provide audible real-time warnings to train crews. Train 32N passed three HBD systems on its trip before the derailment. At MP 79.9, the suspect bearing from the 23rd car had a recorded temperature of 38°F above ambient temperature. When train 32N passed the next HBD, at MP 69.01, the bearing’s recorded temperature was 103°F above ambient. The third HBD, at MP 49.81, recorded the suspect bearing’s temperature at 253°F above ambient. NS has established the following HBD alarm thresholds (above ambient temperature) and criteria for bearings:
• Between 170°F and 200°F, warm bearing (non-critical); stop and inspect
• A difference between bearings on the same axle greater than or equal to 115°F (non-critical); stop and inspect
• Greater than 200°F (critical); set out railcar.
Train 32N was operating with a dynamic brake application as the train passed a wayside defect detector on the east side of Palestine, Ohio, at milepost (MP) 49.81. [4] The wayside defect detector, or hot bearing detector (HBD), transmitted a critical audible alarm message instructing the crew to slow and stop the train to inspect a hot axle. The train engineer increased the dynamic brake application to further slow and stop the train. During this deceleration, an automatic emergency brake application initiated, and train 32N came to a stop.
I used to be a Trainmaster out of Conway Terminal where the 32N was headed if anyone has any additional questions about NS and Railroad Practices in general.
www.ntsb.gov/investigations/Pages/RRD23MR005.aspx
Is it reasonable to lower the threshold? Or do you think it would be better to increase the frequency of detectors or even switch to something like RailPulse?
@@XenSoc I’m not an mechanical engineer but I think increasing the frequency of detectors would be the way to go. Lowering the temperature could increase false alarms and get people in the bad habit of assuming that all alarms are likely false.
I don’t think what Railpulse is currently trying to roll out would be able to detect a hotbox. But maybe in the future.
I would feel better if the regs called for lower thresholds for stop & inspect when the same or an adjacent axle comes up hotter on subsequent detectors. Being 70 degrees hotter in 10 miles and < 15 degrees below the stop & inspect threshold seems like a really bad risk to take. If it’s a bearing problem, even slowing down the train to half speed probably isn’t going to prevent that thing from getting much much hotter, would it?
this is a good example of why worker protections are actually a safety issue.
you dont want your train maintenance crews understaffed & you dont want sleep deprived nurses
Hearing Justin certainly was a nice surprise! He is co-host of an amazing podcast on engineering disasters called "Well There's your Problem" right here on UA-cam (with slides!) or on your favorite podcast app, for anyone who is interested!
One thing that caused the derailment was mostly the lack of car men to do maintenance and the PSR 90 second car inspection [rule?], but other then that. I think no one could have predicted that the hot box detectors would fail.
Amazing work. Really appreciate you recognizing areas you don’t know as well yourself and platforming friends of yours who can better speak to certain things… it sure would be cool if journalists did more of that in covering news events involving issues or topics they’re totally unfamiliar with!
Norfolk Southern's primary function is to make money for its holders.
Its secondary function is to move freight via rail within the framework laid out by federal laws as enforced by the FRA.
Let's go to the root cause. Bearings are supposed to last millions of km and are always replaced on the same wheelset at the same time-only one side looked to be failing. And they don't just fail in minutes- symptoms will be there for hundreds of hours beforehand. The standard over-temperature for a bearing is max 40 deg above ambient, and should have been picked up a long way before this disaster. I'd be interested in the number of hot boxes detected across the states each day - I'd be concerned if there were none.
Also it sounds like defect detectors need to be placed more often than every 20 miles. According to the NTSB report, 32N passed 3 detectors. The first recorded a temp of 38F above ambient, the second recorded over 100F over ambient, and the third reported 250F over ambient, just before the automatic e-brake kicked on. After the third, the engineer/driver increased the dynamic brake application to stop the train, just before the auto e-brake kicked on. Those are some serious temperature jumps, and it could have been caught sooner with more frequent detectors, everything else notwithstanding.
Because of this disaster, Norfolk Southern railroad is on the verge of filing for bankruptcy. And not only that, they are in general a horrible corporation. They do not treat their employees well; they are not given enough sick/vacation time and they are forced to work unreasonable amounts of consecutive hours at a time. The way I see it, they will be forced to sell off their tracks to passenger carriers such as Amtrak and Brightline for expansion of passenger rail.
This video just confirms a lot of the themes that you have been addressing for a while now, and I am appreciative for the knowledge I've gained from following you. Also, #NATIONALIZETHERAILROADS
The tunnel vision that journalists have gotten with ECP brakes is maddening.
It would be like if someone discovered that the tires on the Boeing 737 MAX weren't properly certified, then getting tunnel vision and only focusing on that and somehow blaming that as the cause of the 2 crashes that grounded the entire fleet of them, instead of correctly blaming the MCAS system.
When I first saw the news, my first thought was I wonder If Alans got a video on this.
The engineer and conductor made a big mistake of NOT stopping and getting repairs in a timely manner,,,,
DID YOU SAY ILLIN-NOISE?! BRUH
@2:30 There is no "noise" in Illinois
If you’re touting Conrail over NS without mentioning the 1987 Chase MD disaster, then you fundamentally misunderstand railroad history.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1987_Maryland_train_collision
If anyone is a shareholder, please mention this at the meeting. Imagine investing in an operation that straps golden geese to a conveyer belt and dumps them into a furnace to save on heating costs, hour after hour, month after month.
i saw somewhere that NS recently changed a policy to allow help desk radio operators to order crews to ignore defect detectors if they thought they weren’t serious enough? does anyone know if that’s true?
You also forgot to mention dynamic brakes, which the crew was using to slow down their train after the East Palestine DD (Defect Detector) caught the hot bearing.
So that would mean the Salem one simply wasn't working.....
And the crew couldn't look back and see due to it being near the 100th wagon.
@@davidty2006the Salem one was working the bearing wasn’t hot enough at that point to trigger it per NTSB Preliminary Data www.ntsb.gov/investigations/Pages/RRD23MR005.aspx
@@davidty2006 the Salem one was. It wasn’t hot enough to trigger it apparently. Idk if that’s a issue with the detector or if NS sets it temperature really high in order to broadcast a defect
@@hmitchell8618 If the thing is already on bloody fire then it clearly should of worked then...
2:30 Did you... say Illinoi's?