Need help with featuer artical about trians???

Question

if you have any information plzzz just give it to me beacuse i have to write a feature artical about trains or train danger you know plzzzzzzzzzzzz help thanks

Answer 1

If you're writing about train danger, make sure you include the public's role in creating danger. Trains can derail on their own, but most fatal rail accidents are caused by negligent trespassers and impatient drivers. Stay out of the way, stay alive.

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Answer 2

Railroad safety, or lack thereof, comes in many facets and, as many other things, has evolved over time.

In the past, when large numbers of passengers were seldom merely maimed, lack of signaling was responsible for a large number of train collisions.  Trains were operated by ‘train order authority’.  This was a difficult and hard to understand system of train control for most and as a result oversight caused much death and mayhem.

This changed with the Union Signal Companies designs for ‘automatic block signals’, which through the use of the semaphore signals, conveyed information about track occupancy or conditions of the railroad, such as washouts, land slides or broken rails, the function that they still perform today.

The semaphore signals are the old style easily recognizable by the one or more ‘blades’ at the top of the signal mast that, as they changed positions, conveyed information about the railroad that lay immediately ahead.  Today most signaling in the US incorporates signal heads with electronically and/or mechanically controlled ability to change the color of the signals, called the signal ‘aspect’.  These automatic block signals govern the trains’ operation, or in the case of a ‘controlled’ signal, authorize movement of trains.  These signals are found in Centralized Traffic Control (CTC) or within Interlocking limits.

However, there is still a lot of ‘dark territory’ today, where trains are still operating on right of way that has no signal protection. Here, trains receive their authority to operate either by Track Warrant Control (TWC) or Direct Traffic Control (DTC).  This is unsafe, in my book, and is keeping some areas of our rail infrastructure firmly planted in the unsafe practices of the past and anyone concerned for rail safety and the safety of their loved ones who either work on or live near these dangerous districts should be writing to their representatives in Washington to demand protection.

Of course there have been many innovations to the equipment itself that has advanced the cause of safety.  The wooden cars of the past, which did not stand up at all in a collision are gone.  In the disastrous passenger train wrecks of the past, travelers who did manage to survive impact were usually trapped in the twisted wreckage where they would burn to death, the wooden cars becoming a funeral pyre ignited by the overturned coal stoves in each car to keep it warm.

Bridge collapses were not uncommon, either.  Constructed of wood, limited engineering knowledge of the times produced structures that weren’t always equal to the task of supporting the weight of a moving train and the variable forces at play as it crossed one of these structures.

Perhaps the single most important development in rail safety is credited to George Westinghouse, the inventor of the automatic air brake.  Before its inception, train speed, as well as the ability to stop, relied on the ability of the brakemen (this is were the term originated) to run along the tops of the cars, leaping from one car to another, and manually applying an old type of hand brake, called a ‘staff’ brake. The engineer would signal for the brakes to be applied or released by a whistle signal.

The Westinghouse air brake incorporates a ‘brake pipe’ (often incorrectly called a ‘train line’) that runs the length of the train under each car.  Where the cars couple together at the end of the car there is a rubber ‘air hose’ that is joined together by a device at the end of the hoses called a ‘glad hand’.  These are coupled together manually, but separate automatically when the equipment is uncoupled.

The system operates by taking air out of a charged brake pipe (90 psi for freight trains, 110 psi for passenger trains).  When pressure is reduced it causes air from a charged reservoir on each car to flow into the brake cylinder, which applies the brakes on each car.  This of course allows for much faster application of the brakes and in a more uniform manner.  This timely invention saved many brakemen from winding up under the wheels while trying to move quickly along the tops of freight cars with ice, snow and wet weather to contend with.

Brakemen were usually easily identified as well by the missing finger or two on either hand.  This were a result of the old style ‘link and pin’ coupling system.  As its name implies, there was a coupler pocket at the end of each car, into which had to be guided the steel link and, once in place, a pin was dropped through a hole on the top of the pocket, securing the link in place and coupling the cars.  So, a brakeman would have to be in between the cars both to couple or uncouple them.  A very dangerous, but necessary practice.

This changed with the invention of the Janney automatic coupler, which is what is found on today’s freight and passenger equipment.

Another innovation, with the advent of the diesel electric locomotives, that also greatly increased train safety, is the engine’s dynamic brake.  This essentially reverses the process of supplying power to the wheels by way of an electrical alternator, turning the traction motors themselves into generators, which provides retarding (braking) force.  The electricity that is created by this has to go somewhere, so the energy is dissipated as heat.  The electricity produced is fed to the dynamic brake ‘grids’, which is like an overgrown toaster.  The grids heat up and the electricity is consumed.  This electricity is further dissipated by running the grid cooling fans, which run faster or slower, depending on how much dynamic brake is being used.  This is what causes the variation in the pitch of the hum these fans make as the braking varies at the control of the engineer.

The road bed itself, which used to cause a high number of derailments, has been improved as well.  The light weight cast iron rails of the past were no where even close to today’s carbon steel rails in terms of hardness.  Though today’s ribbon rail (continuous welded rail, or CWR) is still subject to ‘pull aparts’ in clod weather and ‘sun kinks’ in extremely hot weather.  But, with the old cast iron rail, a large problem came in the form of what was called a ‘snakes head’.  This is where the top (ball) of the rail separated from support underneath it (the web) and would curl upwards, similar to the action of a snake ready to strike.  This of course resulted in derailment, but, it usually penetrated the floor of the wooden passenger cars, skewering whomever was in its path before they were crushed or burned.

But, as pointed out above, the majority of the death and destruction occurring somewhere right at this very moment, is caused by ignorant or foolish people.  In these terms, the only thing that causes more death behind the wheel are drunk drivers.

I never made a road trip to anywhere without having at least one idiot go around the operating crossing gates, regardless of the time of day or night.  Of course, pedestrians are right up there with them.  The old saying, “Familiarity breeds contempt.’ certainly plays a role here.

People get used to seeing the same traffic pattern on the familiar tracks and crossings used daily on the way to work, school, shopping, whatever.  Then one day, a train is coming down the track, ‘going the wrong way’ and wham!.  Or, you think it’s one of the long, slow ‘drag’ trains you see all the time, so you think you can beat that headlight coming your way, but this time it’s an engine running light doing 60 MPH, then wham!  You didn’t have enough time.

Crossing gates are there for protection, but, they are still an electro-mechanical device, just like your toaster sitting in the kitchen.  And, just as your toaster can go on the blink at some point in time, so can crossing protection.  Two times in my career I had the dubious distinction of operating my train over two crossings, in different places, moving at track speed (60 MPH in both instances) over grade crossings where the grade crossing protection was INOPERATIVE.  They do fail, even with their battery back up.  So you must ALWAYS look and listen before crossing ANY tracks.  

I’ve said it before.  Trains don’t come looking for you.  You must put yourself in their way.  But they’ll be happy to kill or maim you.  It’s very simple.  Stay out of the way and stay alive.