nascarfan88, and fire/EMS

[rstrong]

There might be something similarly ugly developing with the Lac-Mégantic train derailment and explosions.

The conductor parked the train uphill from the town before midnight, set the air brakes, and went to a hotel in town for the night. Around midnight fire crews put out a fire in the engine, and left.

Dunno if it was the fire, or the fire crews that shut down the engine. But it was shut down.

And an hour later, with no engine running to keep pressure in the air brakes, the train started rolling downhill towards town.

[neoplacebo]

Isn't there some sort of wheel chocks for trains? Maybe I should invent one.....

[neoplacebo]

Yeah, and I just thought there's lots of simple ways to keep something from moving. Hell, a good magnet would work......

[Roland Deschain]

Air brakes are "set" by exhausting the air from the system and allowing the spring brakes to activate. That is the hiss that is heard when they are set. They are designed so that if air pressure is lost the springs take over and lock the wheels. Freight trains also have the manual brakes that the brakeman can adjust. They used to stop the trains in Saluda so that they could tighten the brakes.

[rstrong]

Apparently not in this case:

Reuters quoted a 38-year-old man living near the rail yard in Nantes as saying the driverless freight train started to move shortly after the town’s fire crews left.

Nantes is 11 kilometres uphill from Lac-Mégantic, where railway company chairman Ed Burkhardt said an engineer left one of five locomotives running to secure the brakes on the train.

But Nantes Fire Chief Patrick Lambert told Reuters his crew shut down an engine to fight the fire late Friday.

Wheel chocks aren't going to secure a train on an incline, not unless you use a whole lot of them. It appears that being coupled to the engine wasn't enough; once the air brakes lost pressure on the 72 oil cars, they ripped free of the engine.

“If the operating locomotive is shut down, there’s nothing left to keep the brakes charged up, and the brake pressure will drop finally to the point where they can’t be held in place any longer,” Burkhardt said.

There are two ways to shut down the fifth unit: There’s an emergency lever on the outside of the locomotive that anyone wandering by could access. Or, there are a number of levers and buttons inside the unlocked cabin.

Both means were used, said Burkhardt.

But fear not:

The chair of the 10-year-old rail company headquartered in Maine said they would “consider” changes to procedures in light of the tragedy.

[neoplacebo]

I would say that a steel plate (wedge) that's wide enough to span the tracks that's about 1/4" thick on one end (the end wedged against the wheels) and maybe three inches thick on the other end would prevent a train from starting to move. Several of these may be required due to various other factors, but I think it would work. The down side is that the plates would weigh several hundred pounds each.....

[rstrong]

Or we can just keep subsidizing our addiction for "cheap" gas with the occasional town.

History News Network: Is it Safe Now to Admit Jimmy Carter Was Right?

While the bin Laden family's US representative was bailing out Bush II's failing oil business, Jimmy Carter was making energy independence the central ambition of his presidency.

His April 18, 1977 speech alone established the strategic petroleum reserve, birthed the modern solar power industry, led to the insulation of millions of American homes, and established America's first national energy policy

The Republicans fought and ridiculed the idea they way they fight and ridicule ObamaCare today.

Ronald Reagan's first official acts of office included removing Jimmy Carter's solar panels from the roof of the White House, and reversing most of Carter's conservation and alternative energy policies.

I have to wonder what would have happened if Carter got his way. Imagine an America without - or with merely far less - dependence on Middle East oil. And without the Bush family's strong ties to Saudi Arabia and Reagan's ties to Iran.

Would America have built KKMC in Saudi Arabia - a city prebuilt even before Gulf War I for a major long-term American presence there? Would it have gotten into Gulf War I? Kept the major post-Gulf War I presence in Saudi Arabia that motivated 9/11, in turn leading to Afghanistan and Gulf War II, the Patriot Act and TSA?