Quote:
Originally Posted by propbeanie
Let me interject again... I'm not familiar with what was allowed for with SoCal, but most of the Class 1 lines HAVE to have cameras inside and out. The locomotive, while not having as many events recorded as a plane (no leading or trailing edge surfaces, of course... ahem) do have quite a few.
PTC would be fine, except (besides being a regulatory boondoggle that doesn't work correctly, which is why it keeps getting delayed)... as has been mentioned by others, the local and state officials were in a hurry to get this going (gotta get those brownie points from their constituents)... the rail line has PTC (I don't know if it's fully functional in that area), but the locomotive is not equipped, from what I've seen / heard on the tellie. PTC should work on a single track rail line under most circumstances, but it does nothing without an equipped locomotive that can "read" the signals. Otherwise, the train would have had its brakes applied in an emergency fashion as soon as the train passed the point of non-compliance, which is most like 2 miles out from the curve... Who was at the controls of the locomotive? Was anyone else in the operating cab? Did they not see the violation?
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Counter-Interjection!...
The rail lines here in SoCal, at the time of the Chatsworth Wreck did not have PTC on either the tracks or the trains and, as a result of the investigation into the wreck, it was discovered, also, the installation of PTC had been delayed because of waivers given to the rail companies invloved pushing back implementation. The Chatsworth Wreck was the second large rail disaster in less than 5 years involving the Metrolink system; one poor fellow, with whom I had briefly worked with previously, survived the prior wreck, with moderate injuries, only to be killed in the 2008 Wreck. Metrolink did have all the usual 'black box' equipment, but did not have video or audio installed, again, mainly because of pushback from the unions over privacy concerns and the rail companies, mainly over expense. There are now both video and audio surveillance in the cabs and work areas and full PTC...
Regarding PTC, it may not be a foolproof system, but it does give at least some layer of deterrence against a lot of the problems; until something better comes along, it would be unwise to just abandon the use of PTC just because its not "perfect"; the lock on my front door may not be a perfect solution against break-ins, but I still have it installed because it does deter most efforts and the possible results of not having a lock at all are much more unacceptable than having having a lock...
In the latest case, I wonder just how much the human element may have played in the crash? A while back, the San Francisco Municipal Railway revised and expanded its rail routes to route several street car routes on their initial morning runs to other routes through an area that had a very sharp turn; the turn was well known to the operators who had long serviced the original line and they respected a slow speed limit on the curve; however, it seems some of the other, unfamiliar operators took to seeing who could take the turn at the highest speed; this resulted in a number of derailments and, since the route was one of the main ways streetcars for other lines got to the own routes, the delays caused to other routes in clearing up the wrecks was considerable. Could it be the operators of Monday's train were trying to see if they could also take the curve at an 'extreme' speed?...
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