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How to Derail a Train
After I graduated with a degree in Mechanical Engineering I went to work for FreightMaster, a company that manufactured end-of-car cushioning units for railcars. The units are huge shock absorbers that are installed behind railcar couplers to help cushion the “lading” (i.e, the stuff being transported). We would put strain gauges on the shafts of these shock absorbers and smash railcars together to test new designs. Very cool.
FreightMaster also sold simulators used to train locomotive engineers. A simulator consisted of a minicomputer attached to a control panel from a diesel-electric locomotive. A monitor connected to the computer told you how fast you were going, what your brake line air pressure was, whether you’d just gone off the rails, and so on. As part of the deal, FreigtMaster would “digitize” the routes that the engineers would someday drive and feed the routes into the simulator.
I did a bit of programming for the system and got to play a locomotive engineer. In the process, I found out how easy it is to derail a train. The most obvious way to do that is to take a curve too fast and let inertia do the rest. But there are more subtle ways to make it happen.
For example, if you accelerate on a curve, you put the train – which is like a long, stiff string – in tension. Too much tension, and you pull the string off the inside of the curve. Conversely, if you brake while in a curve, you put the string in compression. Too much compression and you push the string off the outside of the curve.
The strangest way to derail a train is via “resonance.” Resonance occurs when all the oscillations in a system reinforce – rather than offset – each other so that the system oscillates at a higher amplitude. If you’ve ever seen a video of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapsing, you have an idea of what resonance can do.
Trains tend to “rock” on American tracks because of the way in which the rails are laid. Rails are 39’ long so that they will fit inside a 40’ gondola car. When rails are laid, the joints are offset by half a rail, so that there is a joint on the track every 19.5’ – first on one rail and then on the next. The weight of the trains traveling over the joints causes them to “work,” and they end up being a bit lower than the rest of the track. As the cars roll over the joints, then, they dip a bit. This means that the cars “rock” as they dip first to one side and then to the other.
At 17.5 mph, the cars hit resonance. If they stay in resonance long enough, they can actually hop off the tracks. Therefore, the engineer must pass through 17.5 mph – whether he’s accelerating or decelerating – as quickly as possible.
Published in General
My father used to always have fun with us as kids. When we passed under the railroad viaducts with a train passing over, he would say, “Ouch! Ooch! That train’s running over my head!” Dad worked as security for the Illinois Central and Burlington at times before I was born and he got on the Joliet Police Department. My maternal grandfather was also a railroad man in Columbus, Georgia. His father was the wrecking engineer I mentioned earlier in the thread.
What is a “wrecking engineer”? I’ve never heard of the term. I googled it but came up empty.
My grandfather was sent a letter by his grandfather (that’s great-great- to me) explaining their shared first name. Great-great grandpa had been a mechanical engineer for the Illinois Central – City of New Orleans and all that. The letter was written on stationery with the IC letterhead.
There are a lot of neat trains and train museums in the U.S. The Silverton-to-Durango narrow gauge in Colorado is great, and there’s a very good museum in Golden, Colorado as well. There’s an old passenger train running out of Palestine, Texas that’s a fun ride. The Chicago Museum of Science and Industry – which, let’s face it, has everything – has some amazing steam engines on display. One of them is the biggest locomotive of any kind that I’ve ever seen. On the island of Oahu, there’s a small train museum with a great model train layout. There’s also a narrow gauge sugar cane train that you can ride. The trains ran on small, portable track that could be easily moved through the fields during sugar cane harvest season. Houston’s Museum of Natural Science also has an excellent model train exhibit.
Please forgive me for not remembering this earlier:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7eQPm5e-lE
He was a mechanical engineer in charge of investigating and cleaning up train wrecks.
Must have been an interesting first name.
The ATSF 2903? The museum restored it, but couldn’t display it indoors (too heavy) so they in turn donated it to the Illinois Railway Museum in 1995.
The 999 is still there. It set the land speed record of 112.5 mph in 1893.
Addison.
The sugar train is on Maui, if memory serves.
“Son of Adam.” Started as a surname, of course.
They filtched it off of Joseph Addison, co-founder of The Spectator and author of Cato, from which “I regret that I have but one life to give for my country” and “Give me liberty or give me death” come from. Somebody really liked his writing.
That was all in the letter.
Better luck on your next husband ;)
Is there a physicist in the house to give this guy his penance?
The one my wife and I rode was on Oahu, not far from Ewa Beach:
http://www.hawaiianrailway.com/
I did a little googling and there’s also one on Maui:
https://www.sugarcanetrain.com/
Good to know, thanks!
Husband number two might like the Glenn Curtis Museum in Hammondsport, New York. Curtis was a competitor of the Wright Brothers and he invented the seaplane. A lot of American pilots, including Charles Lindbergh, learned to fly on one of his “Jenny” biplanes.
I ran into a lecturer (on sea turtles and the like) who has a cottage nearby and volunteers to work in the Museum’s workshop during the summer. While I was there, they were rebuilding an old biplane that someone had found in a barn somewhere. Sounds like the ultimate retirement gig!
“Barn finds” can be okay for some things – old airplanes for example, it seems – but tragic for others: vintage computers.
Now I remember why I didn’t finish that mechanical engineering degree.
I admire you for getting even part way there. EE was easy…that’s why I picked it. Plus, minus charges. When it started to get tricky (magnetic fields, EM radiation) all you had to do was switch to digital design. Yes, No, Or, And.
I ended up with a computer information systems degree, so I took an easier option. Later. After flunking out several times. I think there’s a toilet named after me at Kansas State University because I flushed so much money down it.
The Statics textbook that started with the phrase ‘It should be intuitively obvious to the casual observer…’ for a discussion about something that I observed to not be intuitive, obvious, or even casual…well, that was the last straw.
One of the best jokes ever sneaked into a textbook.
Not only that, your name has become a hallowed part of the popular lexicon!
A famous math professor was giving a lecture during which he said “it is obvious that…” and then he paused at length in thought, and then excused himself from the lecture temporarily. He returned about fifteen minutes later carrying two textbooks and said “I was right, it is obvious that….” and continued the lecture.
Back in the 1990s I wrote one of the play performed on the Texas State Railroad’s annual Murder on the Disoriented Express. It was an interesting exercise. It started at Palestine, you had four stops, during which the cast rotated among the cars providing clues and at the Wye (before you got to Maydelle) the murder occurred. I wrote two others that were not performed.
If you are in the Houston area and interested in model train layouts check out the Texas City Museum. They have an impressive one.
I’m glad I waited before I told that one.
Rod Stewart has a pretty impressive layout. I’ve seen a video, but can’t find it.
https://allthatsinteresting.com/rod-stewart-model-trains
I have just learned a lot
My uncle was sheriff for Will County, but he started on the Joliet Police force and was Chief of Police before being elected to sheriff.
Which one? (I left more than thirty years ago, and all of my family who were there either left or died.) If you don’t want to say out loud, PM me.