US Class 1 Railroads Were In Favor Of Improved, Safer Braking Systems Until They Weren't

[hatrack]

National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) chair Jennifer Homendy concluded that the East Palestine, Ohio, rail disaster was “100% preventable.” The certainty of this statement raises the obvious question: Why did this happen? The answer was actually provided by one of Homendy’s predecessors at the NTSB. In 2014, speaking about the spate of oil train disasters that were occuring, NTSB chair Deborah Hersman told the Associated Press that, “We know the steps that will prevent or mitigate these accidents. What is missing is the will to require people to do so.” The NTSB has no enforcement capability, so its recommendations are often ignored by the rail industry. Meanwhile, the regulators at the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) have enforcement capability, but lack the will to enforce regulations that would prevent these accidents. More evidence, as DeSmog has documented, that the rail regulatory system is “fundamentally broken.”

In 2016, when the rail industry was actively fighting against regulations requiring modern electronically controlled pneumatic (ECP) brakes on trains carrying hazardous materials, Sarah Feinberg, the head of the FRA at the time, explained to the Washington Post the real reason why accidents like East Palestine aren’t prevented. “The science is there, the data is there,” Feinberg said. “Their argument is, despite that data, [they] don’t want to spend the money on it.” The rail industry has frequently argued that ECP brakes don’t work and are too costly. An industry spokesperson recently said the modern brakes, “have a ‘significant’ failure rate and lengthy repair time that makes them impractical.”

EDIT

n 2009 the director of air-brake systems for rail giant Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) discussed the problems with the existing air brake systems in a story that appeared in the technology magazine IEEE Spectrum. “Anytime you put the air on, you’re subject for something to go wrong,” said Dana Maryott, director of locomotive and air-brake systems at BNSF Railway. “We’ve had long trains where the engineer released the brake and started pulling a little bit too early, while the brakes were still set on the rear of the train,” explained Maryott. “And coming around a sharp radius, we’ve literally pulled the train off the track.” In that same article in 2009, he explained how ECP brakes were a modernized and higher caliber braking system.

Again and again, we find instances of regulators and representatives from the rail industry lauding the benefits of ECP technology. To the point that a 2010 article on rail braking and safety in the trade journal Progressive Railroading opens with the following: “There’s no doubt electronically controlled pneumatic (ECP) brakes provide a slew of benefits compared with conventional braking systems.”

EDIT

https://www.desmog.com/2023/03/08/railroad-industry-ecp-brakes-safety-derailment-ntsb-fra-east-palestine-ohio/

[Turbineguy]

1. Electrons move faster than air.

Air is great for small distances, like a railcar length. On large diesels, air is used to close exhaust valves instead of mechanical springs. But it's electronically controlled.

[moniss]

2. This is somewhat similar to the trucking industry/manufacturers

that fought against disc brake technology for decades despite the Europeans adopting it and showing that it worked fine and greatly improved braking/stopping distances. Finally we do have adoption in America. Just a short discussion about another issue that is tangential to East Palestine is the subject of overheating bearings.

Industry has had reliable temperature sensing technology for decades now but adoption of that technology for wheel bearings in the transportation industry is almost non-existent. Money, money, money. Greed, greed, greed. Despite the cost not being exorbitant. Lip service about safety. A major problem in the trucking industry has been "wheel end failure" on both the semi tractor and the trailer. When those bearings overheat and fail they can cause the system that retains the wheels to fail and the tires and wheels can separate from the axle and come flying out into traffic/surrounding areas. Those wheel sets are big and heavy and will be moving at typically a high rate of speed. Your air bags aren't likely to save you. The consequences from them hitting other vehicles/houses is deadly. But the bearings heating up to dangerous failure levels is not an instantaneous matter. The sensors are available that could alert the driver that a problem is occurring and allow sufficient time to slow and stop. The train is no different. It is a question of the will to implement change. I won't put up pictures/video of some of the examples because it can be a trigger for people who have been in vehicle accidents. They can be found if people want to look.