smitty195 Wrote:
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> What would be a give-away in a similar situation?

Every situation is different, but in the case of this train, this first thing I would've questioned, had it been me, was the tonnage figure listed. Every engineer and conductor was provided with a print-out of the train called a "Car and Tonnage Profile," more commonly knowb as a graph. It's a wealth of information about the train. My recollection is that the graph showed 6100-something tons, which would be well under what 69 loaded 100-ton coal cars should weigh. That's the first "light bulb" that should've gone on in my head. (It was later determined by the NTSB that the figure shown was an "Estimated Weight" since the shipper had not actually weighed the cars, and the railroad's clerk entered an "Estimated Weight" based on his experience with these kind of cars when they carried coal. As a result of this accident, SP stopped accepting "Estimated Weights" for bulk commodities.)

Based on my suspicion about the weight, I would've also paid more attention to the availability of the dynamic braking - or rather, the lack thereof. Holland and crew had deadheaded by van from Bakersfield to Mojave. They found the lead unit of the 3-unit consist (7551) was dead and would not start, so they were instructed to add the 8278 ahead of it. What they didn't know, but was determined during the NTSB's investigation, was that one of the other units had been previously reported (and entered into the TOPS computer system) as having only partial dynamic brakes. Thus, they ended up leaving Mojave with a train that was considerably heavier than shown on their paperwork, and with two "good" units of dynamic and a third with probably little or none. This was another part of the recipe for disater.

After the crew had left Bakersfield, a West Colton helper crew had been called, who deaded headed to Dike to pick up a two-unit helper and head over the hill until they met the trona train. They were to act as a rear-end "downhill" helper, to help with dynamic braking when going down Cajon. Of their two units, one had been reported at least a week earlier as having an inoperative dynamic brake, but had been allowed to remain in the consist.

Although the trona train and helper crews had operating radios, neither advised the other of the condition of the units (nor were they required to). Thus, the fact that out of a total of 6 units, they really only had 3 or maybe 3 1/2 units of dynamic braking. And the helper crew didn't know about the train being over its listed tonnage.

Engineer Holland should've crested the grade at Hiland at a speed that was at least 5 M.P.H. less than the Maximum Authorized Speed, but the investigation determined that he failed to do that. Thus, he had no "wiggle room" to control his speed as the train tipped over the hill.

The investigation revealed that after the train crested the grade, it almost immediately because obvious that its speed could not be controlled normally, so the train should've been placed in Emergency and stopped. However, because of a series of miss-steps caused by inexperience, other actions were taken instead, and as the train continued down the grade, it gradually lost braking ability as the brake shoes wore down. Once it encountered less curvy track, its speed really took off with no real hope of stopping it until physics took over on the curve leading up to the Highland Avenue overpass, with this result: [www.railpictures.net]

What whould I have done differently? Well, assuming that I had actually left Mojave or Palmdale with the train like that, I would've made sure I crested the grade way under the cresting speed requirement so that if I discovered I was having trouble controlling the train, I'd be able to immediately stop it. Even if it became necessary to reverse the locomotives in the hopes of building up a false flange to create a derailment, I'd rather have it happen at, say, 20 M.P.H. than at 100-plus. (The investigation revealed that SP's Locomotive Simulator training program for engineers didn't specifically teach what to do in the event of a runaway when an Emergency brake application wouldn't stop the train.)

Or maybe I just would've laid off!