Longer and Longer Freight Trains Drive Up the Odds of Derailment

<i>&gt; “We desperately need a law in this country to cap the length of a train,” Cassity says. “We need to know what too long is, and we need to know what the limit is going to be.” The big picture of the Risk Analysis study is correct, in his view: “They’re seeing the reality that long trains derail more often than shorter trains,” Cassity says.</i><p>The limit should be whatever fits in the sidings on a track. It&#x27;s ridiculous that the rail industry can handicap passenger rail by just increasing the length of the trains until they physically can&#x27;t fit in the sidings.<p>Then if they want to make their trains longer, they have to improve the infrastructure instead of putting pressure on everything and everyone except the shareholders&#x27; profits.

Missing from this article is the correlation between train length and use of sidings when opposing trains need to pass.<p>It’s well known the reason Amtrak sucks is because freight trains run on the same tracks and their sidings are too short, relative to the length of the trains, to prevent freight-caused delays on most Amtrak lines. Avg. passenger rail speeds in the US peaked in the 1880’s iirc.<p>If you simply can’t use a siding because your train is too long, I can see a derailment becoming more likely.<p>There may also be loading fatigue contributions, similar to higher speeds and harder tires making semi trucks responsible for 90+% of US highway wear. The longest trains no doubt run on a minority of busiest routes, so there is less risk of derailment with shorter trains on the plurality of routes. In essence, it’s not that the derailed train is too long, it’s that the previous train is too long, causing the track to wear out too fast.

I find it interesting that the article doesn&#x27;t really mention that regardless of derailment <i>rate</i>, longer trains increase derailment <i>impact</i>.<p>A longer train can, of course, derail more cars, and when it derails, will strand more cars (since the train&#x27;s cars still on the rails are temporarily stopped and often can&#x27;t be moved until the derailment is partially cleaned up). In addition, derailing the 50th car of a 50-car train can only cascade to cars ahead of it; derailing the 50th car in a 100-car train can cascade in both directions. (Stated more generally, the average car in a 100-car train is twice as far from the end of the train than the average car in a 50-car train.)<p>Even if a 100-car train had the same likelihood of derailment as a 50-car train, a 50-car train would, on average, have reduced impact.

I&#x27;d really like there to be a study on the secondary impact of long trains. They cut entire towns in half for sometimes 30+ minutes at a time. In Portland, OR, extremely long trains would cut of entire sections of the city, and that&#x27;s assuming they didn&#x27;t have to stop for some reason.<p>It makes it really hard for emergency services to get to where the need to be. At least a couple of times a day, a train would cut Naito in half (the main road running on the west side of the river). The fire station was on one side, and a ton of apartment buildings were on the other. If a fire starts at the wrong time, it&#x27;ll take 30 extra minutes to get there. Ditto for ambulances. Not to mention all of the impact on congestion in the city, which has tertiary effects on emergency services

A few comments here noting the conflicts between freight and passenger service on shared lines. Would it be a better use of resources to eliminate token passenger rail service to keep it from interfering with freight? Bus is as good or better than passenger rail in many cases, but there is no real alternative for moving hundreds of tons of materials.

Nobody talking about the track geometry which is surely a major factor at play.

Look up Cantara Loop in Northern California, a derailment caused a major environmental disaster back in 1991.<p>They&#x27;ve never really figured out how to stop derailments there, they still happen on a regular basis. We&#x27;ve just gotten lucky recently and the derailed cars weren&#x27;t full of toxic chemicals.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ijpr.org&#x2F;disasters-and-accidents&#x2F;2022-11-17&#x2F;fourth-train-derailment-occurs-near-dunsmuir-at-cantara-loop" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ijpr.org&#x2F;disasters-and-accidents&#x2F;2022-11-17&#x2F;four...</a>

Isn&#x27;t there some static limit to how long a train can be? On a 1% grade with a 15000-ton train, the first knuckle is loaded with 150 tons statically, which sounds like a lot. It seems like you wouldn&#x27;t be able to practically enjoy the power of 9 locomotives because you wouldn&#x27;t be able to pass that much force through the knuckle.

Here’s another great article on the topic. I particularly like the animations in this one.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.propublica.org&#x2F;article&#x2F;train-derailment-long-trains" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.propublica.org&#x2F;article&#x2F;train-derailment-long-tra...</a>

Well, fix the economics. That will make corporations rational overnight.<p>If a derailment only happens X% of time and causes Y$ amount of monetary loss, you need to increase Y. Apparently no one cares when corn gets derailed, and maybe that is okay. If derailments cause human injury, the cost goes up. Toxic chemicals are the classic example.<p>So why not raise the cost when a toxic chemical is released during derailment? You can do it with fines, regulations, etc.. But until you fix the economics, its going to continue to happen.<p>Ask yourself: Over the course of 1 year, it better to have a 20% longer train with a 0.1% chance of corn derailment, or a 20% shorter train with a 0.001% chance derailment? If you arent breaking out excel, and instead using emotions, you never had a chance to make this decision.