Dennis Plunkett wrote:
>
> At 18:10 13/10/99 -0400, you wrote:
> >At 12:23 PM 10/12/99 -0700, you wrote:
> >>actuating the air brakes. Electropneumatic air brakes have been a dream of
> >>RR people for years. If you have a mile long freight and you open the train
> >>pipe
> >>that runs the length of the train, it'll take some time (during which the
> >>train is bearing
> >>down on a school bus) to empty the air from the rear car.
> >>Unfortunately, the difficulty of making a reliable electrical connection
> >>that won't
> >>be a maintainence nightmare for the approximately one million RR cars out
> >>there
> >>has proved beyond solution.
> >>
> >
> >
> >This is going to sound like a really odd idea, but I will throw it out
> >there anyway ;-)
> >
> >I always wondered why no-one tried (or maybe they have?) to develop some
> >kind of breaking system for RR cars that didn't depend on the wheels (for
> >example, solid-fuel rocket motor) that could be used in an extreme
> >emergency to stop the train QUICKLY. I realize that this is changing the
> >subject slightly from the safety concern you mentioned, but it made me
> >think of it.
> >
>
> HUMM,
> Would this device be at the front or the rear of the train?
>
> Lets see at the front.
> KABOOM rocet fires, driver is thrown back, through the bulkhead an onto the
> diesel, where he obtains 2nd and third degree burns. The train was
> travelling at 50MPH, with the front on a flat and the rear coming down a
> hill. The engine starts to shove other carrages back, the resulting
> intertia casues the carrages to de-rail, these lay accross the tracks
> infront of a high speed intercirty express carrying 2000 passanges, losts
> of dead people = states greatest rail disarster.
>
> On the rear of the train.
> The train is long, and has come over the crest of a hill (1/2 the train on
> each side). The emergency brakes and firing of the rocket causes the train
> to break apart of the the crest (This happens now, with incorrect breaing
> on trains 1 mile long (We run the longest trains in the world here in
> Western Australia, at Mount Tom Price). The back part of the train takes
> off in the oppersite direction and slams into a stationary train waiting at
> the previous signal block, more people dead.
> Meanwhile at the front of the broken train, the driver has been slung up
> against the screen during the jolt that occured while the slack was being
> taken up.
>
> All nasty
>
> Dennis

Distribute the rockets, one smaller pair per car, would make better
sense to me.  All braking fire at the same time, then brakes come on,
rearmost car's brakes first, at 1/8 second intervals running up to the
front of the train, & "feathered in".  Brakes are (soon after rocket
firing) all locked down, so no runaways.  That's the only way that makes
sense to me.  But then I don't work in rail, and don't use 400
characters in Subject lines, unlike some list members!  <G>

(What if a car's run backwards, do you have 2 sets of these?  How bad of
a weight penalty would enough rocket power to brake a 5,000 ton railway
car, COST, per car, and who'd pay when a rocket fired accidentally?
What would the individual states, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco,
and Firearms, etc., have to say about transporting potentially explosive
devices across state lines, I wonder?  Doubt it's practical, from a
legal standpoint, if nothing else.  The engineering's do-able,
political/financial stuff probably make it unlikely.)

  Mark (We're sorta "fluffy" here, huh?)