Gregory's Server@kegill @SuperMoosie @sidereal I can actually speak from personal experience that you absolutely don't want to be anywhere near that switch/point when somebody tries that on a track with concrete sleepers and a diesel locomotive weighing 80 metric tons. Even though its center of gravity was low enough that it didn't topple over. (I was neither aboard the loco nor in the switchbox, but I was close enough to get hit by the dust cloud when it cracked all the sleepers โฆ)
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35 comments
@kegill Here's proof of the incident. Fella on the bottom left was a teammate of mine, fella in black crossing the track was my engineer, on his way back from checking how his colleague on the derailed locomotive was doing (turns out he was fine). @kegill Must have been around 2012-2013, Ulm, Germany, in the shunting yard south of the roundhouse(s)*. Affected loco is a German Rail class 218. *three back then, but two have since been torn down @kegill This picture also shows that it requires quite a bit of skill and proper timing if you want to let the loco go both ways until it locks up. Merely eyeballing it will result in a situation like in this incident more often than not. Also, shunting operations are limited to a Vmax of 25 km/h. Could have ended worse at higher speeds โฆ @kegill @farbenstau @farbenstau @KawaTora @kegill Japan must have imported a lot of terms associated with railways from the UK. They call switches ใใคใณใ (literally "points") in Japanese. Sleepers are ๆๆจ ("pillow wood"), which I'd imagine was coined based on the UK term. @kegill For some real foreign language, try "Hilfsblรคser" and "Luftpresser". To the uninitiated, these sound like German profanities, but these actually the proper nouns for two particular (steam) locomotive components.  @aeva @kegill Germany uses them a lot โฆ and has had quite some nasty surprises with them. Turns out derailing locos aren't the only way to cause fatal structural damage to them. cf. "Concrete Csncer", https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alkali%E2%80%93silica_reaction @farbenstau (when relating to trains this a problem exclusive to communist/east german made concrete. Subpar materials used ) @farbenstau a systematic error (bad chemistry). While there is reporting of special inspection where many of this type were replaced this isn't phrased in a way that suggest a type wide issue. https://www.sueddeutsche.de/bayern/zugunglueck-garmisch-partenkirchen-unfall-fuenf-tote-ermittlungen-bahn-mitarbeiter-1.6244651 Do you have any evidence explicitly linking this to Concrete Cancer? @freemin7 I found an older, but post-reunification case: Hamburg-Berlin. Concrete sleepers from the 1990ies failed around 2008, track had to be closed off for 3 months for the replacements to be installed. @farbenstau Were the concrete sleepers manufactured in (former) east germany? Maybe i should have used a weaker statement and called it a non-west german problem. @freemin7 It seems they were from the new Bundeslรคnder, indeed. @farbenstau I found nothing about concrete cancer being a problem before east germany in that region. (looked from Nazi germany to Prussia) That this issue plagued east germany trhough outs it's existence suggests some geological cause with a lack of process control and competition. That the problem persistent so long into the unified germany also shows a market failuire, possibly due to local monopoly and limited west german competition (distance). @freemin7 I wonder if the Schienenfreunde Cartel was only about steel or also about sleepers โฆ Als alkaliempfindlich gelten Gesteine, die amorphe oder feinkristalline Silicate enthalten, wie z. B. Opalsandstein und porรถser Flint. Insbesondere die in Norddeutschland in grรถรeren Mengen vorkommenden Opalsandsteine sowie die Grauwackevorkommen in der Lausitz kรถnnen schรคdliche Mengen an alkalilรถslicher Kieselsรคure enthalten. Durch Verwendung von Zementen mit niedrig wirksamem Alkaligehalt (mit โ(na)โ hinter der Normbezeichnung gekennzeichnet) @farbenstau @farbenstau The question is: I think the concrentation of such defects in particular orders for particular installation kinda speaks against a truely random "meist"? However in east germany "concrete cancer" also impacted some "Plattenbau"s but also in local clusters. ๐คท @freemin7 To me, it sounds like you cannot rule it out completely, either due to the source material being too heterogenous in nature, or due to factors that are not completely known/understood yet. So you need rigid quality control, both during manufacturing and at regular intervals once the sleepers are in place. @farbenstau  There was a company trying to sell hemp sleepers. Negative co2. Income for farmers, kept rail cooler, put a wireless mesh sensor in it so condition could be monitored remotely. @SuperMoosie @aeva @kegill Oh dear. We already have issues with criminals stealing the wiring that's running parallel to the tracks, due to the copper. Now add hemp to the equation ... @kegill That's what you and I know, but some pothead might not โฆ we've had copper thieves rip out glass fiber because they couldn't tell the difference โฆ  @kegill @farbenstau I'm pretty sure the CalTrain tracks 200 meters from my house are on concrete sleepers. That makes sense as they are highly used passenger trains. Most of our (limited relative to Europe or Asia) rail use nationwide is for freight, however. @kegill @farbenstau yeah, there is no more than one one freight train a day on those tracks. It's almost entirely commuter rail. ( I live between San Jose and San Francisco) |
@farbenstau
โConcrete sleepersโ was a bit of foreign language. I had no idea.
Added: the US doesnโt use its limited trains enough to cost justify leaving wood behind.