Gregory's Server“Concrete sleepers” was a bit of foreign language. I had no idea.
Added: the US doesn’t use its limited trains enough to cost justify leaving wood behind.
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34 comments
@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 … @kegill @farbenstau @farbenstau @KawaTora @kegill Japan must have imported a lot of terms associated with railways from the UK. They call switches ポイント (literally "points") in Japanese. Sleepers are 枕木 ("pillow wood"), which I'd imagine was coined based on the UK term. @kegill For some real foreign language, try "Hilfsbläser" 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 … 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 Bundesländer, 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 … Als alkaliempfindlich gelten Gesteine, die amorphe oder feinkristalline Silicate enthalten, wie z. B. Opalsandstein und poröser Flint. Insbesondere die in Norddeutschland in größeren Mengen vorkommenden Opalsandsteine sowie die Grauwackevorkommen in der Lausitz können schädliche Mengen an alkalilöslicher Kieselsäure enthalten. Durch Verwendung von Zementen mit niedrig wirksamem Alkaligehalt (mit „(na)“ 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. 🤷 @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 … we've had copper thieves rip out glass fiber because they couldn't tell the difference …  @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) |
@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).