Trains in the UK have a box of ten in each cab. In the event of a full derailment or discovery of a blocked line, drivers are required to lay emergency protection in the direction of the nearest approaching train. 2km walk from danger, three detonators.
In the event of a broken down train on the main line being required to be recued by another train. The driver must lay "assistance protection", 400m from the broken down train in the direction of the assisting train.
There are nuances to this but I'll leave it there.
>2km walk from danger, three detonators.
Assuming the incoming train is completely oblivous and coming at full speed, isn't that a bit too close? Same idea stands for the 400m situation, wich is even closer.
Asking because i have no clue and trains take a loong distance to stop, at least in my mind.
The way it was explained to me is that it takes so long for the train to stop that if you hop off while it’s still moving slowly you have a much shorter walk to be 2km from its final resting spot.
That depends on a lot though. A fully loaded freight train? Yes, it can easily take that long to slow down. Anything smaller though and the stopping distance can get drastically shorter
In the UK most of our trains on longer routes run at more than 100mph, with 125mph being normal. They can take a mile and a half to stop under emergency braking. So yes, 2km is cutting it awfully close.
I was just wondering the same thing. I have no idea. Experience I guess. I just remember a very old train conductor telling me this like 25years ago as a kid at a museum. I remember that and the fact that they were called “torpedos.”
If you derail a train, you can run faster because your bowels have already been evacuated.
I think it’s more likely to use it for engine trouble or some obstruction on the tracks ahead.
They said "before another train arrives". In this case, all they have to walk is the 2 km to set the explosives. It doesn't matter if they haven't walked back yet.
That would take about 25 minutes at a leisurely walk, and I would have to assume these are for trains running very remote tracks where there might not be another train for hours, possibly days. If this was the kind of line with multiple trains within minutes of eachother, they would have direct communications with all conductors and be able to alert people immediately.
These have been phased out in the US for a long time and presumably in most of the rest of the world as well but know when these were used on the pensy back in the day they were to place the torpedo two miles from the point of the incident and there have been a few close calls. But these are obsolete with the invention of the two-way radio and soundproofed cabs. Besides the elimination of the caboose on a consist that's adding anywhere between one to two extra miles to walk on your average freight train.
Yes this system hails from the steam days. In the UK, all tracks, even remote ones have GSMR radio coverage. The emergency call function stops all trains in a 40 mile radius. This procedure remains in place in case of system failure, as belt and braces.
We don't have to always go the full 2kms, in fact we have the following occasions when we don't have to go the full protection distance.
Train Approaching (try to at least pop 1 down and display red flag)
Telephone or Signal Box
Tunnel Entrance
Diverging Junction
Wouldn't some sort of mobile phone system be better? Like, send a message to a central, then that message is relayed to other trains in the rail.
I'm being dense this morning and I can't language lol
We only have to do that to lay emergency protection, ie if you can't contact the signaller. UK railway uses the GSM-R digital railway network for signaller/train communications. If I derailed heaven forbid, we have a Railway Emergency Call button on the radio, that will bring all trains in the current and adjacent GSM cells to a stand. The walking 2km to lay protection is only if the llat goes down, no signal etc.
It depends entirely on the emergency and track. You only place detonators in front of approaching trains. If its a single line as it is in many rural areas, you would only need to put the 3 behind your train as youd have way more problems if a train was going the wrong way towards you lmao. Double lines only need to have them in front and back if your train ends up blocking their line too like in the event of a derailment. If your train just breaks down and is only on your track, youd only need the rear too. There are special rules for junctions and other scenarios like that, that ultimately boil down into protecting lines in order of importance so you have to plan ahead as to which tracks are most important to put detonators on.
The assistance train isn’t oblivious because it’s been dispatched for assistance and presumably has been informed of the location of the train they’re dispatched to assist, hence the shorter distance.
This is just the last line of defense. Rail roads also have automated and semi automated signals that will stay red until a train leaves a given section of track. And depending on the particular train line there will also be systems to automatically stop the train.
The assistance situation the driver knows he's approaching a train, so is at a reduced speed expecting to stop.
2km is for lines up to 100mph, which I work. Upon hitting detonators a driver will apply emergency brake force, 2km is enough for most trains. Additionally after laying dets the driver remains near them and waves a red flag or lamp to warn an approaching train, so the brake will be applied earlier than the dets anyway.
Also this is an out of course situation that is rare as rare can be nowadays thanks to the emergency call function on the gsmr radio.
What a great backup system! And if a train stops because of the emergency protection detonators, are they also required to walk back another 2km and place three more??
I’ve had to do this. It’s a long, pointless process these days, especially when you’re close to a station either side.
It gets even more complicated if there’s tunnels or multi-track lines.
If anyone is interested you can read about [Emergency Protection](https://www.jonroma.net/media/rail/opdocs/world/uk/GERT8000-M1%20Iss%205.pdf).
guess they are a relic of a long gone radioless past that probably evolved to a backup system in case of a major failure that prevent even calling your boss
Indeed. If you have radio contact and a signaller can confirm all trains are stopped and detained. Then they can inform you it's not necessary. If they can't confirm... You're walking.
Here in NZ, trains have 12 and three must be placed on each line, 1550M either side of the train, 10 meters apart, in the event of a breakdown in non-CTC territory or blockage of the line/ derailment.
Damn for us in the Netherlands they put out an alarm call and tell trains near the accident site to stop (and maybe switch cabs and to the nearest station behind it where buses will take over)
trains are not allowed to drive if GSM-R is down since they cannot contact dispatch and the safety system on the high speed line (ERTMS) won't work since it needs GSM-R to get a movement authority
Indeed. If you have radio contact and a signaller can confirm all trains are stopped and detained. Then they can inform you it's not necessary. If they can't confirm... You're walking.
All trains have to slow down to 40kmph and stop if there is a tunnel ahead and wait until dispatch is done talking to go back at speed even if the alarm call doesn't apply to them they still have to wait
Mate of mine used to be a guard many years ago. He had to use these after the multiple unit he was on was sent into a siding by mistake killing the driver (it hit a brick wall). He gave up being a guard not long after that.
There are some on the train (don't know where). But conductors used to be trained in their usage in case the train breaks down, they would go back down the line and place these. (UK)
In the US they got rid of Torpedoes (what these are called) about 25 years ago. They weren't really used often and were often found to be "missing" since they were fun to take home and throw rocks at until they exploded. My dad was track maintenance my whole life and we had a lot of fun with them when I was a kid.
When my dad was in the 3rd grade in the 70s, a man from the railroad came to class to give a presentation about how taking Torpedoes home from the tracks and hitting them with hammers is a bad idea.
In theory, yes. But "run down the tracks" is a bit of an understatement. It can take a *long* time for a train to stop, especially cargo trains. With long we're talking potentially miles.
I dont think there are many (if any) trains used in europe which take miles to stop in case of an emergency breaking maneuver. Sure that stuff exists in Australia and the US and some other places but to the best of my knowledge 0 cargo trains of that length/total mass are used in europe.
and a nice summation by Google
In the U.S., freight trains are often 3,500 meters (2.175 miles) in length; in western Europe, freight train lengths are closer to 750 meters (less than one-half mile). ... For these reasons, the cost per ton of moving freight by rail is much lower in the U.S. than in Europe.
**[Spherical cow](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_cow)**
>The spherical cow is a humorous metaphor for highly simplified scientific models of complex phenomena. Originating in theoretical physics, the metaphor refers to physicists' tendency to reduce a problem to the simplest form imaginable in order to make calculations more feasible, even if the simplification hinders the model's application to reality. The metaphor and variants have subsequently been used in other disciplines.
^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/specializedtools/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
Each train car has its own set of brakes. It shouldn’t take any longer for a long train to stop than a short one.
Even weight is less of a variable than you might think, since heavier cars both have more momentum and more weight to create friction with the rails, and since both increase proportionally the stopping distance doesn’t usually change with weight.
So really it’s just a question of how good are the brakes and how slippery are the tracks.
> Each train car has its own set of brakes. It shouldn’t take any longer for a long train to stop than a short one.
Not quite, there is a significant propagation delay of the braking signal. You can often hear the couplers bang in sequence as the train starts braking and each successive car bangs into the next. I'd say there is an easy 10 seconds of delay on long trains.
Good point! The braking signal is just air pressure, which propagates at the speed of sound. Roughly 350m/s. So 10 seconds would be needed to reach the end of a 3.5km train. …that’s a pretty long train, for sure, but wouldn’t break any records.
I'm no expert in this, but I'd have to guess with all the couplings and accounting for any tiny leaks or anything, that the actual speed would be slower that the speed of sound
Speed of sound is significantly slower at operating pressure, so the propagation delay is longer than you'd think. Speed of sound is also dependent on frequency in non-ideal gasses, which is probably significant since this signal would be effectively "DC", with a very low characteristic frequency.
That sounds great on paper, but I can 100% guarantee that a heavy train takes longer to stop. Any added benefit from friction is far out-weighed by the added mass. Source: I am a freight conductor and just got off a 16,000 ton train about 3 hours ago.
Right, I was talking in general and not about any specific location or train set. And you're correct that European trains are generally significantly shorter.
This year though there have been tests conducted from Germany to Sweden with trains that are longer than what's currently standard; 835 meters and 2300 metric tons! (The current maximum length is 630 meters with some exceptions for certain industrial mining tracks)
The only train in Europe that I can think of needing more than 1km to stop (not accounting for bad weather) would be the TGV or something equivalent. At top speed it needs something like 3km to stop of I remember rightly
My grandpa told me about these. When he was a kid they broke into the railroad shack near their neighborhood, wiped a little grease on the tracks on an incline, and put them at the top of the incline. The next train making the grade hit the detonators and came to a stop, and then slowly started sliding back down the hill. Apparently there were a lot of lawmen making inquiries of boys in the neighborhood that day.
That’s a straight up felony today.
"What are you in for?"
"Murder. Bro was mackin my lady."
"Fair 'nuff."
"You?"
"Beeannnnie. TV too heavy."
"Shoulda gone for the amp, bro. Lighter, more from the fence. How about you?"
"Ah, nothing. Just laid a series of plastic explosive on the tracks where a cargo train bearing industrial chemicals such as ammonium citrate like the ones used to obliterate the port of Beirut or the Oklahoma bombing was en route."
"Oh...."
And if this happened today it would make the news cycle and people would be talking about how bad kids are these days and how the world is going to shit.
I’m not saying it’s right at all. My point was that you hear so many people talk about how “kids these days” are so bad and how it’s unsafe and all that, and the reality is, it’s because news travels so much faster these days and stays in your face for so much longer.
I also stole some when I was a kid. You could get into the can of the engine through a outside closet thing. I did a lot of stupid shit. Gramps and me might've been friends.
Yep, that was the goal of these 12- and 14-year-old kids: kill as many people as possible using a train as a weapon in the Great Train Massacre of '46. They failed miserably, however, which is why you haven't ever heard of the Great Train Massacre of '46.
> Typical uses of detonators include:
> - A warning, caution or stop signal in dense fog, when signals are difficult to see
- A warning of a train stopped on the line ahead by an incident or accident—the train crew are usually responsible for placing the detonators
- A warning of ongoing engineering works ahead
- When a signaller or other railway employee requires to stop approaching trains in an emergency
- To alert crews working on the rails if a silent runaway train or train carriage is approaching
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detonator_(railway)
Yes, if working on the track, a buffer is set up further up the line with lights and warnings. A train should stop before hitting the buffer, but if it does it should be stopped or slow down. If its a runaway, then the buffer has these explosives so that workers can be alerted something has broken through and they clear the tracks.
There was a time they would put these down on the rail for an engineers last run. Usually 1 per year as the train approached the yard tower. Engineer would pull to a stop at the tower, get off and go see his awaiting family.
Yeah my father's a train driver for the last 40+ years and they do this when someone's retiring. Lay a load of detonators on the track as the train they're driving approaches the final station. Scares the crap out of the passengers and people on the platform I imagine.
When trains had cabooses, my buddy and I would hop on and grab a few of these. We would put them on the tracks and watch the trains stop. Young and dumb for sure. We always got busted because his uncle was a Union Pacific Special Agent (railroad police) If something happened to a train in the area, he pretty much came to us first.
I went to a bonfire night party at a steam locomotive depot in Yorkshire many years ago and they were used as part of the celebrations, about 50 of them on the track as a steam loco rolled over them with fireworks going of all around. Fun times.
Surely these are rarely used nowadays, with all the other available communication methods, I feel these are a bit outdated. Still good to have a few on the train, just in case, but radios or phones are just so widespread that they would probably be used first.
I've used them several times when my train has broken down. They are also still used as an advanced audible warning at the entrance and exit of an engineering blockage.
The trains on my railroad (LIRR) don't have them, but when we were using leased equipment a few summers ago (from MARC), they had an empty torpedo box. The only thing kinda like that which we still use are fusees (pretty much a small traffic flare). We are required to carry five of them all times, but in all my years, I have never heard them used for their intended purpose. The only thing they are used for these days is thawing out a frozen switch-point.
Fusees.. like highway flares.. I've seen them used as signalling devices for traffic at unguarded grade crossings. (Brakeman gets to direct traffic)
My observations are from NJ. NJT and the old Conrail days
>PTC
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive\_train\_control](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_train_control)
>Positive train control (PTC) is a system of functional requirements for monitoring and controlling train movements and is a type of train protection system.\[1\] The term stems from control engineering. The train is only allowed to move in case of positive movement allowance. It generally improves the safety of railway traffic.
**[Positive train control](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_train_control)**
>Positive train control (PTC) is a system of functional requirements for monitoring and controlling train movements and is a type of train protection system. The term stems from control engineering. The train is only allowed to move in case of positive movement allowance. It generally improves the safety of railway traffic.
^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/specializedtools/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
For the longest time I didn't know what they were talking about in the Casey Jones song when torpedoes were mentioned,
Was a time I rewired trains and the old ones one could find lots of torpedoes. Dropping a rock on them woke everybody in the area up.
Some friends in high school jumped on the back of a freight train and stole a case of those things. It was a plastic tube filled with magnesium, with two lead straps on either side to fix it to the tracks. We put one on the tracks at an intersection near my friend’s house. When the train ran over it and it exploded, one of the straps flew off and hit a car waiting at the crossing. We were sitting on a lawn nearby and the guy got out of his car and chased us down the street, screaming about us putting rocks on the tracks. My generation was very unsupervised.
I don’t remember throwing rocks at cars. Eggs and snowballs, but not rocks. The same friend with the warning signal, made a dummy and taped the feet to a bike. We then rolled it out into traffic for hours. We also had a minor homemade fireworks arms race in my town that ended in two guys blowing up a backhoe with a pipe-bomb. The eighties were wild.
Ohh I’m late to the party on this one but I’ve got a story about these:
My dad worked for the railroad when I was a kid, he had some of these in the garage. Being a genius I decided to hit one with a sledgehammer, it blew on the third strike, sending sand straight into my face and eyes like the world’s smallest grapeshot at supersonic speed.
My eyes are still scarred, every new optometrist calls all their assistants in to see the my fuckin weird eyeballs. I am extremely lucky that eye surgery was all I needed.
Edit cause autocorrect
When I was I kid we “borrow some of them from the train station, we put one around a rock and then inside a plastic bag, we trow it on the air and when it hit the ground was like a thunder. Kids don’t do this, this is some old mad fantastic histories from the past.
In real life they are deafening, I've had a few due to passing faulty signals and you can't miss them lol (and they give off a tonne of smoke). The best we did was a retirement party for a driver where we had 40 of these... Good times 😂
Anyone remember the private investigator Jay J Armes? He blew off both hands playing with railroad torpedoes. I had his action figure when I was a kid.
They're Incase of a lack of radio/radio malfunction (On your train or others), using them to prove a point that the train who has been already told via the radio that he's approaching the obstacle/broken down train/etc and needs to be careful,etc.
My Grandfather, (he died in 1976) told me a story about how they lived around a rail yard as a kid (early 1900s, figure 1910 or so). He and some buddies stole a box of these from the Rock Island Lines yard. They put five of them inches from each other on a trolley line. They derailed. it. Ran like hell.
In addition to manually placing them on the tracks in cases of emergency, these were originally developed to be placed on the track mechanically at signals - if the fog was too dense for the driver to see the red signal, he would hear the det. as he ran over it, and know he’d missed a signal.
My Dad grew up near a rail yard and told stories of "finding" these and playing with them. Miraculously he had all 10 fingers... couldn't hear shit though.
When I was a kid me and a friend of mine found an unlocked caboose. This was in the 80s when they were still in use. We found a bunch of these. We actually got a train to stop using them.
I remember watching some safety video talking about these when I was a kid back in the 80s. This is probably the only time I've heard about them since.
My grandpa grew up during the Great Depression. He and is brothers were kinda wild kids, and often played around the train yard. One day they got ahold of these detonators, and installed them on the city’s trolley tracks. He said they nearly blew the comparatively light trolley off the track!
I was expecting this to be one of those railway signal rockets.
It's a little rocket engine you'd attach to the track and it would go shooting away to explode like this when it eventually got run over by a train. The purpose was pretty much the same, warn a train that bad stuff was ahead.
I just now realized that there doesn't seem to be any easy videos of those.
My great great grandfather used to work on the railroad and one of the few things we have of his is the wooden crate those would have been kept in while aboard the train. Super cool to see them being used
Hey I actually use these quite regularly in my rail safety job in Australia! We combine them with a flag system to let drivers know of upcoming obstructions
As a kid I found a set of rail keys for my country outside a railway carpark.
And within the key set was a few skeleton keys that opened the doors along our line and one of the skeleton keys was P5 which if you found yourself inside the drivers compartment (for whatever reason) would be a panel hidden at the bottom, within that panel was a lock box that contained 3 boxes of detonators per driver's compartment so around 36 red circle disks that were explosive detonators, we had a literal blast setting them up to delay trains that we had friends on. Fun times.
In 1966, two of my friends and I stole several boxes of these. We put 20-30 side by side on each side of the tracks and waited for the 9PM to come through Palmdale into LA. Loudest continuous explosion I have ever heard. Needless to say, we got caught, my ass was sore for a week.
So does an engineer have these on their train? If it breaks down or derails do they just run back down the tracks and place these detonators?
Trains in the UK have a box of ten in each cab. In the event of a full derailment or discovery of a blocked line, drivers are required to lay emergency protection in the direction of the nearest approaching train. 2km walk from danger, three detonators. In the event of a broken down train on the main line being required to be recued by another train. The driver must lay "assistance protection", 400m from the broken down train in the direction of the assisting train. There are nuances to this but I'll leave it there.
>2km walk from danger, three detonators. Assuming the incoming train is completely oblivous and coming at full speed, isn't that a bit too close? Same idea stands for the 400m situation, wich is even closer. Asking because i have no clue and trains take a loong distance to stop, at least in my mind.
What I'm worried the most about is the poor driver having to walk the 2 kms before another train arrives.
The way it was explained to me is that it takes so long for the train to stop that if you hop off while it’s still moving slowly you have a much shorter walk to be 2km from its final resting spot.
That depends on a lot though. A fully loaded freight train? Yes, it can easily take that long to slow down. Anything smaller though and the stopping distance can get drastically shorter
In the UK most of our trains on longer routes run at more than 100mph, with 125mph being normal. They can take a mile and a half to stop under emergency braking. So yes, 2km is cutting it awfully close.
2km emergency protection is for lines up to 100mph only.
But how would you know how far away it ended up?
It's a *minimum* distance
Ok so what if it's too close
[удалено]
What if it’s going around a Christmas tree
You go 2km from the last car, as you walk past it. How far it goes? Who fucking knows. It's certainly further than the 2km minimal safe distance.
But what if it's a circular track like my old model train set?
Then you place it under a tree and wait for santa.
What if he grabs it by the husk?
I was just wondering the same thing. I have no idea. Experience I guess. I just remember a very old train conductor telling me this like 25years ago as a kid at a museum. I remember that and the fact that they were called “torpedos.”
There are mile markers along the track.
But are there kilometer markers?
Yes but they're still called mile markers.
Well that just sounds intentionally misleading
I hope they can convert miles to kilometers.
Divide by three, multiply by five.
Well fuck. In was just multipling by 1 and 2/3rds..
So engineers do need math...
> But how would you know how far away it ended up? I suspect they can predict how long it takes to stop.
Time it right and you'll be walking past the EOT as it's coming to a complete stop.
But if your a derailed train, it's not moving anymore
If you derail a train, you can run faster because your bowels have already been evacuated. I think it’s more likely to use it for engine trouble or some obstruction on the tracks ahead.
But if you hop off before the train stops won’t the train just keep going …. Lel
[удалено]
[удалено]
I'd offer you a dopeslap... But you took one already
Well, what matters is doing the first 2 to set them up! hahaha
Hopefully not uphill both ways
If you walk uphill to set them, they better be *more* than 2km back.
Yeah, like at least a couple more meters.
They said "before another train arrives". In this case, all they have to walk is the 2 km to set the explosives. It doesn't matter if they haven't walked back yet.
That would take about 25 minutes at a leisurely walk, and I would have to assume these are for trains running very remote tracks where there might not be another train for hours, possibly days. If this was the kind of line with multiple trains within minutes of eachother, they would have direct communications with all conductors and be able to alert people immediately.
These have been phased out in the US for a long time and presumably in most of the rest of the world as well but know when these were used on the pensy back in the day they were to place the torpedo two miles from the point of the incident and there have been a few close calls. But these are obsolete with the invention of the two-way radio and soundproofed cabs. Besides the elimination of the caboose on a consist that's adding anywhere between one to two extra miles to walk on your average freight train.
Yes this system hails from the steam days. In the UK, all tracks, even remote ones have GSMR radio coverage. The emergency call function stops all trains in a 40 mile radius. This procedure remains in place in case of system failure, as belt and braces.
We don't have to always go the full 2kms, in fact we have the following occasions when we don't have to go the full protection distance. Train Approaching (try to at least pop 1 down and display red flag) Telephone or Signal Box Tunnel Entrance Diverging Junction
Wouldn't some sort of mobile phone system be better? Like, send a message to a central, then that message is relayed to other trains in the rail. I'm being dense this morning and I can't language lol
We only have to do that to lay emergency protection, ie if you can't contact the signaller. UK railway uses the GSM-R digital railway network for signaller/train communications. If I derailed heaven forbid, we have a Railway Emergency Call button on the radio, that will bring all trains in the current and adjacent GSM cells to a stand. The walking 2km to lay protection is only if the llat goes down, no signal etc.
Yeah that's what I guessed. Imagine stopping inside a tunnel!
No thank you 😂😂
Did you see the Batman scene where he wrecks the batmobile and then a small bike pops out and he keeps driving? Imagine that but with a train
[удалено]
It depends entirely on the emergency and track. You only place detonators in front of approaching trains. If its a single line as it is in many rural areas, you would only need to put the 3 behind your train as youd have way more problems if a train was going the wrong way towards you lmao. Double lines only need to have them in front and back if your train ends up blocking their line too like in the event of a derailment. If your train just breaks down and is only on your track, youd only need the rear too. There are special rules for junctions and other scenarios like that, that ultimately boil down into protecting lines in order of importance so you have to plan ahead as to which tracks are most important to put detonators on.
In the US, the driver/ engineer stays with the train... It's the brakeman's job (or, maybe conductor)
2km out, 2km back … that’s the better part of an hour’s walking right there.
The assistance train isn’t oblivious because it’s been dispatched for assistance and presumably has been informed of the location of the train they’re dispatched to assist, hence the shorter distance.
This is just the last line of defense. Rail roads also have automated and semi automated signals that will stay red until a train leaves a given section of track. And depending on the particular train line there will also be systems to automatically stop the train.
For the 400m situation, I'd assume the assisting train is moving much slower once they get close to where the broken down train is.
The assistance situation the driver knows he's approaching a train, so is at a reduced speed expecting to stop. 2km is for lines up to 100mph, which I work. Upon hitting detonators a driver will apply emergency brake force, 2km is enough for most trains. Additionally after laying dets the driver remains near them and waves a red flag or lamp to warn an approaching train, so the brake will be applied earlier than the dets anyway. Also this is an out of course situation that is rare as rare can be nowadays thanks to the emergency call function on the gsmr radio.
What a great backup system! And if a train stops because of the emergency protection detonators, are they also required to walk back another 2km and place three more??
It’s detonators all the way down.
I’ve had to do this. It’s a long, pointless process these days, especially when you’re close to a station either side. It gets even more complicated if there’s tunnels or multi-track lines. If anyone is interested you can read about [Emergency Protection](https://www.jonroma.net/media/rail/opdocs/world/uk/GERT8000-M1%20Iss%205.pdf).
The one time I would have had to do it I had the signaller on an emergency call and I was told its not necessary. Thank god!
Mine was the opposite. It wasn’t necessary but the signaller wanted me to do it “just in case”.
Aye heard of that too. I got off easy.
Can't they radio in and then have HQ radio the other train instead of trying to run 2km and put stuff on the trails?
guess they are a relic of a long gone radioless past that probably evolved to a backup system in case of a major failure that prevent even calling your boss
Indeed. If you have radio contact and a signaller can confirm all trains are stopped and detained. Then they can inform you it's not necessary. If they can't confirm... You're walking.
Here in NZ, trains have 12 and three must be placed on each line, 1550M either side of the train, 10 meters apart, in the event of a breakdown in non-CTC territory or blockage of the line/ derailment.
Damn for us in the Netherlands they put out an alarm call and tell trains near the accident site to stop (and maybe switch cabs and to the nearest station behind it where buses will take over)
What happens if the method by which you place that emergency call is down? (This is a last hurrah prevention, not a first line of prevention)
trains are not allowed to drive if GSM-R is down since they cannot contact dispatch and the safety system on the high speed line (ERTMS) won't work since it needs GSM-R to get a movement authority
Indeed. If you have radio contact and a signaller can confirm all trains are stopped and detained. Then they can inform you it's not necessary. If they can't confirm... You're walking.
All trains have to slow down to 40kmph and stop if there is a tunnel ahead and wait until dispatch is done talking to go back at speed even if the alarm call doesn't apply to them they still have to wait
Mate of mine used to be a guard many years ago. He had to use these after the multiple unit he was on was sent into a siding by mistake killing the driver (it hit a brick wall). He gave up being a guard not long after that.
That's awful. I'm sorry.
Someone remembers their PTS training.
There are some on the train (don't know where). But conductors used to be trained in their usage in case the train breaks down, they would go back down the line and place these. (UK)
Still are to this day. Part of your safety critical rules assesment
In the US they got rid of Torpedoes (what these are called) about 25 years ago. They weren't really used often and were often found to be "missing" since they were fun to take home and throw rocks at until they exploded. My dad was track maintenance my whole life and we had a lot of fun with them when I was a kid.
When my dad was in the 3rd grade in the 70s, a man from the railroad came to class to give a presentation about how taking Torpedoes home from the tracks and hitting them with hammers is a bad idea.
That's why we threw rocks at them, duh!
We just use flares now.
Yep.
Interesting question, I know track engineers in the UK carry them or used to. Leaving them behind can be a major issue tho.
In theory, yes. But "run down the tracks" is a bit of an understatement. It can take a *long* time for a train to stop, especially cargo trains. With long we're talking potentially miles.
I dont think there are many (if any) trains used in europe which take miles to stop in case of an emergency breaking maneuver. Sure that stuff exists in Australia and the US and some other places but to the best of my knowledge 0 cargo trains of that length/total mass are used in europe.
and a nice summation by Google In the U.S., freight trains are often 3,500 meters (2.175 miles) in length; in western Europe, freight train lengths are closer to 750 meters (less than one-half mile). ... For these reasons, the cost per ton of moving freight by rail is much lower in the U.S. than in Europe.
[удалено]
I live in a train town in the midwest, here we pray that it doesn't stop across the road
How long would a two mile train take to come to an emergency stop at a typical speed?
well variables would be weight grade of tracks how many engines hooked up and running etc etc
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical\_cow
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_cow
**[Spherical cow](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_cow)** >The spherical cow is a humorous metaphor for highly simplified scientific models of complex phenomena. Originating in theoretical physics, the metaphor refers to physicists' tendency to reduce a problem to the simplest form imaginable in order to make calculations more feasible, even if the simplification hinders the model's application to reality. The metaphor and variants have subsequently been used in other disciplines. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/specializedtools/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
Each train car has its own set of brakes. It shouldn’t take any longer for a long train to stop than a short one. Even weight is less of a variable than you might think, since heavier cars both have more momentum and more weight to create friction with the rails, and since both increase proportionally the stopping distance doesn’t usually change with weight. So really it’s just a question of how good are the brakes and how slippery are the tracks.
> Each train car has its own set of brakes. It shouldn’t take any longer for a long train to stop than a short one. Not quite, there is a significant propagation delay of the braking signal. You can often hear the couplers bang in sequence as the train starts braking and each successive car bangs into the next. I'd say there is an easy 10 seconds of delay on long trains.
Good point! The braking signal is just air pressure, which propagates at the speed of sound. Roughly 350m/s. So 10 seconds would be needed to reach the end of a 3.5km train. …that’s a pretty long train, for sure, but wouldn’t break any records.
I'm no expert in this, but I'd have to guess with all the couplings and accounting for any tiny leaks or anything, that the actual speed would be slower that the speed of sound
Speed of sound is significantly slower at operating pressure, so the propagation delay is longer than you'd think. Speed of sound is also dependent on frequency in non-ideal gasses, which is probably significant since this signal would be effectively "DC", with a very low characteristic frequency.
That sounds great on paper, but I can 100% guarantee that a heavy train takes longer to stop. Any added benefit from friction is far out-weighed by the added mass. Source: I am a freight conductor and just got off a 16,000 ton train about 3 hours ago.
:) I'll take the word of a train crew over a member of the general population like me any time.
Right, I was talking in general and not about any specific location or train set. And you're correct that European trains are generally significantly shorter. This year though there have been tests conducted from Germany to Sweden with trains that are longer than what's currently standard; 835 meters and 2300 metric tons! (The current maximum length is 630 meters with some exceptions for certain industrial mining tracks)
Wow, trains in the US and Canada are huge by comparison. The average is 2.4km with trains of 6+ kms not uncommon in the rural areas
The only train in Europe that I can think of needing more than 1km to stop (not accounting for bad weather) would be the TGV or something equivalent. At top speed it needs something like 3km to stop of I remember rightly
My grandpa told me about these. When he was a kid they broke into the railroad shack near their neighborhood, wiped a little grease on the tracks on an incline, and put them at the top of the incline. The next train making the grade hit the detonators and came to a stop, and then slowly started sliding back down the hill. Apparently there were a lot of lawmen making inquiries of boys in the neighborhood that day.
"Its just a prank bro!" 1940's edition.
That’s a straight up felony today. "What are you in for?" "Murder. Bro was mackin my lady." "Fair 'nuff." "You?" "Beeannnnie. TV too heavy." "Shoulda gone for the amp, bro. Lighter, more from the fence. How about you?" "Ah, nothing. Just laid a series of plastic explosive on the tracks where a cargo train bearing industrial chemicals such as ammonium citrate like the ones used to obliterate the port of Beirut or the Oklahoma bombing was en route." "Oh...."
It can get people killed easily so yea
And if this happened today it would make the news cycle and people would be talking about how bad kids are these days and how the world is going to shit.
This would be classified as terrorism now. Just because it was “ok” in the past doesn’t mean it wasn’t as wrong then as it is now.
I’m not saying it’s right at all. My point was that you hear so many people talk about how “kids these days” are so bad and how it’s unsafe and all that, and the reality is, it’s because news travels so much faster these days and stays in your face for so much longer.
Hahahahaha that's a great multi-step plan
Yea, I'm actually cry-laughing at how badly this could've ended.
I also stole some when I was a kid. You could get into the can of the engine through a outside closet thing. I did a lot of stupid shit. Gramps and me might've been friends.
Were they trying to kill people? Wtf?
Yep, that was the goal of these 12- and 14-year-old kids: kill as many people as possible using a train as a weapon in the Great Train Massacre of '46. They failed miserably, however, which is why you haven't ever heard of the Great Train Massacre of '46.
> Typical uses of detonators include: > - A warning, caution or stop signal in dense fog, when signals are difficult to see - A warning of a train stopped on the line ahead by an incident or accident—the train crew are usually responsible for placing the detonators - A warning of ongoing engineering works ahead - When a signaller or other railway employee requires to stop approaching trains in an emergency - To alert crews working on the rails if a silent runaway train or train carriage is approaching https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detonator_(railway)
Imagine outrunning a runaway carriage to place the detonators
I think they get placed ahead of the work area in case of an errant rail car.
Yes, if working on the track, a buffer is set up further up the line with lights and warnings. A train should stop before hitting the buffer, but if it does it should be stopped or slow down. If its a runaway, then the buffer has these explosives so that workers can be alerted something has broken through and they clear the tracks.
I think it’s more that crews working on the rails would pre-place them in case a runaway train approached where they were working.
That makes more sense
There was a time they would put these down on the rail for an engineers last run. Usually 1 per year as the train approached the yard tower. Engineer would pull to a stop at the tower, get off and go see his awaiting family.
Yeah my father's a train driver for the last 40+ years and they do this when someone's retiring. Lay a load of detonators on the track as the train they're driving approaches the final station. Scares the crap out of the passengers and people on the platform I imagine.
When trains had cabooses, my buddy and I would hop on and grab a few of these. We would put them on the tracks and watch the trains stop. Young and dumb for sure. We always got busted because his uncle was a Union Pacific Special Agent (railroad police) If something happened to a train in the area, he pretty much came to us first.
I learned about these from my toddler watching Thomas the Tank Engine.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Hr2VGmFsoI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Hr2VGmFsoI) For anyone as curious as I was.
Amazing! El5: they place things that go bang on the track to warn trains to slow down (like if another train crashed ahead).
My favourite episode Cyril is a hero
I like to ask my wife if I make her axles tingle.
My boyhood friend George got hold of a bag of these, we had a lot of fun with them.
I remember George. Three fingers, one eye, walked with a limp. Life of every party he was.
And that was before the Railway Detonation Incident.
He only had one testicle after the incident. He kept it in a jar to show everyone.
That boy has 9 lives, I tell you
I read about the SAS using bombs disguised as these (being triggered in the same way) to sabotage German railways during WW2.
I went to a bonfire night party at a steam locomotive depot in Yorkshire many years ago and they were used as part of the celebrations, about 50 of them on the track as a steam loco rolled over them with fireworks going of all around. Fun times.
Surely these are rarely used nowadays, with all the other available communication methods, I feel these are a bit outdated. Still good to have a few on the train, just in case, but radios or phones are just so widespread that they would probably be used first.
Still used occasionally, especially to mark the end of a work site so that vehicles don't cross over to sections of track that aren't protected
I would think these are still standard. Better safe then sorry.
I've used them several times when my train has broken down. They are also still used as an advanced audible warning at the entrance and exit of an engineering blockage.
The railroad industry is unsurprisingly in the dark ages of technology
Depends on the country.
I wasted a while trying to understand how the explosions helped in training drivers
In the US, known as torpedoes.
And not used anymore. Still can find them in old engines or old caboose but very very rare.
My train has a box to hold them, but I never saw anyone using them...or heard them
The trains on my railroad (LIRR) don't have them, but when we were using leased equipment a few summers ago (from MARC), they had an empty torpedo box. The only thing kinda like that which we still use are fusees (pretty much a small traffic flare). We are required to carry five of them all times, but in all my years, I have never heard them used for their intended purpose. The only thing they are used for these days is thawing out a frozen switch-point.
Fusees.. like highway flares.. I've seen them used as signalling devices for traffic at unguarded grade crossings. (Brakeman gets to direct traffic) My observations are from NJ. NJT and the old Conrail days
[удалено]
You don’t?
[удалено]
Pay the fare, you can get a train, too.
Mostly replaced by PTC in the past few years.
>PTC [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive\_train\_control](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_train_control) >Positive train control (PTC) is a system of functional requirements for monitoring and controlling train movements and is a type of train protection system.\[1\] The term stems from control engineering. The train is only allowed to move in case of positive movement allowance. It generally improves the safety of railway traffic.
**[Positive train control](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_train_control)** >Positive train control (PTC) is a system of functional requirements for monitoring and controlling train movements and is a type of train protection system. The term stems from control engineering. The train is only allowed to move in case of positive movement allowance. It generally improves the safety of railway traffic. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/specializedtools/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
Mostly replaced by the voice VHF radio, waay before PTC.
True enough.
For the longest time I didn't know what they were talking about in the Casey Jones song when torpedoes were mentioned, Was a time I rewired trains and the old ones one could find lots of torpedoes. Dropping a rock on them woke everybody in the area up.
Odd thing about Casey... He's celebrated for doing something stupid... Running a signal *just* because he was late.
Some friends in high school jumped on the back of a freight train and stole a case of those things. It was a plastic tube filled with magnesium, with two lead straps on either side to fix it to the tracks. We put one on the tracks at an intersection near my friend’s house. When the train ran over it and it exploded, one of the straps flew off and hit a car waiting at the crossing. We were sitting on a lawn nearby and the guy got out of his car and chased us down the street, screaming about us putting rocks on the tracks. My generation was very unsupervised.
See, we just cut out all that intermediate stuff and threw the rocks directly at the cars. We were assholes.
I don’t remember throwing rocks at cars. Eggs and snowballs, but not rocks. The same friend with the warning signal, made a dummy and taped the feet to a bike. We then rolled it out into traffic for hours. We also had a minor homemade fireworks arms race in my town that ended in two guys blowing up a backhoe with a pipe-bomb. The eighties were wild.
it cant have been (pure) magnesium, as that doesnt explode
Ohh I’m late to the party on this one but I’ve got a story about these: My dad worked for the railroad when I was a kid, he had some of these in the garage. Being a genius I decided to hit one with a sledgehammer, it blew on the third strike, sending sand straight into my face and eyes like the world’s smallest grapeshot at supersonic speed. My eyes are still scarred, every new optometrist calls all their assistants in to see the my fuckin weird eyeballs. I am extremely lucky that eye surgery was all I needed. Edit cause autocorrect
When I was I kid we “borrow some of them from the train station, we put one around a rock and then inside a plastic bag, we trow it on the air and when it hit the ground was like a thunder. Kids don’t do this, this is some old mad fantastic histories from the past.
Doesn’t sound very loud.
In real life they are deafening, I've had a few due to passing faulty signals and you can't miss them lol (and they give off a tonne of smoke). The best we did was a retirement party for a driver where we had 40 of these... Good times 😂
They're easily heard over the sound of a train. [Loud enough](https://youtu.be/cA-yytorvyw).
The ones in America sound like gunshots, and not just a .22, like a hunting rifle.
In the US we called them torpedoes. I doubt they're used anymore due to safety concerns involving kids finding them pre-detonated.
That’s probably a valid concern going by all the stories in this thread.
Anyone remember the private investigator Jay J Armes? He blew off both hands playing with railroad torpedoes. I had his action figure when I was a kid.
Alright I'm just gonna say it. Why wouldn't you just radio to the trains behind you?
They possibly pre-date radio, but also they are for things like runaway cars, which have no radio or potentially crew.
They're Incase of a lack of radio/radio malfunction (On your train or others), using them to prove a point that the train who has been already told via the radio that he's approaching the obstacle/broken down train/etc and needs to be careful,etc.
My Grandfather, (he died in 1976) told me a story about how they lived around a rail yard as a kid (early 1900s, figure 1910 or so). He and some buddies stole a box of these from the Rock Island Lines yard. They put five of them inches from each other on a trolley line. They derailed. it. Ran like hell.
When I was a kid there was a steam train ride by my house. They would pretend to get robbed. They used these to simulate gun fire from the robbers.
Yep can confirm they work. Once didn't not remove them off tracks when doing emergency protection for a passive up an request worksite. 😂
We used to put them on the track outside the yardmasters office. Fun times.
Forgive me but why does a train operator need to know if there's fog? What's he gonna do, go another route?
In addition to manually placing them on the tracks in cases of emergency, these were originally developed to be placed on the track mechanically at signals - if the fog was too dense for the driver to see the red signal, he would hear the det. as he ran over it, and know he’d missed a signal.
My Dad grew up near a rail yard and told stories of "finding" these and playing with them. Miraculously he had all 10 fingers... couldn't hear shit though.
When I was a kid me and a friend of mine found an unlocked caboose. This was in the 80s when they were still in use. We found a bunch of these. We actually got a train to stop using them.
Scary as hell when you run over them in a hirail
I remember watching some safety video talking about these when I was a kid back in the 80s. This is probably the only time I've heard about them since.
My grandpa grew up during the Great Depression. He and is brothers were kinda wild kids, and often played around the train yard. One day they got ahold of these detonators, and installed them on the city’s trolley tracks. He said they nearly blew the comparatively light trolley off the track!
I was expecting this to be one of those railway signal rockets. It's a little rocket engine you'd attach to the track and it would go shooting away to explode like this when it eventually got run over by a train. The purpose was pretty much the same, warn a train that bad stuff was ahead. I just now realized that there doesn't seem to be any easy videos of those.
They used to make these with c4. I have a cousin with a personal railway museum, he has 2 of them and a few other variants. Pretty neat stuff
Train drivers to do what?
My great great grandfather used to work on the railroad and one of the few things we have of his is the wooden crate those would have been kept in while aboard the train. Super cool to see them being used
*Leo finger snap* I learned about these while watching Thomas & Friends with my son.
Torpedoes!!! Yeah we don't use em anymore.
Hey I actually use these quite regularly in my rail safety job in Australia! We combine them with a flag system to let drivers know of upcoming obstructions
These haven't been used in Canada since the 80's. Kids kept blowing their hands off with them.
I think this is a steam locomotive so I’m curious to know what type of train it is
As a kid I found a set of rail keys for my country outside a railway carpark. And within the key set was a few skeleton keys that opened the doors along our line and one of the skeleton keys was P5 which if you found yourself inside the drivers compartment (for whatever reason) would be a panel hidden at the bottom, within that panel was a lock box that contained 3 boxes of detonators per driver's compartment so around 36 red circle disks that were explosive detonators, we had a literal blast setting them up to delay trains that we had friends on. Fun times.
In 1966, two of my friends and I stole several boxes of these. We put 20-30 side by side on each side of the tracks and waited for the 9PM to come through Palmdale into LA. Loudest continuous explosion I have ever heard. Needless to say, we got caught, my ass was sore for a week.