(The following article by Patrick O’Driscoll and Martin Kasindorf was posted on the USA Today website on January 28. Tim Smith is the BLET’s California State Legislative Board Chairman.)
NEW YORK — Federal railroad regulators will examine whether Wednesday’s deadly derailment in California was made worse because passenger cars, pushed from behind by the train’s locomotive, took the brunt of the crash.
Passenger coaches weigh much less than locomotives and aren’t usually as sturdy. The force of initial impact, plus the weight of a rear-driving locomotive pushing from behind, can cause trains to jack-knife in a derailment.
Warren Flatau, a spokesman for the Federal Railroad Administration, which writes safety rules for train operations, says there is no conclusive evidence that pushing a train is any more hazardous or risky than pulling it.
“Each method of operation poses a unique potential risk,” he says. But Flatau adds that his agency will consider “whether or not changes need to be made on Metrolink or any other property” involving the push-from-behind method. Metrolink is the operator of the commuter train that derailed Wednesday.
The train was operating in “push-pull” mode, a decades-old practice in which a passenger train moves back and forth between destinations but the locomotive remains attached to the same end. The locomotive pulls the cars in one direction, then pushes them back on the return trip. The car at the other end has a control cab for the operator.
Most of the USA’s 21 commuter railroads, which carry 1.5 million people a day, operate in push-pull mode on some or all of their routes. The practice saves time and money because locomotives don’t have to be disconnected or turned around at each end.
The National Association of Rail Passengers, a Washington advocacy group, has recommended that when possible, the lead car of a train in “push” mode not carry passengers. But David Johnson, assistant director of the National Association of Railroad Passengers, notes that Wednesday’s crash also was an “absolutely bizarre, horrible set of circumstances” that don’t reflect a typical collision.
The Metrolink train struck a vehicle wedged in the tracks, not merely stalled on the smooth surface of an auto crossing. When the train derailed, it also struck an idle locomotive nearby. The jack-knifing passenger cars then hit a Metrolink train coming the other way on another track.
The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, a national railroad union, has lobbied for years to have all commuter locomotive trains pulled from the front. (Electrified systems don’t use locomotives.)
Tim Smith, the union’s California lobbyist, says a cab car has a blunt front end that cannot shove away obstacles with the strength of a locomotive. In push mode, he adds, a locomotive can create “an accordion effect” in a derailment.
Tom Rubin, a Los Angeles transportation consultant, calls it “pushing the rope. If you are pulling from the front, the stuff behind you tends to follow,” Rubin says. “When you are pushing from the rear, everything gets off track and will go in strange places.”
Rubin says, though, that a locomotive “may not have made a difference” in Wednesday’s wreck.