(The following column by Tom Angleberger titled ‘What’s On Your Mind?” appeared on The Roanoke Times website on February 18. Timothy Smith is Chairman of the BLET’s California State Legislative Board.)
ROANOKE, Va. — Q: Why was the engine pushing instead of pulling in the California train tragedy? -Dick Sloan, Fincastle
A: Using locomotives to push passenger cars is actually a pretty common practice.
According to USA Today, most commuter railroads in the United States do a mixture of car pushing and pulling, because they can save time and money by not turning the locomotives around when it’s time to change direction. You pull them one way, then push them the other.
It sounds dangerous but USA Today also reported that the Federal Railroad Administration says it doesn’t have evidence that pushing is any more dangerous than pulling.
But would you want to be sitting in the cab car? That’s the car that brings up the rear when the train is pulled, but leads the way when the train is pushed.
“Cab cars tend to run into things and over things and derail, where locomotives tend to shove things off the track,” Timothy Smith, of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, told the San Francisco Chronicle.
Smith was also quoted in the San Francisco Examiner News saying, “The fact that a locomotive was pushing the train from behind was a factor in making the damage worse. Any time you have that kind of power collide with something ahead, it creates an accordion buckling effect.”
The Chronicle interviewed a veteran Amtrak engineer who said he had survived a crash into heavy equipment when a locomotive was pulling the cars. But if the locomotive had been pushing, he said, “we would have been all over the landscape.”
The Jan. 26 crash in Glendale, Calif., occurred when a man parked his sport utility vehicle on a railroad crossing in an ap
parent suicide attempt, police said. He left his vehicle before the cab car struck it, derailing multiple cars, killing 11 passengers and injuring 180 others. On Tuesday the suspect pleaded not guilty to charges of first-degree murder and arson.