Railway accident at Washington Union Station
The railway accident at Washington Union Station was a brake failure and the locomotive ran over the buffer stop on January 15, 1953.
Starting position
The Washington Union Station , the main train station of Washington, DC , is a railhead . The driveway has a slight slope .
The night train from Boston , the Federal Express , which was run by the Pennsylvania Railroad from New York City , ended here. It was pulled by the class GG1 electric locomotive No. 4876 , which weighed about 200 tons. The train was traveling with 16 cars and was traveling at a speed of 130 km / h before the brake failed.
the accident
When the engine driver was about to initiate the braking process about three kilometers from the station, he found that the brakes on the locomotive and some of the cars had applied, but the train hardly decelerated. The Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) investigation later revealed that the main air valve on the third car was closed. The brakes did not apply to the 13 cars that were behind the stopcock. The misalignment of the stopcock was due to a design flaw, which meant that part of the coupling could hit the handle of the tap and thus close the tap.
The train driver alarmed the station by radio when he noticed the brake failure, so that everyone was able to be evacuated from the platforms and from the danger area in the main hall. In the main hall, a single railroad worker managed to get everyone out of the danger area within the last 30 seconds by shouting. The dispatcher also allowed the train to enter platform 16 as planned .
The engine driver was still trying to reduce the speed with the brakes on the locomotive and those of the first three cars. Eyewitnesses reported that the train, spraying sparks, passed all the switches on the apron at far excessive speed without a car derailing. The subsequent investigation showed that the brake pads of the first three cars were completely worn off and the wheels of the locomotive had flat spots that were 8 cm long .
When the locomotive hit the buffer stop at 8:38 a.m., it was still traveling at a speed of 60 to 80 km / h. She ran over the buffer stop and the cross platform that housed the stationmaster's office and the station's largest newsagent. Both were destroyed. The locomotive broke through the wall behind and got into the main hall. The floor was not designed for such a weight, so that the locomotive broke through the floor and was left in the basement in the baggage handling area - roughly in the middle of the area where the “food court” is today.
consequences
Amazingly, there were no fatalities in the accident and for the passengers in the last passenger cars the accident just felt like braking too sharply. The engine driver and his second man on the machine immediately got out of the locomotive and the building rubble that had fallen on them - unharmed.
The Interstate Commerce Commission recommended that all identical cars be shut down until a technical adjustment made it impossible for the coupling to hit the handle of the air shut-off valve.
The accident was used as a template for the finale of the film Trans-America-Express (1976).
Cleanup
Five days after the accident, the new President of the United States , Dwight D. Eisenhower , was due to take office. The damage in Union Station could not be repaired by then, not even the locomotive could be recovered. Initially, a temporary wooden ceiling was installed as the floor in the station hall within two days.
After the celebrations were over, the locomotive was dismantled into three segments and recovered after two weeks. This procedure had to be chosen because the locomotive in baggage handling could not have been lifted in one piece by a crane. Scrapping with replacement by a new building was excluded by the locomotive 's insurer, Lloyd's of London , as this would have been more expensive than repairs.
The 4876 could be repaired by October 1953 and was in service for almost another three decades. It was not eliminated until 1981. It then ended up in the collection of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Museum in Baltimore . The machine is not on display there because it would have to be restored beforehand.
Classification of the event
The railway tries to prevent accidents caused by brake failure by carrying out brake tests . Part of the brake test is checking the continuity of the main air line. Unfortunately, accidents happen again and again because the brake test was not carried out correctly. Occasions where the brake test was carried out correctly, but the main air line was interrupted after the train had left, without venting the part separated from the locomotive, as happens automatically when the train is separated, are less common .
The Washington accident belongs to this group, as does the 1957 Kendal , Jamaica rail accident .
In Europe, a comparable accident occurred in 2010 in Braz on the Arlbergbahn : when a freight train with new cars was traveling downhill, a brake clutch was so badly knocked off by rails lying in the track that the hose of the main air line was kinked and became stuck in the undercarriage of the rear freight car Part of the train wedged. Since the air from the rear part of the train was trapped in the main air duct, there was no emergency braking. The train derailed in a curve in front of Braz.
See also
literature
- Robert B. Shaw: A History of Railroad Accidents, Safety Precautions and Operating Practices . 1978, p. 221 ff.
Web links
- Bob Cohen: The Famous Union Station Wreck ( April 7, 2007 memento on the Internet Archive ).
- Investigation report of the ICC - with a drawing of the problematic construction.
Individual evidence
- ^ Alfred Horn, Walter von Andrian: Spectacular derailment on the Arlberg . In: Railway Austria . No. 8 . Minirex, 2010, ISSN 1421-2900 , p. 428-431 .
Coordinates: 38 ° 53 '55.6 " N , 77 ° 0' 21.9" W.