Monday, July 11, 2011

[rti4empowerment] Re: Derailments On Cement Concrete Sleepers - One More Gets Off The Track

 

2011 JUL 12

Hello all, 

Yet another accident due to a derailment.

The two train drivers have been reported as saying, the end of the train wobbled and jumped off the tracks, which is also obseved in the picture


Clear signs of whip lash action, the faster the long train moves and sways, the more chances of it going out of control.

The train would have kept bobbing up, due to the stiff resistance of the cement concrete sleepers which are now almost embedded into the stone metal ballast bed, and the momentum gained would have made the bogie wheels jump of the rails at some point.

Some pictures show that some of the cement concrete sleepers are almost covered by the stones, giving an idea of how much they have sunk.

That the engine drivers even felt and noticed that shows how much it must have been swaying.

All this analysis can be dismissed once the investigation is complete in all respects covering these possibilities as described above.

If there is nothing wrong with the cement concrete sleepers on dense stone metal ballast beds, then, very good, all the best, sorry for the trouble.

Thanqx.

Jagdeep DESAI

Secretary
Founder Trustee

Forum for Improving Quality of Life in Mumbai Suburbs


+91 98 6922 7148

>>>

Kalka Mail toll touches 68, may rise further



MALWAN/ALLAHABAD: The death toll in theHowrah-Kalka Mail derailment rose to 68 on Monday as the two train operators regained consciousness in a government hospital to shed light on what may have caused the wreck. 

Top Railway officials who met the injured drivers A K Singh and Uma Kant Yadav quoted them as saying that when the
train was at around 108kmph, its rear bogies began wobbling. The drivers tried to reduce the speed, bringing it down to nearly 70kmph, said the officials. When Singh and Yadav felt the wobbling did not stop, they applied the emergency brake.
 

"The next moment, all the bogies crashed into one another," the officials said quoting the drivers. The impact threw the drivers off and both lost consciousness, they said. 

Nearly 260 injured passengers are admitted to different hospitals in Fatehpur, Allahabad and Kanpur. Two Swedish nationals were among the dead. One Swedish passenger is in a Kanpur hospital with multiple injuries. 

After talking to the two drivers, officials doubt that the application of emergency brakes led to the accident. CPRO (Nothern Central Railways) Sandeep Mathur said a technical investigation is being conducted to ascertain the exact cause of the accident. He added that commissioner of railway safety will conduct the inquiry. 

On Monday, rain hampered rescue operation and restoration of traffic on the Delhi-Howrah mainline. Railway Board chairman Vinay Mittal, who visited the site on Monday, said the Howrah-Delhi route should be cleared by Tuesday. He said an inquiry by the chief commissioner of Railway Safety (Lucknow) Prashant Kumar has been ordered into the rail incident. 

Mittal said there was no fault in the track and the cabin man told him that when the train was close to pole number 927/23, its engine started shaking and emitting smoke, after which the mishap took place. According to preliminary investigations, signals were functioning normally and fishplates on the tracks were intact, Mittal said. 

The railways released the list of 68 dead out of which only 34 have been identified. "Sixty-eight bodies have been recovered. About 259 people are being treated," said Fatehpur Superintendent of Police Ram Bharose. The victims include 14 women. By evening, all bodies were removed from the accident site near Malwan railway station. 

Bharose added, "Two Swedish nationals, Eric Anders Rurik, 21, and Richer Carl Victor, 22, were among those dead. Another Swedish national Oscar Hultman, 22, is being treated for injuries." 

>>>



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concrete_sleeper


On Sat, Nov 14, 2009 at 5:16 PM, Jagdeep DESAI <jagdeep.desai@gmail.com> wrote:
Hello,

In reference to recent derailments, the latest being Mandore Express, 2009 NOV 14.

It has been my observation since over fifteen years, that more derailments have occurred after the wooden and steel sleepers were replaced with cement concrete ones.

The simple fact is, that softer wood and tensile steel were more resilient, and shock absorbent that the rigid, brittle and hard cement concrete ones.

Though I am certain there will be all kinds of justifications and statements and claims that all is well, and all studies have been done before the sleepers were replaced, somehow it just doesn't give that impression.

This factor is critical to the traction and the retention of the wheels onto the track.

According to my non technical mind, once the train reaches a certain speed and momentum, the variation of the load on the train makes it roll and rock, and sway, in fact at high speeds, especially since it is quite apparent that there is level of incompatibility between the springs and shock absorbers of the bogies of the coaches, and the stiffness factor of the cement concrete sleepers.

Also,  due to the length of the trains nowadays, the last few coaches tend to behave in a whip lash action and maybe even in extreme cases, detach from the main train.

The slightest bump or jump makes for a possibility of the wheels going off the rails and resulting in serious accidents, unlike the old days, when the train would go down and up as per the give, and take,  of the wooden and steel sleepers.

And now my theory of what happened for the Mandore Express derailment, in which the rail actually pierced the floor of a coach.

As it is the temperature must have affected the expansion coefficients of the rails, the connector clips and the cement concrete sleepers, which may have also fractured the sleepers, and since these are so rigidly fixed, if one sleeper fails, then the distortion of one would affect the rest, resulting in multi sleeper failure, which wouldn't happen in wooden and steel sleepers.

The connectors of rails to cement concrete sleepers do not give confidence to the viewer about its solidity, as against the old clips.

It is possible that either one or more of the clips may also have given way, or pilfered.

This might have led to a imbalance on the rail from the load of the train running on it, and resulting the loose part of the rail jump or fly upwards after the wheel moved over the affected portion, and released the section.

This pierced the floor, and since it was off the track, the train derailed.

Similar things may be happening at other places.

The trains which derailed at CST, Mumbai at slow speed were found to be due to points failure, which again, may be due to malfunction due to heavier cement concrete rails, and the moving portion getting 'stuck' and not getting into place.

Anyway, maybe the reasons are entirely different, and nothing of the above, in which case, kindly excuse my stray thoughts.

However if they may be related or similar, some serious thinking has to be done about the cement concrete sleepers.

Thanqx.

Jagdeep DESAI
Architect

Secretary
Founder Trustee
Forum for Improving Quality of Life in Mumbai Suburbs

+91 98 6922 7148

>>>




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