Re: Beresfield Accident Findings

["Tezza" <tezza@atinet.com.au>]

eoliver@efs1.efs.mq.edu.au wrote in message
<6iou00$7nk$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com>...
>In article <354F0117.F67C662F@lisp.com.au>#1/1,
>  John MacCallum <johnmac@lisp.com.au> wrote:

>> There are hazards in making an emergency application but I can assure
>> you that it happens every day on every railway system . Most of the
>> time with no ill effects other than the odd skidded wheel .
>> I have had occasion to use the emergency position several times and
>> have never had any problems .

>Thank you for putting a balanced perspective on this.

>The original point was that emergency applications USUALLY don't have any
very
>adverse consequences;


It gave the impression that a freight train running into a passenger train
is better than a mid-train derailment (which no-one seems to have heard of
here.)

>nevertheless they can have such consequences, ranging
>from skidded wheels through damaged drawgear through (in a worst-case
>scenario) derailments. Thus granted that they CAN have adverse or very
adverse
>consequences, they are to be avoided wherever possible.



Of course they're to be avoided, but killing hundreds of passengers is to be
avoided even more.

>What some of us were trying to point out was that installing mechanical
trips
>on freight trains would (amongst other adverse outcomes) generate
unnecessary
>emergency applications


Only if passing signals at stop, something freight trains very rarely do.

>which COULD have consequences comparable with the
>problems which were sought to be solved in the first place.


They are in NO way comparable.

 >which is one of
>several reasons why the rest of the world has generally not used mechanical
>trips on freight trains.

>Now that we have thrashed that subject to death, can we return to being
more
>constructive about what viable options - i.e. other than mechanical trips -
>are available for automatic train control? The commonest systems around the
>world seem to be either single-location type devices like British AWS, or
>continuous transmission devices like most forms of cab-signalling where the
>information is continuously contained in coded track circuits and the like
>(with an immediate fail-safe provision that zero coding is interpreted as
the
>most restrictive indication).



FreightCorp refuse to adopt any kind of safety device that costs more than
about $1.50.