Train derailment kills two women in Maryland, delays 9/11 hearing

Train derailment kills two women in Maryland, delays 9/11 hearing

mw3.vzwwap.com

(Reuters) - A freight train derailed early Tuesday while crossing an overpass west of Baltimore, spilling tons of coal on top of two 19-year-old women who were sitting on the bridge and killing them, police said.

The accident also crushed nearby cars and damaged telecommunications lines in the area, affecting data connections as far away as Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where a pretrial hearing for five men accused of plotting the September 11 attacks was delayed by a day as a result.

(visit the link for the full news article)
www.reuters.com...

What horrible news. A train wreck killed two 19 year olds. The story says they were crushed by coal. But also this disrupted 9/11 trials!?

So a train wreck in Maryland disrupted 9/11 court trials in Cuba!! Every day seems to be new 9/11 lies like just yesterday they were saying defendants can't talk about torture. Now suddenly the trial is delayed. I'd say its been delayed for about eleven years.

mw3.vzwwap.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

This is down the road from me, we haven't heard about any disruptions, just traffic disruptions. But there is a transformer station and a Verizon station in the area, so it is possible.

It the first train station and rail in the US, that is a very old line.

I'm a locomotive engineer for Union Pacific in Kansas city and it's sad to see all the derailments happening across the nation. The same thing happened in chicago what like two months ago and killed an elderly couple and there suv was crushed by coal cars. This is the result of the federal government getting in the way of railroad companies and forcing them to install extremely expensive systems along the rails.

Positive Train Control is a multi billion dollar system the FRA has mandated to be installed on most lines that operate a high volume of traffic or freight lines that also share the rail with passenger trains. The idea is that they PTC can slow down or stop a train if they are not responding to the signals they are given. The premise was good, but this is costing the railroads way too much money, money that could have been used to update and maintain current rail lines and maybe avoid accidents like derailments. It's basically saying, ok we are going to stop head on collisions by having the power to stop a train remotely to avoid killing a few people but at the expense of these derailments which seem to be killing more people than head on collisions do.

I think that the government needs to let these railroad companies invest their money back into the rails instead of wasting billions of dollars on something that happens rarely. We go to work knowing that it could be our last time we lace up our boots and it's something we accept. We rely on our brothers and sisters to do the right thing at work and not get people killed. The government needs to stay out of our business and stop trying to regulate crap that doesn't do much good. Ok I'm done venting. I'm just sick of hearing about derailments killing people when there's a way to minimize that risk. My thoughts and prayers go out to the victims in this tragic situation.

reply to post by boomer135


these lines aren't shared with passenger trains though, not this line. It is pretty much strictly freight.

The curve through a state park around mountains, which is why they rarely go over 25 mph.

the conductor said he didn't feel or see anything that could cause it. We were speculating on skype whether it was a mechanical failure.

Glad to have an expert here, any idea what could cause a freight train to suddenly tip over like that?


PS. I would totally love to be an engineer. How cool. How do you get that job?

reply to post by nixie_nox


It could be a dozen different things. If you say it happened in a curve, then the rail could have simply gave out under the stress of the loaded coal cars. Every loaded coal car is around 160 tons each. I would guess that the rail broke or maybe a wheel on one of the rail cars broke. It could have been human error but we don't mess around with coal trains. They are the heaviest trains we have and any engineer would know his territory and the speeds around the curve. If the curve is rated at 25mph, then they would have had to have been going around 40 for the car to just tip over. Theres a safety net built into every speed we see. We will hear about it in the upcoming weeks at work just like all the other derailments. So I will know more by then and get back to you guys

On the getting the job thing, everyone usually starts out as a switch man, brakeman or conductor. After about a year, and depending on where you are, you can bid on an engineers spot based on seniority. I've never met an engineer that has never been a conductor or switch man.

19 19 911 in a story about a coal train derailment?

Noteworthy and wierd. I don't understand how or why Cuba was brought in to the conversation? Ok, so finally those poor guys getting a court room charade, which is also ... nice. Seriously, this is when i believe that news is crafted for consumption.

Originally posted by boomer135
Positive Train Control is a multi billion dollar system...

Right there is the problem. This is BASIC stuff that a few college kids could create - a GPS in every train, it connects to a central computer and informs it of its position, the computer program (only ONE program needed, we aren't talking about millions of trains) does the rest, and informs the train when it needs to stop. How could it possibly have cost billions of dollars, unless the scum who created it, and the scum who bought it, are charging thousands of times the real cost, and taking bribes at the same time?

I read this in the news today and - was sad. I thought how could this happen. Also the article said the train lost about 45 kgs coal on abridge earlier before the accident. 2 and 2 equals overloaded train.

It is either human error or greed

Enquiry will hopefully reveal

csx dispatcher here....


Word around here is, the girls were around the track(bridge) and the t&e hit the emergency brake because of the kids. This in turn, bunched up the cars on that bridge and derailed. which unfortunately fell on them.

They were not run over.
The cars fell over on them.

EDIT: Now, I could be wrong. There is no official statement released yet by csx.

False flag maybe.

From link in O.P .................

"" The train derailment in the Baltimore, Maryland, area that killed two young women knocked out fiber optic lines that are part of the wire-and-satellite network providing communications to the remote U.S. Naval base in eastern Cuba, said Captain Robert Durand, a spokesman for the Guantanamo detention operation. ""

Can some one tell me how the hell these fibre optic lines were "knocked out" ? it makes no sense at all.

And i seriously doubt this would stop them from accessing info / emails and what not , there`s no way in hell is that thier only line to cuba

Good find OP

reply to post by TrainDispatcher

I thought about that too but it wasn't your usual 120 car coal bucket. It was shorter and if they were in fact going 25 I still don't see how plugging it would knock a car off the rail. At that speed at least. I plugged going 60 once and they all stayed on the rail

reply to post by packoftwenty


You make a good point but the cost isn't that the computer tells the train to slow down. It Remotely slows down the train. Big difference and that technology had to be created from what I understand. It would be like a central location being able to take over a car on the highway that's about to hit the car in front of them. That's where the cost comes from.