@brenda said in Bad day to be riding the rails:
Wow. Yes, that's the same train route hubby and I took, George. How tragic for these families.
I've ridden the Empire Builder 4 times. I think it's my favorite route, just for the sake of scenery.
Interesting how long it took for NTSB to come up with a report. It'll be interesting to see the ramifications of what they found.
From what I gather, there are all kinds of signals that relay rail integrity to the dispatcher (or even the crew). If a disruption occurs, that should send a signal to dispatch to close the block until the cause of the signal is evaluated.
Seen on various Amtrak-related sites:
The BNSF former GN High Line is generally maintained to high standards and its FRA Class 4 status requires track inspections at least twice weekly. BNSF generally does not cheap out on maintenance on its mainlines.
The next train over that section likely would have derailed, passenger or freight.
This one is probably in the "s happens" category. However, with that said, the NTSB is now likely laser focused now on track maintenance on that section of track and any irregularities or bad practices will no doubt be in its final report.
Yeah, my experience of BNSF tracks has been that they do keep them upto standard to pass the FRA track category requirements, but not much beyond that. Of course the ex-CB&Q tracks are usually significantly worse than the ex-BN tracks though.
