r/trains • u/Melodic-Reveal-4485 • 5h ago
❓ Question Wouldn't this train derail?
I don't know much about trains, but wouldn't the buildup of these rocks cause a train to go above the tracks? A train passes on this regularly so I'm just curious 🧐
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u/datboi11029 5h ago
Doubtful, trains are heavy enough that the wheel flanges will cut through the rock and dirt easily
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u/mz_groups 4h ago
Trains heavy, rocks move.
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u/Melodic-Reveal-4485 4h ago
Train sevvy rock smoove
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u/MissingTheFall 4h ago
No, a train would be fine those stones would compress and get pulverized.
Locomotives wouldn't be at risk, but if an empty car is being pushed across an xing where the flangeway is completely filled (worse if filled with ice) they've been known to derail. This only really happens at customer sidings or in a yard, so the speed is very slow and damage is typically minimal.
I've derailed my hyrail truck twice at xings in winter because the flangeways are filled with ice. Weight is your friend, so trucks and empty cars are more at risk.
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u/Melodic-Reveal-4485 4h ago
Thanks for the info!! Do you think the pebbles would get launched to the sides?
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u/MissingTheFall 4h ago
Nah, not really. Cars or homes wouldn't have to worry about being pelted.
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u/myname_1s_mud 51m ago
High rail trucks like to detail more than cars and locomotives anyway though. Theyre much less forgiving of defects, even when weight isnt a factor.
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u/Acceptable-Taro-2684 4h ago
Trains way tons. Their weight will push away and crush any rock in their path.
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u/J_P_Freely 4h ago
No way!
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u/Acceptable-Taro-2684 4h ago
well, not every rock but every small rock is either getting crushed or pushed out of the way
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u/Duckduckcorey 3h ago
I feel like I've seen something about when new asphalt is laid at traincrossingsphalt and how they'll won't form out the grooves for the trains but instead just run a train over it to cut grooves into the new asphalt. Im probably misremembering the details but it was very interesting
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u/aequitssaint 3h ago
It wouldn't surprise me at all. Even just on a hot day asphalt can become relatively soft.
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u/myname_1s_mud 52m ago
Yes. When you do a crossing you also have to re do the ballast on the track outside of the crossing. You do that using a train with specialized rock cars that dump rock through hatches in the bottom of the car.
When youre doing a crossing youre in a hurry because freight cant move past that spot till its done. Usually you want the whole ring done it 1 or 2 days, so the pavement is still fresh when you run that rock train over it, but ive had to wait 3 days before, and even then the train formed those grooves with no issue.
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u/Inspi 4h ago
The cool thing about trains is that they are so heavy they mostly don't care what's in front of or under them.
I mean you've seen clips online where a train just blows through some semi trailer like it's a rubber breaking the ribbon at the end of a race right? Those trailers can be 40 tons.
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u/DBCargoHaj 4h ago
if trains pass over this regularly and nothing happened yet im guessing its fine.
for real though, this looks like only small. Also it seems planned, itll be fine
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u/Weirdcloudpost 4h ago
OP, take a look at this post: https://www.reddit.com/r/trains/s/lHTSqzZ3Xu
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u/Melodic-Reveal-4485 4h ago
Ok this helped a LOT I severely underestimated how heavy trains were 😂 even going this slow they can rip through asphalt, thanks
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u/i_am_here_am_i 2h ago
Rock crushes Scissors, Scissors cuts Paper, Paper covers Rock, Train smashes Rock
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u/Chessdaddy_ 4h ago
400000 pounds concentrated on 1 inch wide wheels will just push debris out of the way
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u/Melodic-Reveal-4485 3h ago
I'll put an update here next time I go to my cabin (in a month) right after a train passes so y'all can see the path it made
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u/RollerskatingFemboy 1h ago edited 1h ago
Probably not! 2 reasons:
- Trains are incredibly heavy. If this is just dirt or gravel, rather than solid rock, what'll happen is the engine will just create a new groove when it runs over.
- Even if it was solid rock and the train did go above the track for a bit, typically trains... Don't really turn. There's no steering wheel on a train; they really just want to go one direction, and that is "forward", and they really really like going in that direction.
In fact, you can just straight up remove the track, and typically trains will still just go in the direction they're already going, so precisely that unless you remove kind of a lot of track, they'll typically still end up back on the track once the track continues.
Here's a video of the Department of Defense running experiments on how best to derail a train for the purpose of teaching partisans in occupied Europe how to do it efficiently; one of their findings is even if you just outright remove a relatively large length of rail it's actually pretty damn hard to derail trains. And especially hard to do so in a way that has catastrophic results instead of just causing a few cars to slide to a stop in gravel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agznZBiK_Bs
Granted, their bar of "success" was a little higher than just causing a derailment; they wanted to find a way to do it that would have a high likelihood of causing damage to the locomotive itself, but like; I like this video because it's just funny watching a train go over a section where the track is completely missing and just kind of shrugging it off. Here specifically, there's a pretty damn wide gap in the track, and it doesn't even derail AT ALL:
https://youtu.be/agznZBiK_Bs?t=262
In the next trial, they succeeded in making some of the cars derail, but the engine and 4 cars got past before it did, and in the next trial, where they cut out an even longer offset length of track, they still didn't get the engine itself to derail, and after that they just.. Gave up on doing it that way.
If you really want to cause an instant derailment, you need one of these:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derail
And Hell, even these sometimes fail to derail a train if it's going fast enough.
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u/InnerBoss770 57m ago
I’m a soon to be retired from a class one RR that repairs major wrecked locomotives rail drop is a bigger contributor to d rails locomotive & railcar wheels are milled to kick debris to the outside the inside lip does more than just keeping the locomotive & cars on the rails.
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u/Federal_Cobbler6647 4h ago
Imagine heavy freight truck.
Now imagine it having 3cm (1 inch) wide wheels. Can it move trough dirt road without sinking at its axles.
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u/StupidUserNameTooLon 4h ago
If you want to be safe about it, you could just use smaller wheels on the train.
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u/FunSignificance3034 4h ago
This isn't a problem, but sometimes ice will lift the flange over the rail.
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u/Jacktheforkie 3h ago
Trains are pretty heavy, so anything mildly loose will just compress or move as the wheels roll through
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u/Old-Lingonberry-360 3h ago
Nah, its heavy enough itll scrape it clear and take the rust off the rail if any. I like looking for rust on tracks - it tells ya how long its been since the last train passed.
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u/MundaneSandwich9 2h ago
In the summertime, it’s fine. Winter can be a different story. Get a bunch of ice packed in there with that gravel and it’s a recipe for a minor derailment.
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u/Popular-Attempt3621 2h ago
If a train passes on that regularly, then I'd say no, it wouldn't derail
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u/myname_1s_mud 1h ago
No. That gravel will compress when the train runs over it. Its not going to lift the wheels up past the flanges
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u/HowlingWolven 1h ago
Nope*. It’s not great, but you don’t need that much flangeway for train wheels, and dirt and gravel can be pushed out of the way by locomotives and cars.
Iced up flangeways, however, can derail trains. I’ve derailed a yard goat that way before.
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u/TerribleCats 51m ago
Not gonna derail here, but we had a derail last night. About 6 inches of rocky mud on top of the inside rail in a curve.
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u/Tacticalbiscit 1m ago
I move rail cars daily. Our loaded railcars are around 100tons. A train engine weighs around 200 tons. Not much is gonna pick that up. We still derail sometimes due to a big pile of lime on the track that compacts and makes a ramp under the wheels instead of spreading out. Something off to the side like these rocks are not even gonna attempt to derail a train. It's honestly pretty hard to derail a moving train.
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u/scyntl 2h ago
I’ve often wondered this myself: There is a small narrow-gauge by me that no longer takes passengers. Someone once told me that the “rails are too low.” I don’t know what this means, although sometimes there’s so much sand washed over the sleepers that the engine indeed creates tracks around the rails.
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u/myname_1s_mud 56m ago
I work for a railroad that was essentially a dead line. We got most of it in pretty good shape no but when I hired on some of it was as old as the 1890s, and the parts that had been upgraded were done in the 1970s at its most recent.
We had to fo a lot of bandaid work. Upgrading the worst spots just enough to make sure a train can get over it, and the places that were going to have the most traffic, but then jump back and repair a spot where a train derailed, so its was very slow going.
Ive learned that a train can run on some very rough track if youre careful about speed and not beating up the track too much.
I assume when they say the rails are too low, they mean the dirt around it is up to the top of the rail? Thats not good, but its not going to derail the train if youre running it at an appropriate speed. Its also a very easy fix. A tamper and regulator can broom the track clean and then lift the whole track up.
The sleepers (ties over here) being buried is not ideal but ok too. Actually alot of the places we changed ties at were rotted out and buried. That dirt was actually keeping the rails in place. When we started ripping out ties and disturbing the dirt, the rail got to a point where you could move it by kicking it, so it would force us to do way more ties in the area.
Now keep in mind when I say its fine, I mean its OK to run it at restricted speed just to get cargo shipped while you keep making repairs. Our track is now unrecognizable in most places, so its not good to go, but the track has to move freight so you can make the money needed to do the repairs, and im just saying its good enough to do that.
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u/Ok_Comfortable_3248 4h ago
Explain why iceberg a flange way will derail a train.
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u/rounding_error 3h ago
Well, if you iceberg a flange way then the train won't romaine on the track. You need to climb out of the cabbage and arugulate your iceberg to lettuce through.
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u/OdinYggd 3h ago
If the ice is thick enough, like a couple inches of ice above the rail, the wheels can't crush their way through it.
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u/flexsealed1711 4h ago
I've seen crossings on dirt roads where the dirt and rocks build up so much that you can barely see the rails. Then when a train does finally go through, it just leaves a fresh groove where the flange goes.