From a friend who's an engineer, it sounded like the 'dead man brake' was
(easily) forced into the 'on' position....


Al Karman
IT Consultant
US Freightways
[log in to unmask]
773.824.2284


-----Original Message-----
From: Tom Brandt [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Thursday, May 17, 2001 10:57 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: OT: Runaway train


According to new reports here, the engineer left the train to set a switch,
and the train started moving on its own.  There are supposed to be a
variety of safety devices on board, such as a "dead man's brake", to
prevent a driverless train from moving, but these evidently failed.

At 04:47 PM 5/17/2001 +0100, [log in to unmask] wrote:
>I was watching the news here in the UK and saw clips of the train in the US
>that travelled for around 70 miles without a driver. How did it start
>without a driver? Did he forget to put the train into park and went for a
>cup of coffee?? It seems a bit strange to me.
>
>I dont know a great deal about safety of trains in the US but there have
>been some very serious and fatal train crashes here in the UK - the latest
>of which a car ended up travelling down a embankment before a bridge and
>getting stuck on the line. The car was hit by a a train which was then hit
>by another.
>
>I just wondered if train safety(or lack of it) was a global problem and not
>just specific to this country.

--------------------------------
Tom Brandt
Northtech Systems, Inc.
313 N. 1st Street
Ann Arbor, MI 48103
http://www.northtech.com/

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