How Are Runaway Trains Stopped? | Tales From the Bottle

you may have heard of the movie unstoppable where freight train carrying toxic materials loses its driver and continues barreling down the railroad unattended and it has to be stopped by catching up to it with another train and then Denzel Washington and Chris Pine hop aboard and stop it narrowly avoiding the trains derailment and the spilling of toxic goo onto the general public which based on my interactions with the general public would have been much better ending you may also know that this movie was loosely based on a real event well good for you you know it all bastard but forget what you know because today we're gonna watch a real cinematic masterpiece by enjoying a Cooper video like share and subscribe wink wink that's right today's video is a telling of the true events of the Crazy Eights incident on May 15 to 2001 a locomotive engineer was switching a string of freight cars between trucks in a railway yard in Toledo Ohio behind the wheel of CSX 8888 which is an SD 42 locomotive and I'm sure a small portion of you watching this video our train spotters and could discuss the ins and outs of the strain at links but there's only one type of Trainspotting I care about and it's got Ewan McGregor in it [ __ ] as he was carrying out the switching maneuver in the yard the engineer noticed a switch up ahead was misaligned and even though the train was moving pretty slowly he knew the brakes were probably not gonna be able to stop it before it rolled over the switch which I guess would be a bollock this engineer had 35 years of locomotive experience under his belt so being a grizzled veteran he surely knew what to do he decided he would step out of the cab hop off the train manually realigned the switch and then hop back on the still moving train actually that kind of sounds like maybe he didn't know what he was doing there are a few sets of brakes on trains the independent brake uses compressed air to apply pressure to a piston which through some complicated mechanical linkage applies the brake shoes to the train wheels which should then slow down due to friction similar to your car or bicycle brakes the engineer applied the end of and break the automatic break is similar except instead of only being applied to the locomotive it applies to every individual freight car and it acts as an emergency brake being automatically applied under certain conditions the engineer applied some pressure to the automatic brake the dynamic brake is quite complicated but basically it turns the motors powering the wheels into generators so where once you had electrical energy being converted into mechanical energy to power the motors now you have mechanical energy being converted into electrical energy which creates resistance for the rotating shaft I'm sure somebody can explain this better than me but once again there's no sign of Ewan McGregor so I don't care dynamic braking mode needs to be selected and then the throttle which normally controls how fast the wheels should spin now controls how fast the wheels should stop spinning and this is where the engineer [ __ ] up the engineer mistakenly did not complete the selection process for dynamic braking so when he pushed the throttle to max he thought it was in full brake but in reality it was in full throttle maybe it's late design for all to have a system that gives you the exact opposite of what you would normally expect but I've never driven the Train so maybe it's a clear a straightforward and this guy is just the gobshite so the engineer hooks off the train and flips the switch when he turns around he expects to see the Train slowly coming to a halt at which point he will hop back on board what he actually sees is beautiful he tries to board the train again but it's too fast now and he falls over as he tries to pull himself off the railing he's dragged about 80 feet before eventually letting go of the railing apart from some minor cuts and bruises he's uninjured which is probably the only good thing that happened to him that day now CSX 8888 is leaving the yard by itself although the brake shoes are applied it's not enough to stop a train on full throttle you may have heard of the Deadman switch which is a pedal or handle which must be held down by the operator of the Train in the event of the operator being incapacitated they would relieve pressure from the switch which causes the emergency brakes to engage and you would certainly think that the engineer being on the ground beside the train repent as an incapacitated operator but applying the brakes had disabled the Deadman switch so now the train was accelerating down the tracks but no one on board and the brakes being worn at CSX 8888 now known as Crazy Eights consisted of 47 freight cars 22 of which were loaded two tank cars were carrying molten phenol which is well let's just say you shouldn't incorporate it into your skincare routine the engineer ran to find somebody with a radio and from here the yard master was notified of the runaway train as well as the train master the Toledo branch train dispatcher and the police Crazy Eights began a wonderful journey south through Northwest Ohio traveling 65 miles that's 105 kilometers some of you have asked why I'm so inconsistent with the units of measurement I choose between videos and the answer is that the vast majority of my viewership is in the US so I'm stuck between doing the right thing and doing what the audience will actually understand also being inconsistent maximizes your chances of irritating people which is very agreeable to me so how do you stop a runaway train well that's a good question a few people tried to board the train but it was going at around 20 miles per hour so it just wasn't gonna happen and this was in the early stages of the journey you have to remember the brake shoes are clamped on the wheels so that's impeding the acceleration but the friction slowing down the wheels is also wearing at the brakes so the longer the train goes on the more worn the brakes get and thus unless they hamper the trains throttle the police were made aware of an emergency fuel cutoff switch on the locomotive but of course the train was going too fast to press it so they hatched the genius idea of firing at it with a shotgun no joke not really doing much here to help the American cop stereotype in the academy they must just give you a problem-solving flowchart where there's only four actions three of them say open fire this may come as a surprise but shooting the switch did not work it needs to be held down for several seconds and even if it didn't I'm not sure this would have worked but that's one for Mythbusters I guess speaking of sidetracks another attempts to stop the train involved putting a portable derailleur on the track of a siding and the switch was remotely operated so crazy aides would enter the siding and run over the derail and Wow you can probably guess what comes next what Crazy Eights had no intention of being derailed and it dislodged the derail when it ran into it by now the brake shoes were completely worn out and the train was traveling at 50 miles per hour heading in the opposite direction with CSX 8390 to the crew of two pulled their train into a siding to let Crazy Eights pass and then they uncoupled themselves from their freight cars and gave chase ooh boy it's on now CSX 83 92 was eventually able to catch up with Crazy Eights and coupled to its rear applying the dynamic brakes of their locomotives they managed to slow Crazy Eights down but not stop it at a crossing just outside Canton Ohio CSX train master John Haas Feld ran alongside Crazy Eights now traveling at 11 miles per hour and hopped on board where he shut down the engine apart from the brake shoes the trains received minor damage no one was hurt except for the original engineer who was cut up a bit trying to reboard Crazy Eights despite being a 35-year veteran with a keen track record hee hee he was fired from CSX his identity was never disclosed and we never found out what happened to him afterwards a little bit like tank man the CSX authorities probably did away with them several railway museums tried to buy Crazy Eights but CSX refused to sell it saying that did not feel it was worthy of preservation which is the corporate way of saying no we don't want our massive plunder to be immortalized in pop culture history thank you and sadly in 2016 Crazy Eights was converted into an SD 43 given a new roster number 43 89 shine on you crazy eights and if you like the story of Crazy Eights I made a t-shirt to memorializing it you can buy this on all my other great March over on my merch store if you want more stories than subscribe I also have a second channel cukes or two I have a Twitter account a subreddit and a patreon the links to all of which are in the video description thank you all [Music] [Music]

Channel: Qxir

Views: 2,071,532

Keywords: crazy eights, runaway train, csx 8888, footage, incident, explained, animated, funny, news, trains, accidents, accident, caught, film, unstoppable

Id: tcNb3sN0BiE

Length: 9min 41sec (581 seconds)

Published: Fri May 29 2020