These things take miles to slow down, usually tens of carriages loaded with metal, liquid, and whatever else.
Comment on Train collides with 18-wheeler hauling cars, intersection reopens Monday morning
danc4498@lemmy.world 21 hours ago
It’s incredible how little that train slowed down (if it did at all).
derpgon@programming.dev 7 hours ago
homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
FREIGHT TRAIN
caesaravgvstvs@feddit.org 20 hours ago
Well that looked like a three locomotive formation, unless one of those is something else.
Who knows how eternally long that train is
scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 4 hours ago
Think of the mass of a freight train carrying over a miles worth of material behind it. Then a truck
danc4498@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
I don’t even know how that gets started. Let alone stops.
scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 3 hours ago
Started is tih as you see, 3 to 5 massive diesel-electric engines, taking quite a while to max speed.
Stopping is interesting. The engines have their own brakes, but three engines can’t stop a train that long by themselves, the brakes would just melt. They are set mostly like a parking brake when you are already stopped.
The actual brakes are air brakes, with a tube of compressed air connecting from the front of the train to the back. Each car has its own brakes then that are applied as pressure is released from the brake system. Going into emergency brake is essentially all pressure being released and all brakes throughout the entire train engaging, and that is what we are seeing here.
With that though, the train is still tens of thousands of tons of mass moving at a max track speed of 55mph. It’s going to take some time to slow that down, even with every brake being applied.
Don’t fuck around with trains.
danc4498@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
Wow, very interesting. If there wasn’t any critical damage to the train, might as well keep going till the destination!