Well There‘s Your Problem - Episode 21: 1953 Federal Express Wreck

Episode Date: April 1, 2020

In this episode we talk about the northernmost Bojangles franchise with Gareth Dennis (@GarethDennis) whose youtube project can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/garethdennistv slides are here when they finish uploading: https://youtu.be/38-MKEap0AQ

I'm gonna start start recording real quick. All right. All right, let's talk about trains No, no, let's Milne-Ga-Vee Inverness, yeah To be fair, it's not as bad as I've heard actually and struther. Mm-hmm. That's not that's not bad. Yeah. Yeah Kirk could bride partial credit. No, no Parents now live near to them they're in Wales and they live near my hand left. So, um, yeah, we're we're on we're in good grand Yeah

All right Let me let me get the screen recording going here What while you're doing that? I'll tell the joke that my my grandmother told me about the the policeman and paisley who? He finds a dead horse in Cozy side street, which is like it's written causeway side and He tries to spell it for an hour and eventually he can't see gives up. He drags around the corner Okay, we have slides I'm recording everyone's recording, right? I'm also eating a korma at the same time

But hopefully the microphone won't pick that up. That's fine. Everyone can get jealous and hungry that I I'm so hungry It's not very good. It's not going to start the podcast Hello, everyone and welcome to well, there's your problem a podcast about engineering disasters with slides I'm Justin Rosniak. I'm the guy with the engineering degree. My pronouns are he him Okay I'm Alice called or Kelly my pronouns are she her I'm the girl with like two-thirds the law degree and the coma So get jealous bitch. I

I am Lee Madison. I'm an old man Anderson on Twitter. My pronouns are he him and my degrees Are economics and math thanks to again a paperwork error on behalf of Rutgers University The State University of New Jersey and we have we have a guest today Yes, yeah My name is Garth Dennis my pronouns are he him and I'm a rail engineer. Yeah, I've got a degree in civil engineering too Yes, and and for some reason I don't use any of it. Actually, I use a little bit of it I use the hydraulics bit of it for drainage and that's pretty much it. We've why didn't you go into podcasting?

You you can make literally hundreds of Yeah, well, yeah real engineering is like there's not it's not so well-paid you kind of you do it for the love That's what you tell yourself anyway So what do you may notice about the slide we have in front of us? There's a train On the ground That's not where it's supposed to be. No. Hmm. Oh, that's not good It's called overland travel. It's fine. It's wheels are in the wrong place, too. Yes Yeah, I thought trains was to see on these things called rails. Yeah

That is rail engineering. What they've done here is that yeah, yeah, the rails They've moved the rails and replaced them with this station I do teaching sometimes and I say like the one thing that we have to do is like track engineers is stop trains from disappearing Downwards into infinity, which is kind of exactly what looks to have happened here. Yes. So this is trains all the way down This is Washington Union station in January of 1953 and this train just overran the platform and Fell into the basement. This is the wreck of the Federal Express Cool, and that's what we're gonna. That's what happens when you don't support the post office. Yes It's like weighed down by all of the Amazon I never heard of the wreck of the USPS. So, you know, it's a strike one

Anyway, so this is what we're gonna learn about today So, all right, what was the Federal Express? You're looking at the Northeast corridor here. If you remember in the APT episode I said the West Coast main line is kind of like the Northeast corridor. Well, the Northeast corridor is kind of like the West Coast main line We're doing it like by Atlanta At this point in history, right the The the Northeast corridor was run by two private companies and the dividing line was just north of New York City, right? The up here was the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad and then and then I got a change the color of the pen

Oh boy. Yeah, down here was yeah, Pennsylvania railroad, right? Two houses alike in dignity. Yeah, that's it That's it, that's it, that's it, that's it, yeah, New York, New York doesn't go fuck itself, but yeah, that's it, what up? At some point in the late 1800s because I forgot to put these notes in because I'm a moron The New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad and the Pennsylvania Railroad get this idea We're gonna run a continuous sleeper train from Boston to Washington DC, right? Now this is before Penn Station and all the tunnels were built, right? so what they did was they brought the train as far as a

Terminal in Harlem, right in New York City and then they did a car float across New York Harbor and Then oh, that sounds efficient. Yeah. Oh, yeah, good. Yeah We talked a little bit about this in a previous episode that we may or may not have destroyed processing issues The train would continue on its way down to Washington DC, right? So after they built At some point they then changed that routing so it actually went up to Poughkeepsie and then came back down But then when they built the When they built Penn Station, that's when the train assumed the format would have in 1953, right?

so this is this was a Root that required several locomotive changes, right? It's because Beyond New Haven here the train tracks were not electrified that didn't happen until 1995 Excuse me 1999 Jesus it gets worse. Yes, New Haven, Connecticut the last outpost of civilization

I Was deeply familiar like oh, yeah, like let's electrify that bit a hundred years after it's useful. Yes So The train would run with New Haven railroad equipment the whole way Or the passenger cars were all New Haven railroad equipment the locomotives had to change several times though. So from Boston Diesel locomotive would haul it down to New Haven, right? That would be one of these Alco

DL 109s which the the New Haven railroad was like the only operator of these Cuz cuz no one and that like orange livery they have right this is before that Oh, that was not until like the two years after this accident occurred when McGinnis took over the railroad and ran it into the ground in 22 months You should have you should have accidents because it will get you a better livery in the long run as well We're going. Yes, the rock island is these fucking things down at some point So a lot of railroads had one or two of them and then the New Haven had 60 of them Yeah, it's like the guy who like invests heavily in a Tesla or something

So All right, so as far as New Haven it was behind one of these then in this era They would have hooked it up to one of these EP for Electric locomotives. You've got to love the aesthetic there, haven't you? I mean, oh, yeah, it looks real good. Oh, wow Yeah, Alice, I think that's that's pretty much accurate I'm just assuming that like because I have like The depressive mindset that I've covered and this will be my last episode In the comments one of those sitcoms where somebody dies or I'm gonna have to bring

You have to do that But also it's the like TV thing where someone like coughs once and they're into like a handkerchief or something They'll be like, oh, they're gonna die TV get the TV Yeah So Anyway, so at New Haven they hook it up to one of these guys and that would bring it as far as New York Pennsylvania station, right which still looked nice back then, right and in the Pennsylvania station They take the EP for off and they would put on a GG one, which was the Pennsylvania Railroad

locomotive Big big fan of the pins. Oh, yeah, they look good Um Steampunk crossover big time. I mean, wow is it it's like a yeah, it's like a diesel punk thing. It's great It's like there's we only did one local like in the whole history of locals in the UK that even remotely resemble this sort of aesthetic And it's currently in Sheldon, which is in the northeast of England and it was the Delta prototype I think you guys talk about Delta X every now and then Yeah, it's like the what is blue and it has the go faster like doodad stripes

Oh, man That's why you put the stripe of the pinstripe suits on a pinstripe suit is so you can go You get close up to them. They're like it's like the sort of thing in your house next to your window I love it But they've like attached on with with pins with a pin hammer They've paid someone with a pin hammer to actually individually attach them on and they're not painting them in sort of cream It's not painted on that's that's amazing Yeah, just a train with

It's like squizzing molding on the inside on the interior of the cab as well, yeah, yeah, right All right, so since this was a sleeper train, right, you know left Boston and 11 in the evening, right? There were several Pickups and set outs on the route, right? Because you don't want to wake up at 3 a.m. In the morning to get into 30th Street You don't want to wait in the middle of the night 3 3 30 a.m. In the morning. Yeah Well, I feel like you could cram an extra one in there and be like oh 300 hours a.m. In the morning 500 fucking miles across New Brunswick in Nova Scotia Literally at 2 to 3 a.m. With him and my dad fucking telling me how actually that was right because it was for emphasis They should study that car ride for like long distance like how are we gonna get to Mars?

With like a 500-day ship with everybody crammed in together Just sit in there, baby So 50 miles in he's asking you if you want a whoopie pie you fucking don't Whoopie pie is an American thing, I guess okay, because of course you don't have that just like never been to the moon, but That's also a whoopie pie. We trace it. We trace it for health care. Oh, oh well, yeah, but we still been to the moon It's two pieces of like chocolate cake with like frosting in the middle, but it's I mean if they're bad They're bad. I understand that you know whoopie pie Twitter or whatever About it, but I only come to speak true

All of those brands are just like one guy in Brooklyn who's probably dead of COVID by now So who cares right Pete? Oh, it's like He's just like endlessly like replying to himself like switching accounts and like the sonny D account So like the Wendy's account to be like King's supporting Kings It's just a shoot me in the fucking head You just you just got me things about what a British attempt at a moon landing might look like and then I remembered that we did land Something on them on Mars, and it was called Beagle. Yeah, and it was just we just sprayed debris at the surface of the Mars Wheeling this thing around

And then we proceeded to launch it at the surface of the planet about 15,000 kilometers an hour. Yeah landing Yeah, we're gonna learn as much as we can from having some senses on the thing that we just fucking shoot into the moon Great. Yeah, that but unplanned. Yeah, they should have just gone through with the plan to nuke the moon. That would have been funny All right, you think Venice has had a weird summer already So so In in order to in order that you know if you're if you get on the train If you get on the train at Boston, you want to go to say not Washington, DC

You're gonna go to Philadelphia You want to go to Baltimore you want to go Wilmington rather than you know wake you up in the middle of night and kick you off the train You would go into a one or two designated sleeper cars And they would just uncouple it from the back of the train and move it to a siding when you stopped at that station And then you could you know wake up at your leisure and leave I just got this Like the sleeper train the Highland sleepers the Caledonian sleeper still does this folk are sleeping in some like knackered 1970s British rail coaches. Oh, no, they've been replaced by the ones that break now, haven't they?

And there's Yeah, anyway, yeah, they're sleeping in them and they and they shut them around. So yeah, it still happens in that It seems quite luxurious to me 70s British rail cars notwithstanding to just be like, yeah, just get up when you want, you know, we'll just Like the like sleeper cars that you used to have in like Train stations that were like not connected to the line that people could just like rent out to sleep Genuinely, seriously, that was a British thing Yeah we

I used to catch I used to catch the sleeper to go up to the Highlands when I was a student in Edinburgh and Yeah, occasionally you'd like cross your fingers that the old mark to coach at the back would go pop Because then they'd put you into the mark three the advance Stepping up in life into the mark three coach and you get sleep in a bed and you know your head You know sleep sleep is like a inverted comma situation, but you know, yeah Hmm as is lap a luxury, you know everything kind of shake in bits of light fitting coming down from the ceiling on you. It's good The UK is and I cannot stress this enough a I

Anyway, I just a question to ask here is what why didn't they just run through with you know, the New Haven locomotive and Just different company. Why didn't the British different crews? Oh No, I mean Swap out the G1 Yes, it's it's back to the livery again. You can't have The like blue clashing with the green or whatever Yeah, exactly exactly And because it takes less time to like recoupling you locomotives

No, it does to like spray paint the old one a different color This this does surprise me because like even in the ye oldie days of like steam things puffing around in the UK At least they did actually just sort of arrange through running So it does surprise me that they had to like unhook and swap things out But you know capitalism, so that's fine like yeah, that's that's exactly it I feel like the US is like what if we took all of the failure of the UK, but we made it more capitalist The weird thing is once some once the railroads merged in Penn Central, which will be a future episode They just decided to take the GG ones all the way up the New Haven. They were like, yeah fucking the voltages were compatible

Everything was compatible. They just did the locomotive switch at Penn Station because they did This is why you need central planning railroad logic, baby Now there's there's like complications when you swap locomotives, right? You have to make sure all the systems are intact, right in this case, you know that Steam heating for all the passenger cars. You got to make sure the electrical power sucked up But most importantly you got to make sure the brakes are working, right? So you got to do a brake test Which at it's simplest is just you go forward at a slow rate of speed and then stop and then you say yep

The brakes work and and then and then you can just go on your merry way That's fine. That seems fine still the way it's done today. Yeah Hmm well like what would even the more like a more invasive form of this be you go down each coach And you like check the brakes individually that seems like Don't mind me as I walk through the car of sleeping passengers pull a lever and I like a 200 decibel wine Just to go with a massive lump hammer just walking from one end of the train to the other and hitting everything you can see Just smashing out every single line Union we can't find

All right, so on this particular day January 14th 1953 right The federal express left Boston at the head end were three New Haven Railroad 86 hundred series lightweight coaches, which we'll talk about in a bit There was one heavyweight Combination baggage coach car and there were 12 sleeping cars, right? Hmm. You got to carry all of those like old-timey sleeper trunks with the like the like completely like Leather bar for some reason. Yeah. Yeah, I got I got a shit my like thing of concrete

This was the most efficient. It's one of the things that made them heavy-weight cars is they had like a about three inch deep concrete floor Oh Also, why does it why does the livery on that like it must be just a photo. So why does it look like it says new and even? That's not what it's called. You know, that's true They just kind of like start guessing after the new it is basically Alabama once you get past new once you get Oh So All right, so this train leaves at the normal time it gets as far as Kingston Road Island

Where they stop the train because the brakes keep sticking, right? I need to just I need so we've got brakes sticking I need to just pause us just very briefly pause us so I can wins at the permanent way the track that I can see in this picture I just want to make just want you to know that I'm wincing visibly and audibly wincing. Anyway, sorry break failures No What look these two tracks in the foreground just why is it made of cheese it looks like it's made of cheese Like those locomotives what they weigh like 150 tons like probably yeah, yeah, oh wow is it yeah, okay? Yeah, we could that's fine. That's fine. Yeah, I mean Yeah, this is a spring to Massachusetts station, which has actually gotten appreciably worse

Once they once they stop the train, you know, the inspector gets out He starts looking at the looking at the various couplings. He discovers the third car car number 86 65 Has a closed angle cock Right All right, so we remember from lack of ag antique this simple diagram We do Does it still have the cuss out cock on it? Yes. Yes, it does here. Also They cancelled my one of those

So all right, so what is the angle cock of the various kinds of cock on the air brakes system, right? This guy down here, right? That's the valve that closes the air brake system off from the next car Which would be over there, right? Because it's got to go down an angle for to fit through the coupling. Yes, pretty sure That's a hospitalizable condition to be honest That's true If it's at an angle for more than four hours This is what an actual one looks like it's this guy here, right?

Hmm. So that is that is that is a very lewd picture. Yes. Let's see We have to turn the adult content setting on the channel to on now Okay, okay, so Now the reason you have this this valve here The angle cock is that it you close the one at the end of the train, right? So the air doesn't just leak out the end. That's fine. Just run the compressor the whole time just enter into like a Yeah, just a venting air out the back. Yeah, if you do that, you've got it like an atmospheric railway These are compressor driven not these aren't vacuum brakes. Are they just

Yeah, yeah, we're old-fashioned still in the UK. We've got a vacuum brake still. Yeah, whereas this has Like it literally I'm gonna horribly misunderstand what a compressor is But it's a big sucky thing in the front with a locomotive that drags air in using power and like compresses. Yes Yes. Yes, that's just about right So, okay, cool. Now these are on every car because sometimes you might want to Close off the braking system of certain cars to keep the brakes released, right? So, you know, let's let's say you want if you're like moving cars around in the yard You don't want to go through the hassle of setting up the brake system every time you got to use them

So you just close the angle cocks on each end and then you can like kick the car around Or if you need to hump it or pull it or any other any any other any other maneuvers I Can't believe once again that we almost or perhaps actually did lose the episode where we talked about freight car pulling the most Wait, you just you get a just You just get a big pole and you shove it with a train. Yeah on the adjacent track Yeah I hope I'm gonna be able I hope I'll be able to save the episode

I haven't taken too hard of a look at it yet, but we will talk about pulling on this on this show at some point so All right, but you know if if if this air hose is connected to another car, right? And you close the angle cock on one car all the cars behind that will no longer respond to Drops an air pressure in the line and therefore you can't activate the brakes on them, right? Then because there's no air going back. Yeah, they will slowly bleed off air and eventually apply the brakes You know over a long period of time, but they're not gonna

I love that as a systems thing of just being like it's fail safe if you wait long Like In the same way that the Chernobyl nuclear power plant is fail safe once you wait 24,000 years Yeah, so all right, so it's a bad idea if it's not on a passenger train It's certainly not good if one of these were to be closed somehow So anyway, they reopen the valve, right and they bring the train down to Penn station They check again the valve is still open as it should be right and then they

You know they continue on their merry way down to Washington, DC, right? So Now we have to talk about the New York, New Haven and Hartford's 8600 Osgood Bradley coaches. Oh Seen in such beautiful condition. Yeah, this is what they looked like when they at least the track looks better. Yeah Why does it just have rocks on it though? Look, I'm not gonna like get on my high horse on this one because we're clearly not any better at maintaining our train cars like why my question is and I know the answer is because

Ballast and just like a bunch of other bullshit But like why does everything that's on a railway accumulate an inch thick thing of grime in Within an hour and why is it always the most? Disgusting color like it's never the same color, but it's always the worst one you could expect You should you should try doing platform surveys in Doncaster bearing in mind that we still have trains that release poop straight onto the track Some of my favorite shifts. Oh, yeah Shifts in shit. It's good stuff Great. Yeah, fantastic. I have a special bag to store your shoes in afterwards. Wow

And in in Doncaster as well. So, you know particularly bad. Yeah, thank you for your service I Just be just just mentally contemplating how much shit you have to get on like a Network rail orange high vis garment for it to no longer be considered high. I can tell you to the nearest like liter At least at least I'm not doing most of my work down in like the southeast where they still they have like third rail Electrification so you can get fried by like electrified liquid poop if you're looking the wrong way like Can we bring back the atmospheric Yesterday of some of those third rail trains and I was like there. It's just a bare-ass third rail for like a hundred miles

Yeah, yeah, it just blows a hole in you at least where they see it just kind of melts your skin and hair like no No DC just blows a hole in you. Yeah, it's good. It's good stuff I remember seeing a thing from a like it was a marine engine transformer Where a guy had like shorted it and there was literally like an outline of clean floor in the shape of two boot prints And the rest of it was just Yeah, your problem is that you've shorted the thing and now you're missing an electrician. Yeah, double whammy That's a hell of a way of power trains Yes, that just like capture that and then put it into a rail and then power trains with it. It's perfection

Yeah, and just I just have it just there where anybody can like fall on it or step on it It's very efficient. Yeah, and like in the most crowded part of the whole UK as well So like the platforms aren't always super busy or anything. It's fine. It's absolutely fine It's cool So these these coaches the Osgoode Bradley coaches, right? These were built in 1945 The New York, New Haven and Hartford ordered them from Pullman Standard who built them at the Osgoode Bradley plant in Worcester, Mass What's the mass? The idea here was

The railroad wanted shiny new stainless steel cars to improve their image, right? It's it's stainless. It's fine. They didn't want to pay for stainless steel It's like literally it's the Lionel Hart's thing if they got this all messed up stainless steel no stain comma less So You know, they didn't want to go and splurge on bud cars because those work So they don't break don't break. Yeah so they got Osgoode Bradley to take an older car design and Apply stainless steel aesthetic fluting to the outside. That's what this is. Oh my god

That's so depressing train siding boards. Yes, you can just nail shit to the side of a train There's rules they put like go fast destroy and that's why it's clean in stripes and then not in stripes. Oh That rules Yeah, these do have a distinctly like Indian sleeper train kind of vibe going on Like yeah, it needs the big X on the door though Yeah, the it's missing the big X. That's true. But other than that, how you know, they have plague I Want to know what the roofs of these are like for like seating four or five hundred people had

the rest of this car is Made or all of this car all the structural bits are made out of something called core 10 steel, right? That's a that's a weathering steel The idea is that when it gets rusty, right the rust adheres to the surface and protects the rest of the Steel from rusting, right? Oh like a sacrificial anode It's just like you just made a whole rail car out of zinc But less expensive all the rage from making bridges out of it at the moment. Oh, yeah, or 10 steel everyone loves it It's very pretty. Actually, I'm sure this will not come back to haunt us

like three three heads in a jar problem episode four billion Like fucking 1776 we can just be like, well, we talked about this if you go back and listen There's three ways to combat corrosion here that they're doing all at once, right number one Obviously is the stainless steel, right number two is the core 10 steel number three is painting the steel, right now All of these methods work great Individually, oh god No, yeah, no it does not work together is this one of those chemistry equation situations where the electrons start adding to our God

Yeah, yeah, once there was like one little hole in in the paint on the core 10 steel All the corrosion happened right there immediately and Rapidly like the idea of core 10 steel is you do not paint it, right? But they did but you gotta have that cool orange Which was blue originally You gotta have that cool blue There's weird galvanic corrosion between like the stainless steel and the core 10 steel and then also water gets trapped behind the stainless steel right

You know, you know engineering disaster is good when you have a poorly understood chemical phenomenon occurring within it Like when you're at a point where where chemically you're like we can't actually say for certain what this looks like So we've had to hypothesize So so these cars turned into rust buckets almost immediately Hmm It's fine all of the structural bits of the car are now rust, but it has some immaculate stainless steel flute But there was another there's another flaw in this car in addition to the whole car, right in addition to the whole thing being shit They put

Like directly underneath the coupler, right? Okay, and this meant under rare circumstances that angle cock could hit the coupler housing, right and If it hits it in the wrong way and might alter its state That's fine Famously, yeah, also a thing that occurred in the Garda Leon accident was very similar in a lot of ways where a French RER Like regional car had the same thing but instead of a coupler

It was a dude's elbow like it was positioned in such a way that you you try to manipulate a Release valve and like your elbow hits the angle cock oops Yeah, just views a beautiful piece of ergonomic design there where it's in such a way that you can just like Accidentally hit the thing not notice and just go about your business. That's That's fantastic. Oh Yeah Look Garda Leon, I I almost don't want to say too much about it because it would be a great episode But it also features a guy in a train like with no brakes screaming into a central station at like 90 kilometers an hour

On the phone to the signal like Gonna have no brakes There's no identifying information in that call the signal is just like who is this new phone Who this IP freely and just like and just pushes the big button that stops all the trains Which is great if you're a train that has brakes, but this one didn't and so so All right, so the train, you know, I got the GG one it got 48 76

pictured here at Paoli in 1939 ish I think right So shiny yes Good old days miserable fucking place They go through they inspect the train the angle cock on car 86-65 was still in the correct open position, right? And they don't have any braking trouble Through the later stops Philadelphia, Wilmington Baltimore, everything's fine. Hunky Dory Now hmm, so this is speculation on my part

I don't know if this is accurate, but I would say wherever If there was a place where that angle cock was gonna get bumped It was here in the Baltimore and Potomac tunnel right after Baltimore Penn Station, right? Right well the last place where we know everything was working. Yeah This is the old tunnel built 1873. It's very long. It has very tight curves. It's very steep Hmm, it is still used today by high-speed trains which travel at low speeds through Recurring American theme. Yeah. Yeah I just thinking back to the train simulator stream where I just spent an hour getting madder and madder and madder at the existence of the

Accela just being like why does it do? 25 miles an hour Is it's getting better we would just buy new ones they go even faster, but don't go even faster because the tracks won't let them Stupid country. Well, they're good. They're upgrading the section from Trenton to New Brunswick to 160 miles an hour Yeah, they're replacing the sleepers with a slightly like a firmer kind of cheese in cheddar Didn't have enough I didn't have enough money for parmesan, but you know They go to spend fold in money to get greer

Just like due to like mob ties in the construction industry just all of the sleepers are peccary Told you to get the DOP sleepers All right, so after you get out of the B&P tunnel you're home free It's 80 miles an hour track all the way to land over Maryland Which is right around here and the train has gone into Union Station right here, right? Marilad home of FedEx field which thank God nothing bad will happen regarding FedEx in a second. I'm about to say Oh the irony. Oh, yeah, right right here FedEx field Dan Snyder used to charge people for parking even if they took the metro there

Yeah, Dan Snyder is one of those other Jewish people where every time I hear a fucking name, I'm just like I just I just love that you have this arrow pointing to all of the shit That's near Union Station like the National Mall and like the image that forms in my head here is a kind of train 9-11 where you just like ram the train into like all of these historic sites But because it's a train it gets into like one basement and there's a way to do that, but that's in the next slide So All right, so the track from the B&P tunnel the Union Station is very straight very level until you get around to land over, right? But it's an 80 mile an hour speed limit, right?

Now I land over the engineer Henry W. Brower Sees an approach signal ahead right and indicates he's got to slow down, right and he applies Why would you call it an approach if you have to slow? That's a caution signal Just just to do the rational British signaling thing of yellow means start stopping and red means Because it's three lights diagonally Yeah, not not not not enough not a fan of the position light. No, no, thank you Just just lay it out like a car You have the speed limits in like a big red and white circle and then you just have traffic lights

It's very easy. Yeah, but two of these lights could go out and How many times have you been to the moon? I Signals to get to the moon is the funniest shit I can imagine Just be like well, we're in orbit, but it's a is that approach medium or approach slow Oh, that's well done. Yeah So All right, here's the thing about Washington DC, right as we know from our our big wet president

It's built on a swamp so they cursed by God, right? Built on a swamp at sea level. So this is all pretty steep 0.73 percent grade, right so When the brakes a tasty downhill slope so when when when Brower applies the brakes They start to slow the train down a little bit But not as much as he expected and then once he hits the grade the train actually starts accelerating

And that's not good because only the first three cars are applying the brakes and those are Not not only not sufficient. They're also the lightest cars on the train Oh dear because they're not full of like sleeping people They're just full of like a compressor and a dude with a middle initial which nobody has no cuz they're all they're there Most of them have already rusted away It's just like rusting bits off in You're just like losing like windows and shit So so Brower applied the emergency brakes and even that wasn't enough to slow the train down

Like all these there's like sparks flying at the bottom of the train There's like wheels that are you know just stopped and there's like, you know They're they're being worn down by the rail as they're just sliding over it bar decides I'm big wheels. Yeah. Oh dear. He tries to throw the engine into reverse and That blew out the traction motors Just literally like the cartoon bit of you pull the big emergency handler that comes off So So so so we've got like a 200 200 ton train

215 I just did googling 215 ton loco and then like what how much trailing load like just More lots more three and so you got like that part of like 500 tons probably Just hammering down a one in 140 grade towards a terminal. It's a that's fine It's a 16 car train This this is why you get on the phone to the signal or and you'd be like, oh, I was gonna have an apartment breaks so that's that's At this point, I'm not sure if they had train phone on this train They must have a radio

Okay, it's Justin here in post-production to add a correction So I didn't know about this bit when we recorded so I'll explain briefly here at the time of this accident You know 1953 railroads hadn't really adopted radio communications at all, right? The frequencies just weren't available yet Radio wasn't widely adapted for railroad communications until the 1960s Most railroads stuck with paper train orders that you could pick up on the fly. We had this special hook thing to do it, right? But the Pennsylvania railroad had something called train phone Okay, so train phone worked with

electromagnetic induction Through the tracks or through telegraph wires adjacent to the tracks, right and from from the electrical signals Which which you could get from there You could transmit voice right this was picked up and transmitted by a long Horizontal antenna on top of the train. It looks like a handrail, but it's not a handrail. It's an antenna so Using this system the engineer could communicate with dispatchers or the switch tower via an ordinary phone headset, right? Now the thing is train phones low frequency

Electromagnetic induction was completely overwhelmed by the 12 kilovolt 25 Hertz overhead wires which are supply and trains with electric power So the system wasn't installed on electric portions of the Pennsylvania railroad network such as the Northeast Corridor so the engineer of The Federal Express would have had no way to communicate with the dispatcher or the tower to tell them that the brakes were out You know except to blow the horn a whole bunch All right back to the podcast But he starts the engineer starts blowing the horn, you know in short rapid bursts like this is a runaway train

You know, I don't know if he's Yeah, this is a runaway train guys. We got a problem. I Just like the railroad for well, there's your problem is honk. Yes Honk All right, so this is this is the station This is Union station in Washington DC, right? You know very very large station nice nice throat. It's nice big. I'm like approving of this layout. It's very nice Yeah, yeah, it's nice a little bit tight at the throat, but you know, that's what she said

It's because DC's or federal you have to have the like Mormon suit and Tyler Very large station. This main concourse here actually was the largest room in the world when it was built Now they've stuck a Something that there's a thing that's important I think for this tail there appear to only be tracks going into this place and they don't appear to be any going the other Other side. Hmm. That's true. Yeah, it appears to be some kind of term Yeah, all the tracks down here actually go into what's called the first street tunnel, right? And what that does is it goes further south and it squeezes in between

Two Senate office buildings the Capitol building the Supreme Court building the Library of Congress the Canon House office building the Republican National Convention Headquarters and half a dozen other, you know, high-value targets Oh What you told me as we were like 500 feet away from the US Capitol building Remember what I said, what did I say and then you said that you could and you'll have to delete this part out You said that you could do a terrorism your words I Was just saying it would be fairly easy to do a terrorism. I'm not gonna do a terrorism. I'm not suggesting anyone do

You guys had to make up having a subway station underneath the Parliament building we actually Have We have one now, but but like Westminster Tube station is Largely composed of like giant concrete reinforcing pillars. Just so you can't do this in my Ours was built in 1903 out of shitty brick in Minecraft You get one creeper down there, it's like I'm thinking about like railroad security like the like lack of Investment in railroads it leads you to stuff like the Chicago flood But also just like building an entire network of very poorly constructed tunnels under your center of government with no security

And it reminds me very much of the time when the New York Daily News Found out that you could get into pretty much any like sewer grate or like MTA door or anywhere You wanted in New York with like a Yale master And their response to this their response to this was this will stay with me for a long time Well, let's do print a quarter of a page 3000 dpi photo of what that key looks like As a as a call to like I guess ban it So I think about that a lot. I like that kind of collective approach. It's good like let everyone

Everyone can go in there. This is the New York Daily News is a comrade. It was doing practice Well one thing about this is You know there M-Track does security procedures at its big stations, right? They make you queue in a big line for a long time for no reason rather than go onto the platforms, right? And I guess that's I don't know what that's for they say it's for security They're not like checking bags or anything to annoy me. No, it's to annoy me. Hmm. They'll even check your fucking ticket anymore, man Yeah, that's true. I used to take just just to like do some profile I used to take the Virginia Railway Express when I was in high school out of the station a lot to go home after rowing practice

And they just let you walk down on the platform with impunity You should think you can even do that if there's an M-Track train idling there and you just get on that instead Hmm like Britain Britain now is like we don't have the like airport security unless you're trying to get on the euro stuff But what we do still have as a rule are the like ticket barriers that like smack you hard in both lungs at once if you try Yeah, they're fully paddleboard. Yeah, that's it. Yeah. Yeah, do do not like those except I was getting nervous going through except in York, which is like the only one of the few big stations It's I live in York old York and then yes, the few big stations that don't have those stupid ticket gates Yeah, so you know you can dive on and avoid paying for your fare to your heart's content

Yeah in minecraft one thing that I In San Francisco, I think it was the Muni They they put a new ticket gates and they will just crush your head like the head level if you're in a wheelchair And they just come in from the sides and like two big wedges and it's just like yeah, great You just you just have a like a head vise. DC Metro has the same thing Anyway, these these southern tracks, right, you know, this is where If you were taking a train further south like say the Southern Crescent, you know The train would pull in here. They'd swap out the locomotive or diesel locomotive in 1953

That's when they went through and segregated the train because it was Jim Crow from there on out Yeah, I know also the reason the Pentagon has like the most toilets for any building in the world by like square mile Because they went across the river and they had to do segregation there Yep, because it's in Virginia and it has so it still has like two bathrooms next to each other in all the bathrooms. It's cool Rose put like personally instituted segregation in the commonwealth of Virginia these these upper level tracks, right? They're subended, right? They just end right here There's also a little spur right here in the corner that goes into the government printing office building They used to get boxcars and newsprint delivered there

Hmm. Well once again priority redacted Minecraft in a video game, but Very very secure. Well, sometimes they now park like a switcher locomotive there when they're not using it But pay attention right here. This is K tower, right? And that's a switching tower, right now since since the Federal Express ends at Union Station It was going into track 16 on the upper level, right? Here's whoa now you're talking my language Here's K tower, right? And he that got this the guy inside K tower didn't see the train coming until it came around under Florida Avenue now Florida Avenue used to be a bridge about here slightly closer than the bridge farther down and

EC's This train is coming in hot Yeah There are no noises that train isn't making yeah, it's just like it has an old-timey car horn for some reason There's a guy leaning out a window with a harmonica Oh All right, so he's he's already set up the switches were to go into track 16 by the time he sees it And then he sees it and he's like this is not good

See he telephones the station master's office When he sees the train, he's like run away on track 16, right? And a clerk except the phone and and he hears run away on track 16 and he can already look at the station master's end of track 16 and See the train coming and he just yells to the whole office run for your lives I Not a good thing to hear no

I mean I feel like this was this was a more comical time in American history where when a guy in your office Just yelled run for your lives It meant that some slapstick bullshit was about to happen to you like a train was about to come through the window instead of like The guy who got laid off two weeks ago is here with an AI machine and like I Doing the land shark a bit from Saturday night live I've just I've just got the idea of everyone like run for your lives

Everyone lifts up and their feet are doing that cartoon thing where they don't actually move So is about 20 seconds from the phone call to when the train was at the end of the platform Everyone got the hell out Like I was there. There wasn't time to be confused people ran Props to like props to employees for their cardio. I mean like Jesus game everyone was healthier back then looking at They weren't obese like they are now in America They weren't obese, but they were smoking 120 cigarettes a day as an effect I

Just love the idea that all these people run out, but they're like trailed by an enormous cloud of smoke because they're all still lighting up independently So everyone got out of the station master's office now This this is the concourse at Union station at the time, right? That's nice love a terminating vissus It looks like shit Yeah, I love to like go to fucking sparrows and like get a loves to sandwich that will eventually kill me a week later The sparrow is now on the the new concourse to be fair. There's also a pizzeria. Oh, no Well, this is true, but that's near the waiting room like pizzeria. Oh, I don't know the spark

I just like the luxury the weird thing about the new concourse at Union station is this it It's the most dark and grimy place I've ever been to that's made almost entirely of glass I So that was that was every that was every UK station roof until about four years ago when they discovered brushes Yeah Once again our notorious enemy railroad grime That just kind of like appears finally got the license to import Windex

I just I just love the idea. Oh, no UK station roofs are that bad because of the the trains that shoot the poop upwards Yeah, literally Well, I'm so yorks. I'm gonna talk about york station again york station every please don't tell me I'm not joking every single No, I'm literally not joking every single station every single track is electrified, right? And yet most of the trains that go through a diesel so they're just spitting the poop upwards like there's no tomorrow And uh, yeah Great windows. It's the same as it like St. Pancras. Everyone makes a big fuss about St. Pancras station in London Now it's so beautiful, but they basically just turned it into a shopping mall and reduced the number of platforms. Yes

Uh, hmm Such as life, you know, it's like the new um, the new world trade center transportation center, which is just an upscale mall Yeah, it's an upscale mall with like some trains tucked away in a corner I'll kind of greatest crime Is like being being responsible for building a giant boat if you count the 9-11 memorial two gigantic malls in york All right, so they started evacuating the main concourse, right because the runaway was about to come through Uh, probably somewhere down here. I would guess because

at the time it would have been It it it would have come through what is now gate c You got to use gates like it's an airport rather than tracks like a train station um So as the Meanwhile on board the train some of the conductors figured out what was up They started running from car to car telling people get on the ground Or if they had time move to the car further back

Right, you know lie down the same thing happened to go to leo guy just runs through the train just moving everybody backwards with him and uh Now as the train approached the station degrade even doubt it started to slow down properly, right? By the time it hit the platforms At the end of the platform. It was still going 45 miles an hour though Bloody hell fine. There's a buffer. There's a buff. Is there a buffer? Well, there was Oh my god, I did some this is like a thousand tons of train That's like a thousand tons of train at 40 miles an hour. It's don't for shit

Well, actually to be fair put a station in the way and maybe yeah Yeah, so It um It burst through the buffer at 35 miles an hour managed to shave off another 10 miles an hour at some point Sweet big big big buffer spring the unsung hero is the inanimate carbon rods It reared up over the end of the platform, right? Uh, it's just demolished the ornate, uh, you know railings and gates and it smashed straight through the station master's office, right? um

The first three cars including uh car 86 65 went with it over the cut bumpers and into the main concourse, right? Now the main concourse's floor, of course, was not designed to hold the weight of 150 ton gg1, right? Oh That's the that's the concourse floor up here under the carriages that are still up, right? Yeah, that's the concourse door. Yeah So It collapsed

And the locomotive fell into the baggage area, right? Which uh is now the food court um Oh good It's good. It's it's always good when we learn lessons from the past, isn't it? Yeah always good. Yeah It has the so many times i've been in a food court and have thought if only a thousand ton train could bust Feeling and murder me right now food court has the northernmost, uh, bow jangles Yeah, i'm sitting outside the northernmost bow jangles and i'm thinking man, I could really go for being just Is to play a diesel locomotive as the stock is tore down the one in red. I yeah

Do you seriously have a northernmost bow jangles grievance? Oh, yeah. Yes. Yeah, they're they just keep moving further south That sounds like the competition's about 24 seven gregs is in the uk Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah So now the thing is all the baggage handlers had just gone on break This is the thing. He's so again slapstick was there When this happened I was losing time. Northernmost bow jangles is claimed to still be in red egg I was thinking of the york pennsylvania one, which they did tear down. I just I so it's like city of trooro. They're like

It's claimed northern Yeah, yeah, the guinness has not actually recorded this as of bow jangles yet, so we can't say for certain Anyway, so I think about like four people got trapped in the wreckage briefly, but that was it, right? Um after the after the train just plowed into the waiting room, right? Everything was quiet apart from the hissing of the broken brake pipes and the steam lines and stuff like that, right? the engineer climbs out of the locomotive He was completely

Okay, just climbs out and just climbs out and says well, that was a close one. Yeah Drops the title right there. Just looks at the train. It's just like yeah, well The fireman had a couple scratches, but also just you know walked out, right? What did they build the fucking locomotive out of the gg1 frame is basically a truss bridge um One of the reasons why a couple other like mitigating factors in there. I I think is because because it's a truss bridge, right? Um, it the cab is incredibly tiny Um, there's no room to bounce around in there while you're flying through the air and collapsing into a basement

I I don't know though like old old american trains you have like very angular very metal sort of controls I it's a wonder nobody like split their head. Oh, that's a good point. Yeah Just okay. I've done some number crunching because it's my want and uh, so this train. Yeah the best part of 500 000 pounds in weird american money and uh 215 tons. Um, which is bearing in mind that a bridge installed in manchester recently Part as part of the oracle cord weighed 600 tons this thing weighs a third of the weight of an entire steel bridge So no wonder it was a truss structure. Yeah, bloody hell. Yeah, you're welcome. Yeah

I want to I want to fucking put a turret on this thing and like encircle the valmark six It's incredible. Probably could single-handedly have taken berlin Yeah, if only you had uh, just gotten some gg ones, uh, they were around You just had to ship them over around like a liberty ship Oh, there we go. That's your problem. Do a little bit of trimming. So I'll fit european loading a gauge Um, just I I love the idea of like an alternate history thing Well, the only thing that's different is we give the soviets war trains So cool. Oh, that's why the north koreans still run, uh, outgo copies

Also, if you diesel engines are just copies of alco Uh diesels, that's why there's so much goddamn smoke Yeah, so so what you're saying is if it's a copy and it works then it's not a copy That's what I say about the pirate bay So passengers started climbing out of the cars under their own power um A a man was heard to say as he hurled a chair through a smoking car window I've always wanted to do that

Look at least that guy got a good tool and like a fulfilling experience out of it He got to take that one off the bucket list The broken station masters clock read 8 36 a.m I believe in landowner. They were 20 minutes late Um, so they and I think they they made up about 10 or 15 minutes of time Uh, it's a lot of typical you can't even get you can't even get a train crash on time So 43 people were injured in the accident six required hospitalization overnight Yeah, but hospitalization in in the 50s is like a doctor like blows cigarette smoke in your face right now

You're up with morphine, baby But no one was killed bloody hell. Yeah USA So all the lesson here is I guess always always run your train slightly late because The people in the basement in the baggage area are going to get on break just in time for you to like collapse the ceiling. Yes Yes, awesome. Aftermath, uh, mbc news was on site and broadcasting 67 minutes after the accident. It was like one of the first, uh One of the first, uh, live broadcasts of a horrific disaster that happened so soon

After the horrific disaster occurred amazing you can yeah, you just have to like flip on an entire like semi truck full of vacuum tubes and sequence You gotta just just wind up the camera drive the truck full of camera equipment into the station concourse You gotta burst through another wall Thank god i'm alive and then the mbc truck just takes you out as it comes in the wall bringing the news to you There were some slight delays to train service But no nothing was canceled. They stay around a regular schedule that day That rules so hard just put some tape around it. It's fine

Dwight eisenhower was being inaugurated a couple days later, right? And they had to get the station back up the full capacity as soon as possible So what did they decide to do, right? They hold the train out with a big uh, big crane. We'll leave it. No No, what they did is they got a crane in they lowered the gg1 into the basement and left it there Then they built a temporary floor Oh my basement train built a temporary floor over the whole, right? You you leave the train in the basement for a couple of days and you come in it's just wearing a gaming headset

Fortnite leave me alone. You're not my real dad anyway Why why does the train punch this is the kyle of trains because it's just punched a big hole through some driver The the first two cars they um, they had to take out and they scrapped those Uh, the third car they just put back on the rails as 86 65, which we were talking about before Right and they they stored those on a sidetrack where they're going to do a investigation To what caused the accident, right, you know during the investigation They figured out that from abrasions on the paint of the angle cock

That it had somehow been jostled into moving by contact with the coupler housing, right And of course of course stripping the paint off the angle cock means that that entire car immediately turns to rust and collapse Um, so so they um, you know, that was how they determined the cause of the accident They had to alter every single 8600 series car that the new haven railroad owned to correct this problem Which turned out to not be in the specifications. They they were supposed to be designed a different way But polman slash osgoode bradley fucked up um

Classic some guy was just like, oh, yeah, that that that'll work. Yeah So Anyway, after the inauguration they went in they they took gg1 49 76 cut it up into Some people say three pieces some people say six pieces. They shipped it out to al-tuna and they put it back together Oh delightful ran until 1983 Oh, yes, you love to see it. Absolutely hero local. So it was yeah, it's just I just love the idea of lifting out like a a waffer thin slice of diesel locomotive

Oh, like there's so that's our tar there was a diesel locomotive derailed up in Up next to a lock in scotland quite a while back lock trig And um, yeah, definitely They just it was in a plastic bag for a while because they couldn't decide what to do that And eventually they just cut into pieces and took it away There are no roads to it. So, uh, yeah, just just a bag for life with a with a Past it was like they just put in a plucky bag and it was fine. Yeah Just yeah

So 48 76, uh, you know it ran until 1983 was on new jersey transit in the last days of its life. Um And they donated it first they tried to give it to the Smithsonian who wouldn't take it And then they tried it and then They're afraid to bust through that It wants to go back to the basement and then it keeps calling people So they they eventually they gave it to the b&o railroad museum in baltimore, right? And they were gonna restore it for a while But then their the roof of their roundhouse collapsed and they had to devote all the funding to fixing that

Uh, so now it's vengeance now. It's sitting on a siding and resting away in baltimore You can see it if you take a train ride there Um at the museum we got we got we got to rescue this game of train Uh, we got to get like a sponsorship go half and half with like monster energy Uh to like paint it up like a monster can and get it out of retirement start to go fund me Fire up 48 76 Um and using my vast expertise and locomotive restoration make this happen. Yes They can use it in the construction of the uh, the californian high-speed rail just just like barrel it along the tracks and just bulldoze a few of the

Blocks where it needs to prevail. There's there's definitely a u-sprit out there yet. Oh, yeah Just we we just put a big sword blade on the front of it Yeah, it's not killed. Those are it's uh Kill 4876 gg one. Yeah, that's right. So And usually this is where this is where retellings of this tail end. But you know the other question What happened to new haven coach? What uh 86 65, right? And the transfer I want to know

It it kept running Um, it was repair. Oh, they repaired it, you know to the extent that you could repair it, right? And it It'll buff out. Yeah To to the I mean the car's fundamentally flawed from from just what it's made out of but you know They repaired it. They put it back in service and it ran with the metropolis in boston transit authority on commuter trains until the late 1980s And it never returned it never returned and its face is still unlearned. Yes. Yes. We don't know what happened to it

Wait, really? I have no idea. Oh This is not the car in question. This is a car which is similar to it I could probably go in the records and see it was scrapped which it probably was but I have not Maybe it lives on somewhere in a siding People are unsentimental about the actual passenger cars Like there's a bunch of uh, like uk accidents where like, you know, it kills a hundred people or whatever And then they just take the last few Undamaged cars off the back of the train and just put them back into service because what else are you gonna do? Yes?

Uh So, yeah, people didn't die. I guess it's not like they're gonna be haunted. Oh, it's fine Yeah, but well, I don't know one of the electric locals that runs up and down the east coast mainland between edinburgh and uh, london Um class 91 1 2 3 it was in both the selby Disaster and the hatfield derailment a few years before it was the local for both of those Oh, jeez. I'm running That's good. That's fine. That's definitely haunted. Yeah, they changed the change the number to one three two Just in case no one noticed except that we definitely all have the internet and also

There's not a 31. So Yeah, yeah Yeah, just I just love the idea that you're just driving this around the ghost of a land rover that just demolished Is it major major stri sand effect right there people? Yeah But that's the story of the wreck of the federal express Yeah, and and some say that the ghost train still haunts the northeast corridor to this very day. Oh, that's probably what we were stuck Yeah, it's very difficult to get a ghost train to stick to timetables to give up a whole like like five slots a day to ghost trains We can't can't negotiate with the host railroad

Because we're not on the same plane of existence Yeah Broke flying Scotsman woke flying Dutchman Just gonna fly out of that tracks crap again. Yeah Oh, it really is. Is that a fucking molehill in the middle of it? That's pretty it's probably poop Yeah They're gonna pay me to wade through it and read things

I guess So next week we're gonna do the Tacoma Narrows bridge disaster Oh, excellent. That's right. I cannot wait. Yes Do we do we think that the ghost trains leave ghost poop or so like you just exo plasma on the line? Oh god You know the doubt it that that would be bad. I'm not gonna explain quite a lot. Yeah Hmm. You just if a ghost poop sounds something does that make it haunted? I would assume or at least until you like shower just haunting random things Yeah

Wait, does that mean every toilet is haunted? If a ghost, yeah, yeah Yeah, they're explain the various problems with my toilet recently Well, you had your your your toilet problems. I had the fire alarm upstairs that went off for 26 consecutive hours Finally get that fixed I saw Finally I waited it out because

Like literally because it took that long that I couldn't get next day delivery on a crowbar If if I had then I would have parody redacted in minecraft Uh, and I would have just put the door in but like no, I ended up waiting it out But it drove me absolutely insane and the fun thing is Once like a fire alarm's been going off for 26 hours when it stops You can still hear it because your brain is just like, oh, I've just chewed it out. Uh wrong. Yeah, it's great. It's fantastic I love it. I love I love having tinnitus now fresh kind of hell. You just described Mm-hmm. Well, it went through two fire department calls and they and both times they went in and they were like

Well, there's nobody in there. So we can't really we're not we're not the annoyance brigade Uh So like yeah, thank thanks guys My thanks to the the lifesaving heroes of the scottish fire and rescue service who are so Strict about protocol that they couldn't fucking turn off a fucking fire alarm for 26 hours. Did anyone call the landlord? Uh, I mean nobody nobody was in I don't know who owns that because I think the Building is like different units owned by different landlords. He was probably busy making angry videos about airbnb Yes, yeah

That's soul patch guys There's there's there's guys that are mad on our bonus episode. Uh quick plug bonus episode. Go give us money We talked about radisonism. It's just like Uh, why are the you know, why are any of the hosts? Why would you guys even be religious? Why aren't the atheists and like I I actually uh, sorry, I'm an atheist and I'm just like you fucking people It's that same shit being a jewish person and just every fucking time someone says jeffrey eppstein or loylde blankbeld Or jamey dimon or steve mnuchin. I'm just like guys guys. You make us look so fucking bad Someone's just like why do you believe in god? It's just like god damn. It's not your fucking business

Oh my fucking god. I just we we will explain why we believe in god on the secoman arrows episode. Yes Hmm, but in the meantime listen to our paper's propaganda on the bonus episode Listen to our sectarian podcast listen listen to trash future watch, uh, justin's youtube channel and do not eat one Uh, follow liam at old man anderson on twitter and What else do we have to plug gareth gareth you have You have a commercial I have a commercial which is uh, follow me on the twitters. Um, I don't shop And also if you want to hear about niche british railway stuff about the pennines

Google it, uh, then i'm live, uh on for railnatter hashtag railnatter, which is a youtube thing Which i've made up and it's going not dreadfully so far. So hooray. Oh fun. I have to say 100 of the audience of this will be into that Yeah, do that. Yes. Go go go watch the thing. I'll put it in the i'll put a link to it in the description All right. Uh, I think that's the podcast I believe some Uh, bye everyone Bye everyone. Justin justin say mull guy again mull guy Ah, yeah, there we go. Beautiful nailed it. He hasn't said anything really though. I didn't have to read it

So I could pronounce it properly. I'm sure I'm sure if I saw With it how it spelled I would my head would like implode All right, bye everybody