Well There‘s Your Problem - Episode 73: Kaprun Disaster

Episode Date: July 2, 2021

Yes! It's a funicular disaster! Our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/wtyppod​ Our Merch: https://www.solidaritysuperstore.com/wtypp we are working on international shipping Send us stuff! our address: Well There's Your Podcasting Company PO Box 40178 Philadelphia, PA 19106 YOU ALREADY SENT US ANTHRAX so please don't bother in the future thanks

Damn moving quickly. It's right. It's like we're getting better at this. We're not though, but it's like that We can you know, I think we've we reached a certain level of competency and stayed there. Yeah I don't want to I don't want to get too much competency. I This is the union way and that's why we're a union podcast. Yeah, I think you would just need a solid C average podcast I don't know. They call doctors who had a C average of medical school doctor doctor. Yeah All right, well Welcome to well, there's your problem. It's a podcast about engineering disasters with slides I'm Justin Rosniak. Who is the person who is talking at this moment?

My pronouns are he and him All right, I'm Alice Gordwell Kelly the person who is presently talking at this current moment My pronouns are she and her and that guy on the screen looks like Luigi. Oh Yeah, he's having a tough time Hello, I'm Liam. I'm Liam Anderson My pronouns are he and him I Was I was just commenting on

I was responding to Alice there who made a comment and I was adding he's having a bad time because he's got the green helmet Which means he's he's new on job sites such as this. Imagine that being your first fucking day, huh? Coming home to your life like I don't think I want to go back tomorrow I guess how many corpses I dug out, honey Well, the good news is that they're mostly reduced to sort of like Ashes there, so yes, they're portable. Yeah There's one weird trick funeral directors hate him So that he wanted to be cremated and then

Me put his the urn in my car and when my children misbehaved they have to hold grandpa All right, so What you see on the screen Is very difficult to make out what it is because it was on fire a lot. Mm-hmm But at one point it was a funicular right Little mountain railways. Oh, yeah They were gonna talk about the Capron disaster Capron or Caproon

No, no, that's all shit. It gives a shit. It's Austrian Oberammer, Uber, Gertzl, Wugli Yes, hold on. I'm gonna turn the gain up on my mic here. Yeah, how am I some more Justin in the headphones? Some more rods of my monitors, please All right That looks a little bit better from my crisp a crisp Justin. Oh, yes Well, I'm hard as hell All right, that's how we want to record this podcast fully erect

Yeah, I am pointy I'll see it be more alert May get make it more rigid. Yeah, that's what I'm doing, buddy Get that got that post podcast clarity All right Anyway, so yeah, this was a fire on a funicular in a tunnel bad combination But uh, first we have to do the goddamn news

Oh, man, does it ever fall down? I was about to say this is well, we had to do the obvious one Yeah, it's gonna be a long news segment. Yeah, we may we may talk about this more Extensively in the future once some more information comes out But yeah, I made the joke that like um, we are the timeliest engineering podcast We will report the facts a mere five years after they emerge. Yes. Yes um a building in Surfside, Florida just north of Miami Beach Fell down big condominium partially collapsed and it's weird because

You know big tall buildings don't usually just fall down Certainly not without any warning. Yeah, I know we have to like fly two planes into them. Yeah, I mean, that's one way Usually there's like really obvious structural damage This one I you know the more I look at it the less sense it makes to me You know, it's it's very it's very odd because it you know so far I think what's come out is, you know, the there's that engineering report that came out, right? And everyone's pointing to okay, so there's damage under the pool deck, which is like over here, right? Which is not especially close to the part that fell down

and then Yeah, all the images are of concrete spalling under the balconies, which is you know Just something that balconies do like like all balconies do that because you know, they're so exposed It's very weird, I mean, this is this is sort of one of those things um, you know, if you uh Obviously, it's you know killed a whole shitload of people, right? Oh, yeah, but a ton of people missing still. Oh Yeah, all those people are probably dead I fucking know one of those urban search and rescue nightmares in like an already not fun job, right? But it's just it's very it's weird. It's it's a weird collapse so far

Can we pin this on climate change because as to get us sorrow some money That's what we have to do right as to tie everything back to climate. Is this climate change is full? I sort of had a theory that might that might explain it that way Please note. This is not an official engineering opinion. This is not engineering advice. This is not engineering advice. Um, It is investment advice though weirdly Yeah, and legal advice You should give us power of attorney. We are actually Send us power of attorney papers to the p.o box

This building was built If I may go on Um On top of an underground parking garage, um adjacent to the seafront right So as a result The whole building was essentially sort of a a boat Resting on ground water. Okay, terrific. Okay. That sounds good. You know, I has some buoyancy, right?

I looked through the plans that were on um the surfside website Which by the way, if you look at them, uh, good luck Because there's some you were very mad about that yesterday There's at least four separate copies of the same set of plans in there Some of the sheets are missing. One of the things I thought was conspicuously absent was the foundation plan Or the most up-to-date one that corresponded with the the um, the the foundation details Kind of the thing that would be helpful if you were looking for a bunch of people or corpses trapped in like the collapsed ruins of this building, huh?

Well, the column plan for the parking garage was there, but the foundation plan was not um This building has deep foundations of some kind. I can't tell if it's piles Or if it's um, I forget what the the term is. Uh, I forget what the technical term is something called Frankie piles which um have uh They're a weird sort of yes, um very very popular in hollywood, of course um But they uh, they um

Frankie goes to hollywood. Is that anything? Thank you. Yeah, that was that was that was the joke I was making Oh, it was. Yeah I should probably like have detected that so You know, these are but these piles were driven down Until a certain specification Some of them were you know, burying the weight of the building, but some of them were tension piles Which actually hold the building down rather than support it

Because the groundwater is changing with the tides um It's a pain in the ass to like build a city on like porous limestone by the sea, right? Yeah, it is um, you know, if there's all kinds of weird forces acting on this I thought maybe if this were linked to climate change, you know, since the sea level is going up the the the forces especially on You know the midsection of the building adjacent to the core of the building, which is the most rigid would sort of cause it to uh

uh Bend in that section, you know, and that would eventually over the course of 50 40 or 50 years of cyclical loading Cause the failure of structural members in that area It's a 40 year old building, right? Yeah And the reason I remember that is because uh surfside florida requires buildings to be inspected every 40 years and it's 40 years old Yes, oh, they almost made it almost made it. Yeah um

That's a shame That's sort of my theory if it is something to do with climate change It's that because I used to think, you know climate change, okay It's gonna look like, you know that onion article about uh, new york city being inundated and everyone writing an mta whale to work But it may actually be something like well you have a moderate amount of sea level rise And all of a sudden buildings start randomly falling down Because of the hydrostatic pressure um

We get we get we'll probably go into this in more detail later It's sort of just a theory. I have um need to need to really do a climate episode I think when we can get fully dune piled on that We'll talk about the the the solution to climate change. I came up with Okay, is this going to be a big hole? Yeah, it's the big hole. God. I hate the big hole the big hole project Peaceful use this for the assam. Oh, yeah I don't know how we could use an atom bomb to do that. I think you would have to get some really big excavators We'll talk about the big hole later

um But yeah, so this is this is a weird Weird collapse to me. It doesn't it it doesn't it doesn't seem to me that you know Damage, which is again over here Is going to cause stuff over here to collapse um controlled demolition biden went in there with a big axe Just these wearing his aviators he's like hammering away at some support columns. I'll tell you jack It's listen jack

So, yeah, this is a It's weird. It's just weird as all hell is all I can say That's because it was a controlled demolition ross. All right. No, because it controlled demolition They probably take down the whole building. Yeah, I can't wait for the truthers to be in the comments and then Uh before anyone comments that we're being insensitive. Yes, that's kind of the whole bit We know it's a vibe. Yeah, it's we we know the so I mattered us on texas city and I just What was the episode I was expecting to get mad too soon too soon

Yeah, you know how like like trauma surgeons Like, you know, they always get fascinated to go see Like, you know, some creatively mangled human bodies. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, our engineers are the same way about collapses like this It's a little bit of like gallows humor. It's a little bit of professional curiosity Yeah You know, you go over there and you're like, oh my god, I can't look and you put like your hand over your face But you know, you got your finger spread so you actually can look Well, nist sent the team of engineers to go and like, um

Investigate why this is happening. So we'll wait to hear back from them. I guess Ah, the consistency of the concrete was actually similar to the nist standard peanut butter So, um Only only real fans, uh, we'll get that joke. Um, anyway, that's right. Um So, yeah, you send us the nist cigarettes we We don't know what happened. I don't know. I don't know. Build it building fall down building fall down make it rigid enough Mr. Bond. Yes. Nope

Well, I mean, it's reinforced concrete. You can't get more rigid than that No, that out of jude I'm still sorry about the frankie goes to hollywood thing. Can you edit that out so I sound smart? No, no damn I have to sound like an idiot all the time. Yes Okay, I thought we'd start by asking What is funicular? Uh, it's a thing to go angle train go angle. Yes inclined plane trained

Because back in the day when they decided to do locomotive power, they weren't sure whether you could make a locomotive go up a hill or not Yes, exactly. There was um, so Early early railroads were built with inclined planes rather than like consistent grades They were built sort of like canals. You have long flat stretches Um, and then you'd get to a point where you wanted to change elevation You'd have something called an inclined plane where you'd unhook the cars from the train Um, and you would haul them by rope up to the top of the hill and then attach them to a new locomotive Which would take them to the next inclined plane and that's how you got over a mountain

That was like this real Early railroading like 1830s 40s. You can recognize this too. You can have like a lift For uh, like a train that like just lifts it vertically or an engine some kind Yeah, yeah, yeah, or you could have um, you could have the descending train Pull the ascending train up there by um, right There's cableways like that that are still operating. Those are terrifying You'd just be like a fucking like 50 degree hill. I don't like that Yeah, we'll just we'll just shoot this one car down and it's gonna pull the other one up

There's one of those in um, cornwall, I think which is like the going down it the view out is like If the brakes fail, you just go and straighten the harbour, which is very fine Yeah It's like like fucking burnout with a crash mode, you know, you're trying to aim where you're gonna throw this cable car But there's um, there were you know, eventually Uh, they realized okay, you can actually build a train that's power enough to pull a train uphill So inclined planes for railroads were obsolete fairly early on But there were still specialized applications in the form of funiculars, right?

um now A funicular usually but not always only moves passengers, right? You have uh, two cars that ascend and descend an inclined plane Uh, and they're permanently attached to each other by a haul rope that goes up the plane Around a pulley and then back down So the descending car pulls the ascending car up um So that they counterbalance each other so there's less uh power needed in order to move the cars, right?

Um, here here's here's an example from Cincinnati Um, we've got the store that saves you m. Oh, yeah, the store that saves you m Uh, and this is this is these these particular funiculars Are for they carry street cars as well as road traffic Um, what imagine imagine being the horse I'd like hitch to that car on the right there just being like What the fuck? He's probably done that like 20 times before he's probably still scared shitless every time he drives that big horse

It's oh, it's a staircase to nowhere in the middle here. Yeah It's okay. The horse is probably only gonna do it 20 more times before he dies on account of being a horse in in in fucking, uh 1890s Cincinnati Oh Oh, it is But like most mostly what you want to use a funicular for is like It's a single like point-to-point thing like you go up a mountain and it doesn't connect to anything else, right? Right

I used to be very very common in cities with um, you know, escarpments Uh in america not so much today. There's only a couple left like there's two in pittsbury. There's one in johnstown um there's uh Those are the only ones I know off hand. There's one in los angeles Um, that's a really short one Um, oh angel's flying angels flight. Yeah. Mm. Well, um They're much more common in europe where they're used, you know everywhere constantly

Yeah, because we've got a shitload of mountains that we just built cities on top of oh, yeah So that's that's your your basic funicular concept there, right? So here's why is it called a funicular? I have no idea I'm gonna find out what a funicular is something that I probably should have done before We did the episode about a funicular Someone someone sent a tweet to the funicular magazine people Uh It derives from the word ladward funiculus the divinative of funus meaning rope Ah, it's a little rope. Okay, that'll do it

um so We'll talk about a specific funicular Uh, the capron funicular which brings people to the top of the kittstein horn, right? Uh, which is oh god people are doing a thing Okay It's a one thing of people doing. Oh the steam notification came up in the corner Oh, yeah, just just like delete everybody off of your steam friends list. Good idea. I don't talk to any of them

Nobody does no to me Imagine somebody messaging you on steam the kind of like deranged energy that that would require Oh people used to do that Back when I was accepting commissions for transport fever mods I don't do that anymore because it doesn't pay well enough fucking no You should do cities that you should do um Workers and resources mods. Oh god, that would be complex So, you know this this funicular is relatively uh modern. It's in austria

Um, it brings skiers up to the top of the mountain, right? This is a single track funicular I was gonna ask about that in a tunnel I was gonna ask about that because definitionally it's got to have two cars, right? Yes like one track Yeah, so there's a few kinds you can have There's you know, your two rail single track funicular with a passing loop in the middle You never really short passing loop because the cars always pass each other in the same spot You can have a three rail funicular where you know, you sort of because you don't want to have the switching equipment You just have the middle rail divide into two

So it goes into two tracks for a passing area and then merges back together Or you can have a full two track the whole way funicular. Those are those are the three ways you could do it But so this one the lower station is like in the open air the upper station was in the tunnel, right? um, and it's sort of a single single track tunnel there's no, um Not really a way to evacuate easy. There's not really feeling real claustrophobic looking at this No, yeah um

But you know these these cars were basically, you know, the idea was it'd be really really difficult to get one of these to catch fire, right? um, because of funicular is a very very simple machine um, all almost all the moving parts are up at the top And they're stationed and they're like, you know fixed their stationary, right? You just have an electric motor at the top pull pulling the rope You know Not much more complex than an elevator uh

Yeah, it's like it's a it's a it's a bucket with brakes on it, right? Like Uh, this was uh 12,800 feet long 10,800 feet of which were in the tunnel, right? Hmm don't like that. Yeah So you're in there for a good few minutes, I assume. Oh, yeah Yeah In this tunnel where you can't fucking put your elbows out. Yeah, I don't love this So now these these cars, um the cars on the funicular they were replaced

In 1993. This is the replacement car. You see it's very very sleek and futuristic. I like it. It's the way of the future It looks like a cool bug Yeah, it's unfortunately they didn't have a lot of pixels in 1993. So Now they all burnt up But yeah, the one advantage of funicular cars They're very simple to make because there's not much motorized equipment or moving parts on the cars, right? Yeah, it's a bucket with brakes on it. Yeah, but you still need like stuff for passenger comfort and ease of e-mails. You do Yeah, that's just like climb climb out of the bucket. That's wait

Use using funicular. Yeah use minecarts, you know I think uh Liam and I took the uh The dukeane uh inclined plane in Pittsburgh If I recall correctly, it was unheeded It was it was fucking miserable and it was boring rain Also, we didn't realize it was cash only. Um, yeah, we look like real ass. The only ATM was at the top So the lady just issued us a half a ticket and said, okay pay twice when you come down

And then we didn't wind up taking it down No, then we walked to the we ended up at a bar on the south side Not a really remember what happened after that. Oh Oh, that was uh, we got no, we got very drunk at the tiggy bar Yeah, two dollar big strings, man. Yeah And you threw up off a bridge And then I threw up No, you didn't throw I almost threw up off the hot metal bridge. There we go

And I threw up the next morning on 376. Yes All right Yeah Yeah, because we came back by a way of Altoona to see horseshoe curve, which was closed Um, which is just what the nazis wanted. This is true. They tried to close it too The handshake meme uh between the nazis pennsylvania railroad closing the horseshoe curve Yes, and I think Norfolk southern Oh

Yeah, you could go there you could go to the observation spot now and you could watch Watch and put a train on the ground. Yeah, watch the streamline a train on horseshoe curve So federalize the railroads it's it's time So, you know, you still need Stuff for passenger comfort on a funicular and you need means of egress, you know, you have automatic doors on here So and you need an emergency braking system, right? So the cars were equipped with both a hydraulic six hydraulic system for Actuating the doors, right? They have a larger hydraulic system for actuating the emergency brakes

and You know a low voltage electrical system that operated the lights and the space heater I think that was supplied from a cable attached to the car, right? Hmm So already we've got something that looks like the space shuttle if it was designed by a race of caterpillars But it's way more complicated now Uh, I don't think this is more complicated than the space shuttle No, not in the space shuttle than the previous mine car the fucking asshole. Oh, I see I see I misunderstood I'm sorry. This is way more complicated than the space shuttle. Yeah, that's that's a gut shit on this really

So We should talk about the space heater they installed Right in the space shuttle. No in in the whole thing of space ross. It's a good point. Yeah They have a they have a it's cold down there. It's a vacuum. Where'd you pay attention? I was like what do you need to what do you need to heat my space here on us? Yeah, you can't use a regular heater on the space shuttle. You need a space heater That's from underground. Why not just read the whole book? And why do we drive on the parkway but park on the driveway?

America's most in America and scotland's most inquiring minds once and now Yeah So before we talk about the space heater We need to talk about the difference between consumer and sort of industrial goods, right? Hmm. Oh, is this going to be another one of those things where you don't buy the uh noise dampening foam and home depots it turns out that's the worst kitchen aid I've ever seen was this made for Guy Fieri What you you don't like a kitchen aid with flames on it. I love I love a kitchen aid, but it's like a white owl

I've got a white kitchen and that shows stains dumbass. I gotta clean it Oh Alice cleaning stuff. Oh excuse me. I have a I have a stainless steel one No, that's nice. Yeah, but I wanted to get flame decals for it because I think it's cool. Yes I mean by this point just fuck around with like materials. Just gonna give me a shit bag Give me a bronze kitchen aid so I can see that patina, you know You can also get you can get like world war two bomber decals for them. That's all that's cool I like the sound of that

Especially on the stainless steel. That makes sense. Yeah We want to like some like decorative rivets on yours. I think that'd be pretty good. Yeah, this has been the kitchen aid corner This is the kitchen aid corner. Yeah So there's there's a big difference between, you know, consumer goods versus like durable industrial goods, right? um You know, if you buy industrial goods or products, uh, they usually run on, you know, a longer heavier duty cycle than consumer goods, right so For example

If you buy a car, right and it's marketed to consumers, you know It's sort of based around a concept that it, you know, spends 99 of its life parked in the garage Hmm versus you buy a fleet vehicle like a Ford Crown Victoria for a taxi or a police car Or an f-150 work truck, right? Which, you know, it's sort of built around the assumption that it's going to be on the road Basically, constantly for a long period of time So everything's built more ruggedly, you know, and it's um, you know, there's a lot of common Cops shots. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Well, the cops absolutely destroy cars

Not just because they're driving them all the time, but also because they're bad drivers. Yeah. Oh god. Yes This is true. That's why we have to raise the oil pan. So when they drive over the curb Yeah Every fucking time. Yeah. Well, how else are you gonna park on the sidewalk? You know, so This is this is one of the one of the reasons uber is so successful, right is um, you know, they just You offload that repair cost and fleet vehicle costed like a guy to a guy. Yeah, who's not buying a fleet vehicle They're buying just a car

Yeah, thinking of a guy who thinks police reform is like training the cops to change gears properly But granted to you find it Alice Well, you could you could go into uh, you go follow the placard abuse New York City twitter account and see that yeah, maybe we do need to get the cops to uh Stop just parking anywhere they want I do like the the world there's your problem placard someone made for us. Oh, yeah I missed that one. How did you know somebody made it somebody made us a parking placard? It was like on official like uh, official juicy like podcast vehicle

Oh, I like it. I'm gonna get that. I'm gonna print that out for the gti Yes, take pictures. Yeah Take pictures while you're illegally parked. I'm not illegally parked. Can't you see the placard? So, you know, this is sort of um, uh, applies to uh, you know, most consumer goods like a consumer appliance, right? Not built to run constantly if you have a stand mixer Which may have flame decals You might you know use it once or twice a month But if you're a bakery you need a stand mixer that can run for hours every day, right?

Does everything decals are forced? Yeah durability No, the flame decals add extra horsepower. Oh by mistake. Yeah, the durability is um Harder to achieve a function of bigness. Yes, like a function of like simplifying and adding weight This is my 7.4 liter stand mixer Yeah Yeah, it's a stand mixer srt yes

um Another another result of this is that consumer goods are often more failure prone than industrial goods, right? Because they're used in Environments where certain kinds of failure can be tolerated better, right? Not not to mention our great friend planned obsolescence This is also true So your stand mixer doesn't work. You gotta go out and buy a new stand mixer. Yes But it doesn't like ruin your business. No You're gonna be annoyed, but like if you can afford the one stand mixer It's gonna fail at about the rate that you can afford to replace it more or less

Yes, and you could check this if you ever need to at computer parts with something called uh mtbf which stands for mean time between failures Oh, they use it in rating hard drives So if you're ever in the market for hard drives or ssds be sure to look at that number and don't be a leo Do not advise playing smart roulette So An example of this is like, okay, like housing right a single family house Is not built to withstand fire in the same way an apartment building is because you know, it's smaller and theoretically there's more

Means of egress which the residents can get to more quick, right? Or you may buy a toaster, right? And the toaster May be easier to set fire to than an industrial toaster because you know, it's uh, it's it's being monitored while it's in use And you know, it needs to be cheap, right? Which you know the industrial grade stuff doesn't need to be cheap as much, right? Safety is always a trade-off between other concerns. Uh, this this is You know everywhere and always if you wanted perfect safety, we all live in you know, soft bubbles all the time, right? Yeah, so i'm just gonna keep adding electrical tape around the increasingly fraying phone charger

I have and just hope for the best Girl Um, yeah, we had a good example from a previous episode which is the station nightclub fire Where someone bought, you know inappropriate consumer material to dead in sound Which turned out to be extremely flammable And uh murdered a whole lot of people when they subjected it to a use case it was not designed for which was shooting fireworks at it Um Which is you know commercial and industrial goods and materials are designed to withstand a good amount of mistreatment usually

Which happens in commercial and industrial environments, right? No, you're using it harder and also you're at work So you don't care. Yes, and also if something goes wrong, you know, it's it you don't want it to fail in a way that's catastrophic You maybe wanted to fail in a way that well, we can fix this at the end of the shift Rather than shutting down a whole production line or a transportation system or whatever, right? Yeah You have you have defects that are more repairable So you can be using the same machine for like 30 40 50 years instead of like Well, I mean you try and refurbish an old stand mixer, you know, right? Yeah, or um, I imagine refurbishing an old stand mixer is a lot easier than a new one And uh, you know, I ask a farmer about John Deere tractors right now right to repair right to repair. Yes

Yeah, go look up that legislation because that's I believe before the house now. I could be wrong Oh, but that's something every one of our listeners should give a shit about is right to repair legislation You should you have the right warranty stickers don't mean anything do whatever you want Yeah, so just like this is my pettiest beef. It's my pettiest reason to support right for repair is that like Half of the reason like you look at like various Geniuses of like the 50s or whatever people who got Nobel Prizes The way that they got that way was just yeah, I used to just price shit open in the house and like fuck around with it until it worked again That's how I got into computers. Mm-hmm

So I got into gender Oh Pry and open the gender to see if there are more genders in there How does it work? Yeah, no, just for it's it is sound a garage now It is educational to be able to take shit apart and fix it and repair it On this episode of how it's made gender

You just see all of the genders going past on a conveyor belt. Yes Gender isn't real it was a scam used to sell more pink and blue explosives to Americans Gender was first developed in 1872 by Wilhelm gender of They tried to militarize gender by shooting gender reveal shells over the trench lines in world war one Yeah, but kind of he makes the phosphine pink It's originally like a toothpaste additive or something With a good toothpaste you can only get in canada The point is there's there's a difference between

Consumer goods and industrial goods. They're designed for different applications and and usually your industrial Commercial goods stuff like that. They're they're designed to fail in non catastrophic ways Um, this is uh, uh, particularly a thing in you know vehicles, right, especially commercial ones. Um so Uh, if we go back to feniculars here, there's some some issues with them. Um, which make them a little more expensive to run than other stuff Um Good lord. Are you pregnant? I was going again. He's pregnant

No, I I did two which means i'm good if I do a third one it means i'm sick Yeah, you got like all right. Well, yeah, no, no one or three means i'm sick two means i'm fine This is like a warning system you've developed. Yes. Yeah, and it works All right, i'm not gonna i'm not gonna like uh disrespect your ancient folk ways more than three means it's allergies. Um so Most feniculars are sort of one-off designs, right? Um, there's no nist standard reference fenicular. No, there's not a there's not even a standard track gauge There's not a standard grade. There's not out. There's not anything. They're mostly

Custom designed for the system they run on right? And of course capron was no exception I like this one on the right here this giant fucking shopping cart On this guy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I like this is one of the ones where they try And rotate the cabin as the uh grade changes don't really like that. I don't need to be spinning around Well, you're not spinning around. No, you're you're you're level you're level. You're like stabilized like a tank gun Oh, that's cool. I want to be stabilized like a tank gun. That's my finish So i can record a podcast at 50 miles an hour

I always wanted to record an episode on amtrak on amtrak Yeah, that'd be fun Record an on the road podcast We'd have to like get some sort of like fucking mind hunter Opening sequence like reel to reel recorder to work on I think It's got a log with it the elevators in the gateway arch run on a fenicular system where they rotate Oh, okay. Okay. Okay. Yeah, I understand so

you know the uh The designers of the capron fenicular cars Uh designed them sort of based on other fenicular cars that they had designed in the past Uh, namely that shared a lot of components were supposed to share a lot of components with the Festungsbahn in saltsberg, right? A fortress train Yes, it goes up. Uh, it goes up the hill to a fortress Uh, I think I think I've taken this one actually

um So Now this one had a heating system in it, right? Um, they used a fan heater, which is just an electric heater with a fan on it, right? From a brand called domo, right? The car was designed by a firm called, um Swaboda Caracery

Unstalbao Gesundheit, bros. Yeah That's the third one. I'm sick um Swaboda isn't that like the the russian word for freedom? for Okay, fine. It's weird. They have a different name now, which is like Uh shorter not murderous ink

Uh, co coincidentally changed the name shortly after this disaster whoopsie dz llc Yeah, it's like bodywork and steel builders like llc They had specified, you know, these domo brand fan heaters for the the capron funicular But the purchasing department found these heaters weren't available, right? These are the commercial rated fan heaters

So instead they purchased similar, uh, uh fan heaters from a company called vacure hobby tlb I don't like that. It has hobby in that. Yeah, that that that seems this seems like some stuff. I get off alibaba And these were these were only certified for domestic use like they're good for living rooms, right? Whoa, um and workers modified them for installation into the funicular cars, right? Uh, and this modification was pretty extensive Um, it included splitting the units into two parts and bypassing the overheating protection circuit. Hell. Yeah Now we're talking

They didn't note these, uh modifications on the plan And manuals for the domo space heater were provided to workers assembling the cars Oh, so just act like it has the one that we want. So just loss That's okay. Well I mean, you know fake it till you make it. I assume that's what that means never checked So, you know, these cars went into service in 1993 Um, and they had a perfect safety record for seven years All right, great episode everyone. Uh, next next one's the Tacoma narrows bridge disaster

Listen to kill james bond listen to trash future listen to lion's led by donkeys and we'll see you Yeah, all right. Thanks guys in the morning of november 11 161 passengers and the conductor ordered the funicular for the ascent to the top of the mountain with the whole bunch of skiing equipment, right? Shortly before they departed The space heater in the lower, um operators compartment because for whatever reason they decided they needed an operator in the train Despite the fact it was all controlled remotely makes people feel safer. Yeah. Yeah um, the space heater off those fatality numbers Space it's austria guys got to have like a a special uniform, you know

No, I'm thinking more of like an austro-hungarian vibe where like He's like a member of like some ancient brotherhood of funicular car operators And he's like entitled to wear like little gold tassels and shit so Right before the train departed the space heater in the lower cabin caught fire As disputed as to exactly what caused this whether it was a A leaky hydraulic line or it was um some dirt got in there or something

Um the space heater caught fire. No one noticed this for a little bit until the car started moving Uh, they really noticed Now if you you had a well-designed space heater that was rated for this application The fire would have been contained to the space heater would have been annoyance for everyone Would have stopped the train in the tunnel. It would have ruined everyone's day But it'd be a fire that was easy to contain, right? This was not the case No, because you didn't get the domo thing that you bought it from home depot. Yeah, you got a hobby heater

Whatever the austrian home depot is Heim depot On slush High high in uh high in furor Uh I'd cough if you will austrians getting mad at us in the comments. That's fine. Get mad at us all you want Stop tating your wine That's right our second austrian disaster

Oh, yeah, it really is our our next one will be uh, uh austrian leader exports Um So there is a modified consumer space heater in this and it was of course Installed next to a hydraulic line Which was made of plastic So the fire escaped containment in the um In the space heater, right? Yeah, it melted the plastic pipe all of flammable hydraulic fluid Yeah, this does two things

Number one, it makes the fire bigger Number two, there's a complete loss of hydraulic pressure fail safe Hey, we saved everybody As a result the train comes to a stop Yes, that's what we want the train is stopped. It's not gonna it's not gonna fall off the the fucking mountain We did the thing mission accomplished. Well done everybody go once again the next episode is Now Here's the issue. Uh-oh the train stopped in the tunnel. Oh

That's not where it should be. There's a fire Oh, um, which is bad the fire is now very large Because it's fueled by the hydraulic fluid And you know, of course there's uh, it's it's difficult for folks to you know go anywhere because they're in the tunnel Uh, and of course It's a really small tunnel. We've seen there's no uh, the fire extinguisher was also located in the conductor's compartment That was on which is currently on fire. Sure Well, that's what you want is right by the fire

That's good convenient placement. It's good. It's very convenient. Yeah, and the fire extinguisher is of course made of metal Which doesn't get really hot right All right, so there's there's uh hundred and How much did I say 161 passengers on this uh car which is now in the tunnel? right on fire um

and It's not an ideal place to have a fire in a tunnel right remembering kings cross remembering kings cross. Yes, or or uh, slaying or any other or Why are we tend to yeah, the closed space is bad Enclosed space is bad. You know, they burn those bases on an incline really bad They burn they have for a long time But yeah, a fire in a sloped tunnel is a catastrophe right because the fire sucks in air from the bottom of the tunnel And then you know the the smoke comes out the top. Yeah, you're just in a chimney, right? Mm-hmm

So you have a continuous source of oxygen fueling the fire So once the conductor was alerted to the fire Um, I think shortly before the train stopped Uh, he called the control center at the upper station. He told them. Hey, there's a fire in here Um, it's not good right And the control center couldn't really do very much Oh, yeah, that sucks. Yeah, exactly. It's like, oh, I'm reading all that

Good for you though. Yeah, just to do your best So the first thing you try to do you try to open the doors to evacuate the train, right? the doors Didn't open because the hydraulic line was cut and fuel fire. Oh, that's that's not so fail-safe. So they're just entombed Uh, you never want to be entombed. I find that's not a thing Don't ever put me in a in a tomb like situation. Yeah, please do not bury me alive Ideally not. Yeah, I would avoid going into any kind of tomb Um, especially my own, you know, yeah, exactly. I will say if you're ever in boston, you're looking for something to do

The adam's family crypt is very interesting. I kind of want to see grant's tomb. I think that's cool. I've been there. That's cool I wouldn't want to be like entombed in grant's tomb is the thing So you would us grant hanging out for all eternity Well, julie is there too. So it'd be like a threesome. Oh, how erotic. Yeah, that's right I haven't been to grant's tomb. I have been to the opposite, which is lee chapel. Yeah, sam We've all been to general ease too Cancel us now you freaks if you know

they had to Fun fun aside about lexington virginia, um, please so, um Uh, robert e lee. I think the fourth recently died And they had to sneak him into lee chapel under cover of darkness Because they didn't want any protests That's that's the sign of a winning ideology I find. Yes

Reminds me a little bit of the giant like, um, francoist like, uh, hyper catholic Basilica thing that franco just had built by like republican prisoners of war in a valley outside of madrid They moved franco's body out of it. That's right. Oh, did they put it back recently? Oh, fuck. They might have done But I think the thing I remember is them moving They're moving it out like very surreptitiously They're moving it out slowly piece by piece Yeah

I think somebody tried to do this with one perone because they broke into his tomb and they took his hands So, okay One one dictator corpse, um, created out of several years of dictators It's We've gotten copyright struck Anyway, so Uh, a few passengers at the bottom of this funicular. I don't even know how we got on this subject. Um Managed to break a window. Uh, one of the people down at the back of the train was a volunteer firefighter, right?

Nice, and um, he was like we have to go down So they went down the tunnel the tunnel has like a walkway on the side with some steps So we saw on the first slide looked treacherous as shit. I was made of wood or something Luigi was there Yeah, I think 12 people. I think 12 people got out that way Uh, those were the lucky ones Yeah, I'm impressed they were able to break the window. Yeah, I used a ski pole because it was uh acrylic shatter resistant windows Ah, that's smart. Yeah

so The um, you got to carry one of those little like keychain like glass breakers on you at all times The conductor managed to manually open The side doors, right? There's ones that had failed due to the hydraulic lines being currently on fire. Yeah, okay the people who hadn't been overcome by smoke evacuated the train But by this point the fire was below them They had only one place to go which was up

Nope Up a distance of like two and a bit kilometers, right? Yes You're not gonna make that guys. It's not not ideal In the meantime, there was another train up the tunnel, right? Oh boy And the smoke was now billowing up the toll tunnel into the upper station um So workers and passengers evacuated the upper station And in the process they left all the emergency exits open

So now the chimney effect was much stronger because there was a clear path for all the smoke to go, right? Oh, oh dear I feel really bad about that one because it's like what are you gonna do like close the emergency exit behind you, right? You just sort of yeah, you're just fucked essentially So below the conductor led the passengers up the tunnel As did the conductor on the descending train, which I think had three people on it, right? um And uh, well

They all died Yeah All of them were asphyxiated. Yeah Yeah I think maybe What you want to do is not be in The giant chimney chimney fire if you can help it. Yeah, I think that that's something to avoid um Good advice guys. Yes. So if you're on a funicular and you see a fire break out jump out the back

Mm-hmm. Yes Slide down go go down go down the hill and that up Just getting getting as close to the floor as possible always good advice for fire, right? Yes so In total 155 people were killed Jesus me. No, thank you 150 of them on the ascending train Two people on the descending train and three people in the upper station Um firefighters managed to get into the upper station and rescue one person who didn't initially escape

So bad the smoke is that it's like even with the emergency doors open and stuff It still kills we were in the station above that's nuts I'm sort of just looking at this train and I'm like this seemed this thing looks like it's entirely made of plastic Um, so I imagine, you know, you have like a high heat fire. Um, that's just fuel Right there. Good point. Hmm So that that's what that train looked like After it burned for several hours There's not a lot of it left not a lot left. Yeah. Well, I was concerned about weight savings earlier

Um, it's a little gti stamp on the back of it. Yeah Nah, man. This is a uh, this is this is a uh, weight reduction or Yeah, particular st So After this, uh, after this event occurred there was of course a whole bunch of litigation, right? Yeah, as I was 16 people involved with the design and manufacture the funicular were charged Uh criminally charged

Hmm, and they were all acquitted. Yep. Yeah. Yep. All of them What about the people who installed the fan that should have installed? No, so everyone was acquitted. We can barely like convict people of crimes that they've like done confess to Like maliciously let alone accidentally or negligently. Yeah I there's just insufficient evidence to blame any one single person. Okay. Um, you know, it's always uh, there's always like, um You know, it's always a problem when you have one of these big systemic issues. Um You know, it's not like you can charge a corporation either. Like what are you gonna do? Well, you can you could find them, but I don't think they really did that's the cost of business

You could do like Maoist style mass executions. I suppose This is true. Yeah Just an idea just a thought No, it doesn't have any other like, um implications No, none of that now Corporate responsibility or like corporate personhood that we can talk about and yeah, I know anyway I did not check how much uh compensation the family's got. Um, I should probably should have done that

Some amount of xbox and Yeah, some amount of xbox and There was a lot of complex litigation around Really technical stuff like what the definition of a vehicle was under austrian law The least helpful jurisprudence can ever be is when it's really gonna decide because like Okay, fine. I accept that like in Uh, particularly in a common law system, but also to some extent in a in a like a civilian in a civil law system You can only set precedent. You can only set story diseases on

Terrible things that have happened. You can't be hypothetical about this and say well if this were to happen But still it's particularly galling when there's like actual people who have been uh melted and you are just being like Yeah, no, but actually I need to like jack myself off in my study with my law books for a couple of uh, a couple of years About this Yeah Um, I think that the moral of the story here is um 21.5 million in compensation, so 21.5 million divided by 155

divided by 155 uh 138,709 euros uh xbox cost in euros Hey, don't forget inflation. We don't need to do inflation Uh, okay, so an xbox costs 299 euros Uh, so I'm just gonna put that in the calculator here. We need just like an app to simplify this. Um

Okay, so 138 709 Divide it by 299 600 xbox you got you got 463 xboxes out of this I was close. That's not bad. You play with all your friends per dead person 463.9 xbox and All right, well, I mean that's that's That's a bitcoin farm. That's like more more xbox and then I think uh most of the disasters we cover That's true. Yeah, it's above average. That's for sure So uh I guess the moral of the story

You walk up or down Use walk down like somebody on the walk up Use devices rated for the application That you're using them for Yeah, yeah, that's good advice. Don't don't try and like kit bash together like consumer goods into an industrial application Use an industrial piece of technology for an industrial application Kit bashing fine on model trains not fine on real trains Wow

Great. Well, I'm bummed out. Yeah now i'm depressed. Great. Thanks riles. It's okay Because I think this one was Alice's idea. It was. Yeah, I thought I thought we hadn't done a depressing enough one for a while Thank you. I thought we needed to all traumatize ourselves again We haven't done a funicular one ever So yeah first funicular one second austrian one second chimney effect fire one. Yes Speaking of chimney effect Oh, no, we have a segment on this podcast called Safety third

Which which button did I No, that's not it. Well, it wasn't that one. I don't know what that was Oh, it was a guy saying hasn't got that sloppy wet. Listen, I don't know that sloppy wet But like every time I press it it gets slightly worse in quality. So thank you I see Great that really showed respect for the dead here All right, so we're we're picking up from where we left off the last safety third Yeah part two part two because we ended on a cliffhanger

The man is just almost got hit by an m-track train um, right So Also There was the time I had to go validate some signals going into the cascade mountain tunnel see figure four That's uh here The cascade mountain tunnel is badass It's about eight miles long and goes through some of the most beautiful parts of the country

And is ideally located as far away from Iowa As you can physically be in america, right? It's far away from iowa. I thought it was far away from anything. I Is it no i'm confused. It's definitely not as far as like a traveling salesman problem between you have to get both As far away from iowa and as far away from anything else as you can be What's the antipathy of iowa in america? You know like you got to answer me that Hawaii, porto rico. Wow american samoa

furthest point i'm gonna look furthest point in the u.s. From iowa This is the podcast where I google things And it's it's well, uh The furthest city and country from damoy in iowa Is perth australia that's not really helpful unless the u.s. Annex is perth australia. It's coming Yeah So the train crews use scuba equipment while in the tunnel What and getting to watch a train come through while the fans were blowing out the exhaust is one of the top five things

I've ever seen in my life Nice while it while it's cool to look at much like niches abyss. It also looks back at you hmm There's two sets of cctv cameras watching out for osama bin laden to do a terrorism One goes back to my company's headquarters in an undisclosed location and the other goes to department of homeland security in dc I had to go all the way up to the door in full view and unannounced to the cameras to go measure a signal I only did this after getting promises from my co-worker I could live on his couch if I got fired and then he'd put money in my commissary account if I got arrested

That's a good buddy you like step out in front of the cameras and like you hear a black hawk like touching down behind you You just like You promised It's incredible. He'll put it money in the commissary when you're in federal prison His incredible lengths they went to to de electrify this tunnel Because it used to have electric trains running through it And then eventually they've decided well, we could probably try and run diesel trains through it, which you know Again the aforementioned scuba equipment also huge fans at one side that changed the air in the tunnel right after a train goes through

No, I fucking just give the drivers scuba equipment too. We're not using electricity. This is america So Now onto the real scary stuff Oh boy. Oh good on this audit I was checking up on the work of the resident office morons will call tweedle d and tweedle dumb Get their asses I had gotten to a control point during my previously mentioned audit c figure five Let's call it cp. There's your problem or cp 69 420 if you're the new school

nice That's sure. Oh cp. There's your problem. I guess that's here Okay Basically the easiest cp is what's pictured you have three absolute signals each controlling one approach the switch a power dual switch And all the associated metadata to make ptc work All right, so it's easy the the track just splits and there's three signals. Okay um

So The train needs to know exactly where each signal is because they govern your authority to move as a train In centralized traffic and control territory, right? If you map these incorrectly the positive train control will not stop the train in the right place in case of emergency Hmm During my audit. I found every single signal was in the deep gps database over 20 feet away from the signal See red cross for not the scale example That's probably fine

track one track one westbound Is here according to Pete that gps. I've just learned an intriguing way in which the kessler syndrome can fuck up a railroad Yes, useful to know Well, I the way the railroads are implementing ptc um based on gps. I think is um You know, they're trying to really cheap out in europe

There's been this technology has been implemented since like the 70s and it's all line side equipment As opposed to relying on gps and it works a lot better So, you know gps is already a fickle bitch, right our units were submeter accurate And we had to pay extra for that so it would routinely give us an accurate reading for plus minus 18 inches So we like to pass assets at no more than five feet So if the gps was feeling like adding 18 inches, we'd still be in fra specs Um train gps's aren't that accurate. They're more accurate than your phone Which roughly knows what zip code you're in but they're still not very good

Wait a second But I thought the nsa was tracking my location all the time through my phone and they were able to like Zoom in on a big like a big wall map of monitors and like read shit over my shoulder Oh, yeah, they have like um, there's there's one there's a specific set of satellites Which are you know all monitoring alice called well kelly Yeah, that is s tweet. Yeah. Yeah, so you did it to yourself They're installing shielding on the iss Yeah, there's a little engine just to give it like an orbital boost anytime

I don't know that that would you'd have to anticipate the nut You know, that's why you need the surveillance. Yeah. Yeah, that's what the surveillance is for I guess yeah, I guess and then you would be like, okay, we're you know, we gotta we gotta I I'm the orbital mechanics of this I think are More complex than we can go into right now. That's true. That's true You have to like really get into like orbital rendezvous calculations in order to make this work So someone's gonna have to simulate this in Kerbal space program

Thank you for your service in advance folks. Yes So anyway, it's important to have precise data so the train has less room to mess up I've I'd found this issue on every single control point for about 50 miles And that's when I realized tweedle d and tweedle dumb Had passed these signals By a say pass. I mean, um Uh had approved approved from a moving high rail truck Yeah, so you don't even have to stop and get out. Fuck. Yes. That's that's that's terrific

I started taking pictures of how far off these dumb fucks were and sent the email of my boss to send to our director This was not the first time they had screwed screwed the pooch And here they are willfully signing off on fra audited safety documents that they had verified these signals were accurate when they were definitely not Well, the director got my well researched email and promptly deleted it great Hopefully this got quietly fixed but those two morons got to keep their jobs and avoided non-elective new asshole surgery Meanwhile in the lab tweedle d and tweedle dumb were up to new shenanigans for For ptc to work not only do the locations have to be mapped

But so does signal aspects and signal information. Uh, that's you know, that's what's the the signal aspect is whether it's uh, you know green yellow red other fun stuff which is weird um Weird fucking purple light. Yeah are flashing yellow or like a yellow and uh, or like uh, there's like two Signal heads and like the top one's red and the other one's yellow. There's all kinds of weird stuff with signals. Um So you can get really into this stuff. Oh, yeah, train like train signal guys are the train guys of train guys

A bunch of freaks Yeah, the home farmers. Yeah, you get uh, you get a um, uh a signal with three signal heads and like The top one's red, but the middle one's yellow and then the middle So you get a position light signals you get all kinds of stuff So Since most of our rail is uh centralized traffic control ctc This just involves plugging in a radio into the signal. Uh, the signal bungalow, you know the little shed next to the single

Signal uh and to the ctc computer and then figuring out what code means what I could get really into this topic because trains are my kink, but i'll spare you signal guys single signal guys All the all the all the signal ladies. Yes Wearing like a high vis leotard Never know if you're gonna need it safety first. That's right Basically, we have to make a translation document. So when bit offset two gives code one We know that really means switch one is reversed. So you have to correctly identify each switch and signal Uh determine the appropriate direction and orientation and simulate a code change to make sure it works with our hardware

This guy's so into this if you don't do this, right? You will cause ptc to think the signal is doing one thing For example giving a clear aspect while the real signal is giving a big red aspect Thus negating the usefulness of ptc Yeah positive train control and Yes, uh negative train control Inverse train control Yes, uh proceed on a red

Stop it's opposite day. Yeah It'd be like that one day when sweden changed which side of the road they drove on. Oh, yeah These dumb fucks on multiple occasions would publish the trains to publish the trains incorrect aspects like Mapping mapping the one westbound signal to the two westbound signal Or that the eastbound signal was increasing versus decreasing Every single time we would hope some every single time we hoped someone would pull them aside

And give them the ass chewing of a lifetime But alas they were allowed to continue putting good union employees lives in danger. Okay For my final story you need to know a bit about timetables and speed restrictions. It gets worse. Yeah Speed restrictions are layered going from fastest to slowest 1a is the fastest possible speed on a subdivision called track speed. You can generally only do this on the main line There's a 1b that protects shitty track that we've decided to never fix or curves and grades So, you know, don't go 10 70 miles an hour Down a 10 grade because you'll probably have a boo boo

That's not been my experience in train simulator. You got to get those timetables I don't know why burlington northern santa feige just doesn't you know turn derailments off in the simulator Yeah, you gotta turn those off you gotta turn time penalties off and you you have a nice time Yeah, you run the trains much more efficiently that way Put me in charge of uh precision Then there are one c or turnout speeds which controls our uh Are in our previous example the track between the switch and the two westbound signal, right? So like here Um, basically you have to slow the fuck down going through a tight turn

Then finally there's the 1d speed Uh, these are for entering main track or emt, right? So like a uh an industrial siding right usually emt tracks are really shitty Um They're for industries with rail service and no one ever maintains them. They're usually five miles an hour Although sometimes you'll find a spicy 10 mile an hour one Another part of my job was to go through the timetable and determine where all these speed restrictions were Load up our lab simulator and basically play atari 2600 train simulator to make sure all the speeds were correct. Yes

Since I was a dumb kid and still thought meritocracy was a thing I would do extracurricular audits when I wasn't busy in the audience In the office and just recheck the speeds on active subdivisions and submit the defects to be fixed in the next version of the database This was fine until I was running through one of the subdivisions that tweedle dumb and tweedle d had done And I found there wasn't a single 1d speed in the entire subdivision Every single emt was coded for a track switch Meaning you could flip a hand throw switch And send a fully loaded cold train into an industry track at 70 miles an hour

There's your coal You wanted expedited delivery, right? It's mostly arriving in dust form, but it is it is there I think there was uh, I could have sworn there was some incident a while back of um, some kids Throwing a switch somewhere on the northeast corridor and like a new haven Train just slammed into the side of a building. Yeah. Um, you've told us about that before. I don't remember what it was I don't remember what it was. Yeah um

So You know, I submitted this defect and got pulled aside by one of the managers Who told me I need to stop doing all my auditing This is when I realized the communists were right and I became a satanist See figure six You're in mile pose six six six nice What is this what do these guys have but they kept fucking like Is this like a jobs program or like

Uh Well ptc was mandated by congress after a derailment in los angeles and the railroads are very mad at having to implement it Just these these two guys like you don't you don't want to fire those guys. Yeah ever at all. Okay Uh, yeah, they just don't want to fire them. The railroads aren't very enthusiastic about implementing ptc They'll just run the whole railroad off a train order as well Like keeping the system up to like the barely maintained standards, you know, just so that they can say they have it Or in jerseys case borrowing from septa and then just parking them That was a funny. Okay. So that that's a funny story about um, new jersey transit tried to make the ptc deadline

And and they needed to meet a milestone where x amount of their equipment Like a percentage had to have ptc installed So what they did was septa was retiring a bunch of electric locomotives at the time So new jersey transit leased those locomotives hauled them onto the property And then said look the percentage of our fleet that has ptc is now above the threshold and never used those locomotives Incredible yes Um, it's it's amazing what you can do when there's just rather than having one big railroad. There's a whole bunch of different railroads with fiefdoms Well, what have we learned?

um Railroading it's stupid and dangerous That's true. Yeah, train good railroads railroad bad That's that data signals guy. He will give you that good loving. Yes All right, well our next episode is oh wait that was safety third that was safety third Our next episode is the commas narrows bridge disaster Anyone got commercials before we go. What's the kill james bond kill james bond listen to that listen to lions led by donkeys Watch uh, do not eat one on youtube. When is franklin coming out? When is international shipping on church? I have an update

Yes, uh, yeah, that's what we're gonna talk about after we're done recording. All right, sweet. Yes It may be coming soon folks Watch this face. Yes um Yeah, so that was that was that was a podcast. All right. Bye everybody. Bye. Bye