Melt-Down in the Black Hole (11/8/2017)

The "black hole" is what I call the A-line between Rocky Mount, NC, and Petersburg, Va. Back in the 90's CSX took up way too much of the double track, and so now we have an apparent lack of track capacity in today's little event.

80 was 4 minutes late out of Rocky Mount, but 3 H 44 M late out of Petersburg.

92 was 3 minutes late out of Rocky Mount, but 5 H 33 M late out of Petersburg.

Does anyone know what happened?

jb

I guess maybe it was this incident:

http://wtvr.com/2017/11/08/jarrett-train-fatal/

jb

Sad. Yet another driver in too much of a rush to use his head instead of his foot. My condolences to his family. My heart also goes out to the train crew, first responders and witnesses.

Yep, that was the delay. 80(8) took 92 the rest of the way to WAS because of damage to 92’s engine

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John Bobinyec said:

The "black hole" is what I call the A-line between Rocky Mount, NC, and Petersburg, Va. Back in the 90's CSX took up way too much of the double track, and so now we have an apparent lack of track capacity in today's little event.

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While it is true that CSX ripped out a lot of track, it happened in double track territory. The police closed the railroad and 92's engine had heavy, heavy damage.

Additional delays occurred when a CSX train in the area encountered a trespasser while another one had to set out a draft at ACCA. This caused additional congestion. You can hardly blame this on CSX track capacity.

You can hardly blame this on CSX track capacity.

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Certainly not for the initial incident, but probably for some of the additional delays. See

https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?4,4413380

jb

John Bobinyec said:

You can hardly blame this on CSX track capacity.

Click to expand...

Certainly not for the initial incident, but probably for some of the additional delays. See

https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?4,4413380

jb

Click to expand...

Ummm...the police closed the tracks, which leads to congestion. There are spots on the NEC that have 4 tracks and even 6 tracks. When the police close them, it doesn't really matter. The 53 miles between ACCA (AY) and Jarrett Int only contains 17 miles of single track territory, which has room to contain the trains.

Additionally, you and the TO post also left out the CSX train with a fatality resulting in the other CSX train, hogging the main as it set off equipment at ACCA. THAT is the reason why 95, 53, 91 etc had to see-saw around RVR. They were dodging two other incidents which help cripple the area . To the best of my knowledge, that line didn't have 3 or 4 tracks in the 90's which is why I stated, CSX ripping out track had virtually nothing to do with this incident.

IMHO it's more of everything going wrong at once.

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Loco 142 which was the loco involved on train 92 was observed a few days before in Orlando on train 91. At that time the nose was slightly damaged with many cracks as long as 2 feet. Expected it was considered serviceable. Would like to see the damage now !