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Telescoping (rail cars)

Type of railway accident

Type of railway accident

linear}} of passenger compartment space (nearly half the car) due to telescoping.

In a railway accident, telescoping occurs when the underframe of one vehicle overrides that of another, and smashes through the second vehicle's body. The term is derived from the resulting appearance of the two vehicle bodies: the body of one vehicle may appear to be slid inside the other like the tubes of a collapsible telescope – the body sides, roof and underframe of the latter vehicle being forced apart from each other.

Description

Telescoping often results in heavy fatalities if the cars telescoped are fully occupied. The car riding on top will often destroy the structure of the car below, crushing those on board (although the physics of the incident may reverse the cars' roles). The chances of telescoping can be reduced by use of anticlimbers and other structural systems which direct crash energy and debris away from the passenger and crew areas. One such energy absorbing system is the Green Buffer, winners of the 2023 Swedish Steel Prize, where a collapsing steel structure in the buffers dissipate energy similarly to the crumple zones used in the automotive industry.

To reduce the chance of telescoping, rail and tramway vehicles are often provided with an "anticlimber": a horizontally ridged plate at the end of the chassis, which in a collision will engage with the anticlimber on the next car.

Examples

Accidents where telescoping occurred are numerous and include:

References

References

  1. Solomon, Brian. (2001). "The Heritage of North American Steam Railroads". Amber Books.
  2. Tyrell, David and Jeff Gordon. (June 2013). "Crash Energy Management An Overview of Federal Railroad Administration Research". TR News.
  3. "Green Buffers wins Swedish Steel Prize 2023".
  4. Einat Rozenwasser. (25 February 2012). "Un operativo que resultó eficaz pero que ahora revela fallas". [[Clarín (Argentine newspaper).
Info: Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

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