CoalTrain — Another example of where going by the book isn’t good.
Just a few kilometers into the trip, a wheel bearing became overheated and melted off letting the truck support drop down and grind on top of the rail creating white hot molten metal droppings that spewed down onto the rails.
The GOOD NEWS to this is that a very alert crew noticed a small amount of smoke halfway back in the train and immediately stopped the train in compliance with the rules.
The BAD NEWS to this is that the train just happened to stop with its hot weeels on top of a wooden trestle bridge built with creosoted ties, bents and trusses.
I worked for the Burlington Northern railroad in the early 80s. I maintained the “hot box” detectors that were designed to prevent this. We used to wave a 150 watt utility light fixture in front of the detector to make sure it was working.
We used a similar “high tech” testing procedure when I was in the Air Force. Our strafe scoring system would use an acoustic sensor to count the number of bullets hitting the target above. We used to snap a clip board over it to make sure it was counting.