I know it is repeated
talk… I also know that the worst evil in our country these days is the alleged ability
of everyone to diagnose what we are going through. Also the audacity of some to
prescribe the medication that usually – or always – has this form we used to
know in the past, when we were told in our folk stories about that prescription
that used to cure headaches and worms in intestines; that liquid that we did
not know its composition and whose sellers used to stand at the corners of public
squares and Mawaled’’s yards to sell it. However, I will take the risk
and write about this topic, for we may come up with something new!
I here mean the
accident of the railway station, which came as an answer for a question that
for long occupied my mind when I use the train coming from Tanta or Alexandria
to Cairo. I used to see the concrete stopping bumps at the end of the railway
platform and wonder: to what extent can these bumps withstand the collision of
a train? It also never occurred to me to figure out the speed of the train
colliding with it, for I have not imagined that a train may enter the station
at an 80 km/h speed!
In such context, I
publish what my friend Mr. Mounir Ayyad sent to me in a stating message;
meaning it may be right or wrong. I cannot confirm its veracity. He himself got
it from Mr. Email Attallah; trainer of railway trains’ drivers in New South Wales
for more than 20 years: “There is a very very big question mark regarding the
catastrophe that took place in Bab el-Hadid in Ramsis square;
1- Any train coming
close to a concrete or iron stopping bump should have a speed of 25 km/h at a
distance of 500 meters away from the bump; otherwise it will lose the brakes’
air and will stop forcefully.
2- The train’s speed
when it comes in friction with the beginning of the 160-meter-and-more-long
platform has to decrease to 5 km/h; otherwise the ground bumps will empty it of
the air and it will stop immediately in less than 3 seconds.
3- The closer the train
to the bump, the less the speed that decreases every 30 meters until it forcefully
reaches zero at the bump; otherwise the train will be forcefully stopped not
less than 20 to 40 meters away from the bump.
4- Even if the train’s
bumps collided with the ground bump, there is a spring that can withstand
pressures huge enough to make the stopping action smoother and not harmful.
What happened was an
accumulation of terrible failures including:
1- Not having safety
systems; if one of those safety systems dropped, the train or carriage is banned
from being used in service.
2- There are three safety
systems in the old trains; (dead man feature, control governor and main
blunger), while there are four in modern ones. Such thing makes this accident
almost impossible, and the probability of it happening is not more than zero
percent.
3- Even if the driver
was asleep, dead or drugged, the train itself will come to stop once the driver’s
muscles relax. Therefore, I do not care much about the status of the driver,
unless there is a very bitter probability that I will tell later.
4- Even if we assumed
that the train itself –including the antenna, electrical and power controls– totally
and utterly failed, the ground control network adjacent to the railway bars,
including the air compressor, will stop the train anyway once it exceeds the
legal speed determined gradually to be 3 to 5 km/h. Also, even if we assumed
that the train failed and the railway bars’ control system failed, the signals’
control system cannot fail, as the signal does not allow the train to pass
unless the speed was very close to the legal one in case of high speeds over
the main routes, and which decreases over the routes connecting the sub-urbans.
The same thing applies over the domestic routes. Then the speed reaches 25 km/h
in case of getting close to a dead end.
Conclusion:
What happened was a
complete circle of failure including the following:
1- The train system
itself (consisting of 3 or 4 safety systems).
2- The railway routes’
system (consisting of unlimited number of safety units adjacent to the left or
the right of the railway bars) depending on the air compressor position.
3- The signals’ system;
as each signal is supplied with a safety unit.
If one system of the
mentioned above failed, that means we are facing a catastrophe that can have no
explanation but with the following:
(An agreement between
the driver to disable all the train’s safety devices with the worker
supervising the railway ground connections to make it corrupt, in addition to
the approval given by the signals’ box or signals’ computer to break the closed
signal, in the same time, spoiling the signal’s safety system. The last one
alone needs a pre-agreed upon effort which is very big”.
The stating message
ended for the big question to rise.
We shall continue
later.
Translated by: Dalia
Elnaggar
This article was
published in Al Ahram newspaper on March, 7, 2019.
To see the original
article, go to:
#ahmad_ahmed_elgammal
#Egypt #railway_station_accident
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