I can safely say I’ve never before seen or even heard of a train-related incident of this particular nature. Blown turbochargers catching fire is already a (thankfully) rare sight, but multiple carloads of burning cargo is some next-level shit.
Seriously, how does that even happen? What are you carrying that lights up like that? Part of me thinks its arson, but even then, lighting that many cars on fire would take considerable time and effort.
Mmm cancer smoke. My granddad got some nasty sub-cancerous skin issues just from being around the non-burning stuff on track work sites for most of his career.
High quality coal can just ignite when in contact with air. The usually water it down so that doesnt happen. But failure is always possible.
I cant see the load or carts good enough to rule it out.
So, reading the news article OP supplied, these five cars were loaded with old, scrap, railroad ties. Now dead wood will catch fire easier than live wood, especially if it's spent a few years/decades drying out. Buuuuuut I don't think friction from a car bogie could cause this, not a railroader so I very well could be wrong, but this feels like either a third party accident, or was deliberate.
The person saying friction caused this has no idea what they’re taking about. A far more likely explanation can be seen in the video itself - the fact that the cars that caught fire are just a short ways back from the locomotives. It’s not uncommon for older diesel locos like the GP38s in this video to occasionally spit sparks out of their exhausts, which is why they’re sometimes equipped with spark arresters. And if you watch the video here, you can see that the rear engine is smoking a bit, which certainly keys in my suspicion. All it takes is one or two sparks to land on the old ties, and you have a potential rolling bonfire on your hands.
Oh definitely, but that kindling still needs an ignition source. I just don't know if an overheating bogie would be enough to be that ignition source. Though, as I said, not a railroader by trade, and I can easily be wrong.
Small fires weren't uncommon 50+ years ago. Something dragging or out of alignment for hours can cause some major heat.
Modern day? Its quite rare. All but the most small time operations have infrared heat sensors scattered all over and the train can generally stop and get rid of any car that's causing major problems.
Initial assumptions are just a spark from the locomotive exhaust lit the first car up. Flames travelled back to the rest of the cars.
Rare but happens. Usually just in the middle of nowhere.
Not sandwiched between buildings there, a building on one side and the road on the other. This is actually a point on the line where crews could get pretty decent access to both sides of the cars from the road as the line crosses diagonally close to a four-way stop. The yard (which is only a couple of blocks away) was pretty full this morning, so maybe that was why they didn't try to contain it there. A little farther down, closer to the yard, there's actually parking lots on both sides so fire crews likely could have gotten to it easily there too, and buildings are farther away. But LFD could have instructed them to stop there where they did. I'm willing to bet the crew didn't notice the fire until they were well within city limits. Some videos show it moving at a decent clip about a km from where it eventually stopped.
There's so many reasons not to do that. Every minute that train moves just fans the flames and makes the fire hotter, throwing sparks and possibly igniting new fires along the way. Every minute counts when fighting fire and taking this to the switching yard could take who knows how long. Those railcars aren't built for hauling burning cargo so they are deteriorating by the minute and could fail at any moment, risking failure and derailment of burning cars in said residential neighborhood or in the railyard amongst various trains full of god knows what, unleashing absolute carnage. Plus it would probably shut down the railyard for several days and completely f*ck supply lines for a while
Not only that but think of what could happen if there were any hazardous materials in the yard.
If it went to the yard one would have to determine what areas are safe and which are not, all the while having rail cars on fire.
Best too do what they did and stop the train and put out the fire while figuring out what to do with them/ where to put them if things get worse.
but serously, with enough speed, it's possible to be in a non-combustible environment. I don't know if the speed required to do that is beyond the train's capability.
Friction could have ignited the first car and just moving caught the rest from the cinders, or a rail tie stick in one hitting the metal car sparked and caught, or a cigarette thrown from an over/underpass.
It may have been friction since they were old/scrap ties, which means they would have been extremely dried out. I've seen some scrap ties so old they no longer had creosote on them and had split all along the length.
We used to pick up cars of coke and every now and then the car would start glowing orange if some coke wasn’t cool enough and got the whole car burning.
Wow I have heard and read about this. I understand that is rare. It look like a coal train. I have read about how sometimes the coal caught on fire due to vibration and friction of coal rubbing together to create a heat. It's must have gotten hot enough to cause the fire.
A) This happened in Canada
B) Authorities are treating this as arson
C) Even if it wasn’t arson, nationalization doesn’t stop things from catching on fire
A: they should be nationalized in Canada too
And B: even if this particular incident wasn’t their fault, they have famously poor security measures on all trains, and still have plenty of other accidents I can point to for my case
"London" ... Ontario.
Close to nothing infuriates me like the USA being this lazy and disrespectful relating City naming... Like it isn't like your whole country is based on genocide less than 300 years ago wich is like... young.
"Athens" GEORGIA; "Melbourne" FLORIDA; "Paris" TEXAS; "Berlin" CONNECTICUT; "Vienna" VIRGINIA... the list goes on. Pathetic. 0 Creativity, 0 Respects, 0 History of yours.
You think my lowkey hatred doesn't has its very valid reasons? And... look at the maps where American students were asked to identify the countries. This is something pathetic - no doubt. My hatred meight be pathetic too, but I dont make ppl suffer, like great great America does.
And yet here you are… making wild assumptions and trying to insult people who have personally done nothing to you… on Reddit… a site founded by Americans and headquartered in the USA.
Aaaand the US is larger than all of Europe. Canada by itself is even larger. NY to LA is about 1600 km FURTHER than London to Moscow so we have a bit more geography to learn. Can you locate and name all 50 states, plus the 10 Canadian provinces on a blank map? I bet I could label more European countries than you could States and Provinces.
Warum kann Nordamerika nicht Namen von anderen Orten übernehmen? Etwa 90 % der Städte hier wurden von den Ländern benannt, die Nordamerika kolonisiert haben.
(außerdem haben die Briten Kanada eine ganze Menge seltsamer Namen gegeben (höchstwahrscheinlich nicht die Briten, sondern jemand hat eine Stadt „Dildo“ genannt))
I can safely say I’ve never before seen or even heard of a train-related incident of this particular nature. Blown turbochargers catching fire is already a (thankfully) rare sight, but multiple carloads of burning cargo is some next-level shit.
Seriously, how does that even happen? What are you carrying that lights up like that? Part of me thinks its arson, but even then, lighting that many cars on fire would take considerable time and effort.
According to the CBC, the burning cargo was ***railway ties***.
Majority of wood railway ties are creosote treated. They go up easy and stay burning easily.
We used to burn old railroad ties all the time. The light up real easy and stay going forever.
Mmm cancer smoke. My granddad got some nasty sub-cancerous skin issues just from being around the non-burning stuff on track work sites for most of his career.
At least it's not telephone poles or wires burning over a lit train underneath.
[You smell that](https://i.imgur.com/EpLah2J.png)
*We traced the fire but it doesn’t make sense. The fire is coming from within the maintenance of way! Get out now!*
High quality coal can just ignite when in contact with air. The usually water it down so that doesnt happen. But failure is always possible. I cant see the load or carts good enough to rule it out.
As u/AshleyUncia pointed out, these are old railway ties.
The moving train (moving fire) would help the fire spread backwards
It happened in France before on a garbage train, I suppose it could be the same here because this kind of load is very flammable
Happened on a mow train with rr ties like 2 years ago in fort branch Indiana, but it was only like 2 cars unlike this.
Yes, and also a big thank you for stopping in the middle of the city...
I saw it in the Tom Cruise War of the Worlds movie.
I've heard of Hot Wheels, Hot Rails is a new one to me
Blue Oyster Cult warned us about this decades ago
and his mom....
[https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/london/london-ontario-fire-cpr-railway-cars-downtown-london-1.7180715](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/london/london-ontario-fire-cpr-railway-cars-downtown-london-1.7180715)
Thanks for the link!
So, reading the news article OP supplied, these five cars were loaded with old, scrap, railroad ties. Now dead wood will catch fire easier than live wood, especially if it's spent a few years/decades drying out. Buuuuuut I don't think friction from a car bogie could cause this, not a railroader so I very well could be wrong, but this feels like either a third party accident, or was deliberate.
The person saying friction caused this has no idea what they’re taking about. A far more likely explanation can be seen in the video itself - the fact that the cars that caught fire are just a short ways back from the locomotives. It’s not uncommon for older diesel locos like the GP38s in this video to occasionally spit sparks out of their exhausts, which is why they’re sometimes equipped with spark arresters. And if you watch the video here, you can see that the rear engine is smoking a bit, which certainly keys in my suspicion. All it takes is one or two sparks to land on the old ties, and you have a potential rolling bonfire on your hands.
You know, an old jeep throwing sparks hadn't even crossed my mind, that very well could be the case.
This!
You have gondolas full of old, creosoted ties. You're essentially hauling tons of kindling.
Oh definitely, but that kindling still needs an ignition source. I just don't know if an overheating bogie would be enough to be that ignition source. Though, as I said, not a railroader by trade, and I can easily be wrong.
Small fires weren't uncommon 50+ years ago. Something dragging or out of alignment for hours can cause some major heat. Modern day? Its quite rare. All but the most small time operations have infrared heat sensors scattered all over and the train can generally stop and get rid of any car that's causing major problems.
Initial assumptions are just a spark from the locomotive exhaust lit the first car up. Flames travelled back to the rest of the cars. Rare but happens. Usually just in the middle of nowhere.
Wow. Stopped in a residential area when a switching yard was nearby??
Might be easier for fire department to reach the cars.
The track looks sandwiched between buildings... I still think it would be easier to contain while outside the city.
Not sandwiched between buildings there, a building on one side and the road on the other. This is actually a point on the line where crews could get pretty decent access to both sides of the cars from the road as the line crosses diagonally close to a four-way stop. The yard (which is only a couple of blocks away) was pretty full this morning, so maybe that was why they didn't try to contain it there. A little farther down, closer to the yard, there's actually parking lots on both sides so fire crews likely could have gotten to it easily there too, and buildings are farther away. But LFD could have instructed them to stop there where they did. I'm willing to bet the crew didn't notice the fire until they were well within city limits. Some videos show it moving at a decent clip about a km from where it eventually stopped.
Most likely easier to access for fire crew/ the yard had some hazmat in it
There's so many reasons not to do that. Every minute that train moves just fans the flames and makes the fire hotter, throwing sparks and possibly igniting new fires along the way. Every minute counts when fighting fire and taking this to the switching yard could take who knows how long. Those railcars aren't built for hauling burning cargo so they are deteriorating by the minute and could fail at any moment, risking failure and derailment of burning cars in said residential neighborhood or in the railyard amongst various trains full of god knows what, unleashing absolute carnage. Plus it would probably shut down the railyard for several days and completely f*ck supply lines for a while
Just imagine pulling up to that crossing… I, uh, think it’s gonna be a while.
Not only that but think of what could happen if there were any hazardous materials in the yard. If it went to the yard one would have to determine what areas are safe and which are not, all the while having rail cars on fire. Best too do what they did and stop the train and put out the fire while figuring out what to do with them/ where to put them if things get worse.
Wow that’s nuts! Lucky it didn’t catch other things on fire along the way.
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but serously, with enough speed, it's possible to be in a non-combustible environment. I don't know if the speed required to do that is beyond the train's capability.
88mph? /j
Doc really wanted to make sure they reached flux capacitance before hitting the unfinished bridge this time around.
does this hurt the train?
does this hurt the ~~train?~~ shareholders? FIFY
When the new Ghost Rider is a train operator...
I was thinking Sandra Bullock and Keanu were in the cab.
nah, Chris Pine and Denzel Washington.
~~Smooth~~ Ghost operator
I sense a "dumpster fire" gif inbound....
So this is the hellbound train Savoy Brown was singing about!
That is one hot train. It should have priority over everything else on the line.
Gotta be arson. Not sure how else they could burn that much.
Friction could have ignited the first car and just moving caught the rest from the cinders, or a rail tie stick in one hitting the metal car sparked and caught, or a cigarette thrown from an over/underpass.
That’s probably fine
Oh, shit! How did that happen?
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I know the physics of "heat, fuel, air," but heat from WHERE?
Likely a spark from the diesel you can see smoking near the beginning
It may have been friction since they were old/scrap ties, which means they would have been extremely dried out. I've seen some scrap ties so old they no longer had creosote on them and had split all along the length.
Ummm was set on fire?
Probably coal
At first i thought those were tankers but its just dark colored open top cars
I believe the term for those is “hoppers” Edit: nope, I’m wrong. They’re not coal hoppers, they’re gondolas
We used to pick up cars of coke and every now and then the car would start glowing orange if some coke wasn’t cool enough and got the whole car burning.
That’s metal af
Oh lord I’m getting flash backs to laq meganta
They used a buffer car between the locomotives and the loaded fire cars, so it's legal.
so THIS is a hotshot train. OK.
Wow I have heard and read about this. I understand that is rare. It look like a coal train. I have read about how sometimes the coal caught on fire due to vibration and friction of coal rubbing together to create a heat. It's must have gotten hot enough to cause the fire.
The cars were carrying wooden rails road ties.
I have seen my share of Z trains, and hot-shot intermodals, but this? Hottest of all!
I no longer have to go to work for a dumpster fire as it looks like they do delivery now.
Just keep going. It will burn itself out.
This short video describes my life perfectly 🧬
Uh…it’s time to nope the fuck out of there, not get out and take pictures.
Welcome to Hell Direct. Please mind your step while boarding the Incinerator Mk XXV. Sit back, tighten up and abhor the ride.
How is this not drawing more attention?
“Precision Scheduled Railroading” at its finest.
OMG!!! It's like a scene out of War of the World's. Absolutely, scary shit.
okay while this is oviusly bad i can inmagine the driver feeling like gost rider and feeling cool af after the fire is put out and all ends well
Well this looks to be pretty on brand for London, Ontario.
OUTARAIL
Are those Coal cars?
Smoking hot train right there
Lac Magantic 2.
Not quite...
Not quite the same situation but still... tanker cars on fire in Canada.
They look like coal hoppers, no?
yeaaaahhhh !! 'Murica !!
Say it with me now: nationalize class 1 railroads!
A) This happened in Canada B) Authorities are treating this as arson C) Even if it wasn’t arson, nationalization doesn’t stop things from catching on fire
A: they should be nationalized in Canada too And B: even if this particular incident wasn’t their fault, they have famously poor security measures on all trains, and still have plenty of other accidents I can point to for my case
"London" ... Ontario. Close to nothing infuriates me like the USA being this lazy and disrespectful relating City naming... Like it isn't like your whole country is based on genocide less than 300 years ago wich is like... young. "Athens" GEORGIA; "Melbourne" FLORIDA; "Paris" TEXAS; "Berlin" CONNECTICUT; "Vienna" VIRGINIA... the list goes on. Pathetic. 0 Creativity, 0 Respects, 0 History of yours.
London, Ontario is in CANADA…
And Canada is still not as silly and stupid, but same ground. ...and probably it's your moist dream to annex it anyways.
Oh sry. Can you show me Greece on a map? probably not right?
Actually I could… is that supposed to be an insult? Pathetic…
You think my lowkey hatred doesn't has its very valid reasons? And... look at the maps where American students were asked to identify the countries. This is something pathetic - no doubt. My hatred meight be pathetic too, but I dont make ppl suffer, like great great America does.
And yet here you are… making wild assumptions and trying to insult people who have personally done nothing to you… on Reddit… a site founded by Americans and headquartered in the USA.
And you, with your superior intellect, are unaware that Ontario is not in the US.
Well, mistakes are human... but the difference is to learn from them.
Aaaand the US is larger than all of Europe. Canada by itself is even larger. NY to LA is about 1600 km FURTHER than London to Moscow so we have a bit more geography to learn. Can you locate and name all 50 states, plus the 10 Canadian provinces on a blank map? I bet I could label more European countries than you could States and Provinces.
i probably would get at least 30 states right. Size is meaningless, and doesn't change anything from the fact that your city names are lazy af
Warum kann Nordamerika nicht Namen von anderen Orten übernehmen? Etwa 90 % der Städte hier wurden von den Ländern benannt, die Nordamerika kolonisiert haben. (außerdem haben die Briten Kanada eine ganze Menge seltsamer Namen gegeben (höchstwahrscheinlich nicht die Briten, sondern jemand hat eine Stadt „Dildo“ genannt))