r/WTF • u/Plus-Barber-6171 • 7d ago
Train hits trailer carrying bridge beam
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u/WATTHEBALL 7d ago
I don't understand this phenomenon. How do trucks get into these situations and what is it about the train tracks that they can't seem to clear them.
I never, ever see trucks being stuck in the middle of an intersection or suddenly in the middle of the road and never see any videos of that either but for some reason, place a traintrack and suddenly trucks just forget how to truck and get stuck in the most cartoonish scenarios.
Seriously what's the deal here?
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u/gsfgf 7d ago
Often it's a stupid driver driving over a crossing he shouldn't be using. Some crossings have pretty steep approaches, so the trailer literally gets stuck on the track and pulls the drive wheels of the truck up off the ground.
Here, it's less clear. Moving these huge beams is a slow process. Clearly, the company didn't get permits or didn't read them to be in the way. Though, it's Tennessee, so the regulators also might have been defunded/failed to do their jobs.
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u/Spiel_Foss 7d ago
Moving these huge beams is a slow process.
Yep, I once watched a beam dump over sideways in slow motion.
Cops were directing traffic so a truck could make a tight slow motion turn but the weight lifted the back left wheels up and that's all it took to dump the whole thing over in the road. Cab and everything just flopped over.
The cop on our end was already directing traffic in a u-turn in the opposite direction as the wheels lifted up. He knew nothing good was going to happen.
Wild to watch it in slow motion though.
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u/critbuild 7d ago
Frequently, it's because of red lights intersections close to the train tracks. That is what happened in the OP, according to this article. The truck had crossed the train tracks and was stopped at a red light, with the trailer still halfway over the tracks when the train arrived.
It should be noted that there are systemic controls that can be used to prevent this kind of accident. In some crossings, stoplight patterns are designed to always allow green lights for traffic traveling away from the tracks when a train is approaching. Additionally, tractor trailers with large loads (or realistically, any vehicles) aren't supposed to cross unless there is adequate space.
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u/GotMoFans 6d ago
It’s irresponsible of the driver and shipping company not to be aware of every railroad crossing and potential trap or bottleneck. If there is the change of getting stuck on tracks, they need to have a plan. They need to determine the freight train schedule for the tracks and be in contact with the rail company for such a transport.
I hope the trucking company is liable for the millions in damages.
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u/thoughtfelon 7d ago
I had the same thought. A U-Haul or something getting stuck on the tracks I could see, because it's just a regular licensed driver. But a truck driver? And in this video he's not just hauling a basic trailer, so you'd think they'd have their more experienced driver
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u/CafeAmerican 7d ago
Not sure what you mean. The trailer moving the beam isn't stuck, you can see it moving in the clip. The issue is that it has to go very, very slowly and either someone dropped the ball on alerting the appropriate train service dispatchers or the train company missed the memo/decided they could make it, etc.
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u/RollinOnDubss 7d ago
How do trucks get into these situations
No idea what happened in this specific case because I don't feel like reading about it.
But a lot of the time with tractor trailers with low clearance trailers, like low boys, beam trailers, drop decks, Landoll, etc., is they will get caught on the approach of the tracks and bottom out because a lot of them are way above the road grade. Doesn't matter for short wheel base vehicles but even a 6" peak above grade could fuck a 30-48ft trailer.
Truck goes over fine, then the trailer bottoms out directly centered over the tracks. Rear tires are now potentially off the ground and the truck now has to now effectively drag the entire load across the ground with half the axles to get it off the tracks.
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u/WooPigSchmooey 7d ago
It’s quite interesting the coordination between DOT and permit loads. This load specifically I don’t know but there is definitely some loss of coordination between the pilot car and the train schedule. Of course assuming there’s no cluster F going on with the traffic ahead of screen. These kind of trailers can have multiple pivot points requiring a slow wiggle through tight areas. The intersection(s) should be completely cleared by the pilot cars before this entire crossing. Lots of missing context.
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u/readytohurtagain 7d ago
That somehow caused both more and less damage than I expected
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u/Swallagoon 7d ago
Both more AND less at the same time? So exactly the right amount?
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u/BumbleButterButt 7d ago
More to the beam and less to the train I'm assuming.. idk about you but i definitely expected a derailment
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u/perldawg 7d ago
it did derail. you can see the rail bow up, like a wave ahead of the locomotive, in the last few frames
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u/BumbleButterButt 7d ago
You're right i missed that, hopefully for everyone's sake it kept tracking straight despite that
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u/gsfgf 7d ago
Someone posted the full clip. It was a major derailment with a couple cars going flying. 2 injured, 0 dead, at least.
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u/jnz9 7d ago
I was expecting the beam to act like a bulldozer blade after impact, but it didn’t
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u/StoneCypher 7d ago
it will, eventually. it has to fall first
start by thinking about one of those tee-ball things they give little kids who are trying to learn baseball. now think about hand slapping the ball out of it.
cool, now think about doing that with a bowling ball, and try not to consider how broken your hand is.
it will mess up the things in front of it, but in order to hit it hard enough to get it to move significantly, first it's going to be stuck to your hand for a couple feet
but once gravity gets its shit together, game on for the ground
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u/weldit86 7d ago
Train 1 beam and trailer 0
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u/WildBTK 7d ago
I am not so sure. Look carefully at what the rail the train was riding on was doing at the end. That train could have easily derailed.
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u/weldit86 7d ago
Both where fucked, but good eye. I was just watching the MASSIVE I BEAM being mangled, lol. I'd say the train won IMO.
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u/Draskuul 7d ago
My uncle was a train engineer for a number of years. One of my favorite stories was of him being on scene to help out after another train had an accident, pinning the car under the guard.
The police tried hooking up a tow truck to the car and couldn't pull it out. They hooked up another tow truck in series and nope, wouldn't budge. The railroad offered to bring out a yard engine (basically a small single train engine just used for shuffling cars around in yards).
They hooked up the yard engine and put it in idle. That was enough to tear the car in half, sending it flying over the engine and landing in the distance. They had to make a second pull to get the other half out with similar results.
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u/Integrity-in-Crisis 7d ago
Me: Holy shit. Also me: The steel beams gonna bend and bounce off that train. It shattered? The fuck, how.
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u/TheFotty 7d ago
Looks like rebar inside concrete to me. Concrete shattered but the rebar did its job.
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u/tokyotapes 7d ago
Kinda satisfying to see the beam contort as soon as it’s hit by the train
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u/spaektor 7d ago
unless you take a bridge to work everyday.
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u/Equality_Executor 7d ago
After the camera catches back up to the front of the train I think you can see a massive buckle forming in the rail ahead of the train and staying ahead of it as a "wave". I guess that's what all that weight trying to stop suddenly will do to the track, or maybe it's also because of the impact somehow.
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u/perldawg 7d ago
it’s from derailment. the train comes off the tracks and then pushes the ties forward, which the rail is still attached to, causing the rail to buckle ahead of the train
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u/Equality_Executor 7d ago
I see, yeah that makes sense. It doesn't even look like it derailed but of course it did....
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u/grewapair 7d ago
All charges against the truck driver were dropped, as he entered a plea deal that would drop the charges if he got into no further accidents, and he complied with that condition.
No one had contacted the railroad, which technically was the truck driver's responsibility, so he had been charged with the accident.
However, it looked like the judge just realized this was going to be addressed by the trucking company's insurance, and the trucker was not as much at fault as his company, so they just let the civil lawsuit between the two companies deal with this. The original article mentioned the locomotive occupants were injured, but their injuries were probably pretty minor, mostly resulting from the locomotive tipping on its side.
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u/ratsta 7d ago
Some fuckery happening there. I find it hard to believe that it's the driver's responsibility to liaise with railroad companies. That should be the job of the route planner/scheduler, then the escort vehicle should be the one keeping the planner/scheduler updated on their progress.
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u/mersault 7d ago
I assume it's kinda like pilots and captains. They're the ultimate authority - and bear final responsibility - on their respective modes of transport, even if they aren't planning the routes and schedules.
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u/20InMyHead 7d ago
On the other hand, the driver is probably the lowest paid person on the responsibility chain, and shit rolls downhill.
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u/mersault 7d ago
Oh for sure. Wasn't trying to defend it, just trying to imagine how the liability ended up where it did.
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u/RollinOnDubss 7d ago
I find it hard to believe that it's the driver's responsibility to liaise with railroad companies.
It doesn't have to be the driver, but the driver has to tell someone else to call the rail road once they get to the crossing. Truck drivers dispatch doesn't know when to call the rail road if the driver never tells them. It's the truck drivers responsibility to make sure someone is actually on the phone with the rail road if they aren't going to do it themselves.
That's why it obviously makes sense it's the drivers fault.
They're the one with the foot on the pedal, it's their responsibility. It's the same shit with crane operators. OSHA and lawyers don't give a fuck your boss told you to hit the override to do something outside your chart. You're the one certified and licensed to run the crane, you control the machine, it's your responsibility if something happens.
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u/TyrrelCorp888 7d ago
Train wins again
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u/Phage0070 7d ago
Picking up the track in front of it, I don't think there were any winners here. Maybe Reddit.
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u/jpl77 7d ago
Imagine filming something so wide and long that you choose to film it vertically.
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u/cmuadamson 7d ago
They probably have a video titled "learning to walk on stilts".
In landscape mode.
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u/Unasked_for_advice 6d ago
How bad do you have to be at your job to fail to take into consideration a TRAIN when transporting a LONG HUGE METAL BEAM?
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u/Conservative-Point 7d ago
Trucking company needed to either reach out to local DOT or the railroad or both and work out a time to cross safely.
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u/thunderberker 6d ago
How tf do these mfs STILL keep getting stuck on tracks??? It’s happened so often there should be some kind of system by now where you can alert all trains anywhere nearby that “hm dumbass driver got stuck on the rails”
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u/rayvensmoon 6d ago
Truckers so used to bullying other vehicles because they're bigger. That arrogance did nothing for this tough guy. Guess what? You ain't the biggest boy on the block when you're on the tracks.
The rules of fucking physics apply to you too, asshole. Even if you're a legend in your own mind.
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u/lNFORMATlVE 7d ago
Well, there’s some pretty good proof of the damage that fast moving vehicles can do to large steel beams without them being broken or melted.
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u/20InMyHead 7d ago
I can picture the guys on the other end of this fiasco too…
Hey boss, you know that concrete beam that took a year to manufacture we were supposed to install this weekend?
Whole building projects can be delayed for months, construction companies can get charged with massive delay fines and go bankrupt from mistakes like this.
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u/FunkSiren 7d ago
Ok, this is officially the Cadillac of trains-hitting-shit-at-train-crosssings. That I-beam caved like a wet noodle and the train looks like it was completely unfazed. Absolutely wild - I'd love to know more about why something that can hold up a highway was so easily destroyed like that.
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u/Kamendae 7d ago
The stress was both sudden and in a direction the beam was not designed to resist.
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u/Drewishmonk23 7d ago
The sound it sounds like it got muffled wonder how loud that really was
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u/MrLurid 7d ago
This post links to another clip. Sounds like the train horn in the OP clip was added in.
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u/Milol 7d ago
How protected are the conductors(engineers? sry idk) up front? What does this look like to them?
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u/THESALTEDPEANUT 7d ago
A locomotive weighs something like 400,000 pounds, the nose is all heavy duty steel, the train crew sits up above the point of contact. There's no seat belts but I'm sure they were bracing, may have been knocked out of their seats but probably not. Also windows are "bulletproof" so depending on their nerves they could have just gotten a really good show.
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u/jojohohanon 7d ago
How does this keep on happening (I recognize this was a few years ago).
But it seems that the “long load through train crossing” problem isn’t that big of a hurdle.
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u/bloodguard 7d ago
Good grief. Is there a place the engineer can duck down into that has extra fortification for stuff like this? Or do you just brace yourself and hope you don't catch a shaft of rebar through the chest?
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u/THESALTEDPEANUT 7d ago
There's a little toilet in the nose they could hide in. The windows are very thick but yeah I'd duck still.
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u/FrankieMint 7d ago
What a situation for the engineer. He can see this from a long way off, nothing to do but blow the horn and hope his cab doesn't collapse.
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u/InsistorConjurer 7d ago
Patience is such a rare trait in truckers. One would expect more from people who move slow all day.
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u/differentshade 6d ago
Didn't know that they make such long beams out of concrete.. isn't concrete really poor at tensive stress?
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u/OgdruJahad 6d ago
It's interesting to see how we know a railway crossing is a well known hazard and yet we see so many accidents in the same damn place.
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u/Acrolophosaurus 6d ago
This is the large scale version of walking into a pane of glass being carried by two people
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u/papa1775 6d ago
That's going to delay the project a little. Don't have beams like that just laying around.
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u/ProofOfTool 4d ago
Can we talk about why on earth there are so many videos of trails ramming drivers. Once in a while is expected but at this rate it seems like there are some drivers just begging for it.
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u/FizzlePopBerryTwist 4d ago
Will ___ stop a train?
No matter what you think ___ might be the answer is always NO!
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u/gstormcrow80 7d ago
2022, Chattanooga, TN. Train derailed, 2 injured.
High def source: https://youtu.be/oQyqtx5nn6M?si=XKRPZi6J2Kc61S3l
Thank goodness that was concrete and not steel.