Baltimore Bridge Collision and Collapse

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speed said:
The CEO of Southwest said he would price match the high speed rail prices from Burbank to San Francisco. No track has been laid so far and the costs are skyrocketing. It needs a dirt nap asap. We, the people are being fleeced.
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Perhaps

But as soon as we cancel it, I bet fares on Southwest double
 
cls said:
Yes

Wrong. You don't live here so you are not expected to know anything about it, but you could look it up

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_California_Proposition_1A

Passed 52% to 48%. The people spoke, a plurality wanted something. Nothing to do with "politicians".

Many people voted against it, 48%. For a lot of reasons. The plan was not concrete, it was notional. I'm not writing blank checks for an unlimited project.

Among the other factors:

NIMBYs (looking at you Silicon Valley and Peninsula towns)

Geography: best would be a long the coast, flattest grades. You're not putting any rail over Tehachapis or Grapevine (hwy 5).

But no coastal communities need or want to get to SF or LA. Ok, so go north south on the east side of the central valley. Noone there wants to go to SF or LA. no one in LA or SF wants to ride that (hour plus) detour to the east.

So now we have track between Merced and Fresno and Bakersfield. But how do you run from Modesto to San Jose? Not across Patterson Pass. Not through Altamond. Ok, how about Pacheco and Gilroy? Nope, too ta 😆 ll, unstable.

Geology: multiple unknown major faults through San Luis and Tehachapis.

Would be the longest tunnel in the world, thousands of feet under and through unstable rocks.
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Sounds like a textbook engineering response on why "it would never succeed". I did look it up and there are a plethora of examples that demonstrate how the politicians rammed it down the people throat. CA is not just LA and SF. Anecdotally, this is a case where a concentration of votes decided what was good for them is good for the rest of the state. All of this was pushed by politicians and there is plenty of examples that would need to be discussed in a different forum.

So yes, Merdead, Fresblo and Takersfield all have rail that goes nowhere important...according to all the people in LA. ;)

Having discussed the finer points of CA's geological weaknesses when it comes to driving the golden spikes, perhaps we should go back to comparing the impacts of dragging anchors to faulty shipboard circuit breakers. Both of those are more germain to RoRos and cargo containers.
 
Interesting side note: I saw an article today about government spending to increase Amtrak speeds for Acela in the Northeast corridor. Just the improvements to an existing and operating rail (not HSR) route are greater than what has been spent (including overruns) on HSR in California and no one on the east coast is complaining about it.
 
You want Government fiascos?
Three words:
The Big Dig

But there are many many examples of similarly painful projects. We'd be here for a year just listing them. But the only fair argument I can make for such government projects is that this is one of the reasons for having a government. To take on matters that are too much for local entities to handle on their own. Public infrastructure projects like these won't pay for themselves, so the government is the only one who can build them.

But that doesn't explain or justify the crazy cost overruns or inflated scope of many of these projects. I know there is often a better way, but too often politics, incompetence, or corruption play too big a role in managing them. That's the tragic part.

BTW, to say Californians voted for the rail thus politics played no role means you don't know what "politics" means. But that's not a different thread, that's a whole different forum!!! 😂😂😂
 
Lack of rational intercity passenger rail solutions (aside from the east coast, where I grew up and had it available) drives me nuts. I live in Indianapolis area and need to go to Chicago for various reasons several times per year. There's no practical rail solution for this so I have to drive it. It's a lot of gas, time, and a fair amount of stress dealing with Chicago traffic.

I love my car, but would rather take a train for mid-distance travel like my European colleagues do all the time, enjoying a drink while reading or working on their computers or playing on their phones.
 
Marc_G said:
Lack of rational intercity passenger rail solutions (aside from the east coast, where I grew up and had it available) drives me nuts. I live in Indianapolis area and need to go to Chicago for various reasons several times per year. There's no practical rail solution for this so I have to drive it. It's a lot of gas, time, and a fair amount of stress dealing with Chicago traffic.

I love my car, but would rather take a train for mid-distance travel like my European colleagues do all the time, enjoying a drink while reading or working on their computers or playing on their phones.
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I took a train to DC for vacation, I agree it’s the best way for that sort of travel I’d even recommend it for cross country travel.
 
NTP2 said:
I took a train to DC for vacation, I agree it’s the best way for that sort of travel I’d even recommend it for cross country travel.
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I've taken the train from Seattle to Chicago (~48 hours) or vice versa for vacation a few times. You have to be OK with reading or playing games, and it helps to have a stateroom. Until you take that trip, you have no idea just how big the Montana/North Dakota prairie is. Eastbound, you leave the Rockies just after breakfast, and the land is flat as a pancake for 24 hours. You don't start to get rolling hills until you hit Minnesota. Montana alone is a third of the trip.
 
boatgeek said:
I've taken the train from Seattle to Chicago (~48 hours) or vice versa for vacation a few times. You have to be OK with reading or playing games, and it helps to have a stateroom. Until you take that trip, you have no idea just how big the Montana/North Dakota prairie is. Eastbound, you leave the Rockies just after breakfast, and the land is flat as a pancake for 24 hours. You don't start to get rolling hills until you hit Minnesota. Montana alone is a third of the trip.
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Cool, I bet the best way to win I spy is to see a tree :p
 
boatgeek said:
I've taken the train from Seattle to Chicago (~48 hours) or vice versa for vacation a few times. You have to be OK with reading or playing games, and it helps to have a stateroom. Until you take that trip, you have no idea just how big the Montana/North Dakota prairie is. Eastbound, you leave the Rockies just after breakfast, and the land is flat as a pancake for 24 hours. You don't start to get rolling hills until you hit Minnesota. Montana alone is a third of the trip.
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I've drive across my country a number of times (with some trips passing thru the US..)

Leaving Dryden / Thunder Bay [Western point of Lake Superiors], and passing thru Winnipeg I had a thought. and this thought really made me wonder when I was cruising thru Saskatchewan. And how big the prairies really are..

I thought: what did the original prairie & western settlers think when they set out to colonize this vast flat-land.. They got into their covered wagons & headed west. (and they make, what, 20-30 miles in a day..)
Day one.. still flat..
Day two, still very flat, nothing on the horizon..
Day 14: still flat, no change.. I believe we are going west still..
Day 26, still flat & no change.. How big is this continent?!?!?!?
day 46, still flat, but some hills can be seen... up ahead..
day 56, now hilly, and finally something different on the horizon!
Day 66, still hilly, and some major mountains up a head!!


.....
 
dr wogz said:
I've drive across my country a number of times (with some trips passing thru the US..)

Leaving Dryden / Thunder Bay [Western point of Lake Superiors], and passing thru Winnipeg I had a thought. and this thought really made me wonder when I was cruising thru Saskatchewan. And how big the prairies really are..

I thought: what did the original prairie & western settlers think when they set out to colonize this vast flat-land.. They got into their covered wagons & headed west. (and they make, what, 20-30 miles in a day..)
Day one.. still flat..
Day two, still very flat, nothing on the horizon..
Day 14: still flat, no change.. I believe we are going west still..
Day 26, still flat & no change.. How big is this continent?!?!?!?
day 46, still flat, but some hills can be seen... up ahead..
day 56, now hilly, and finally something different on the horizon!
Day 66, still hilly, and some major mountains up a head!!


.....
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I'm reading a book right now about a person who emigrated from the Virginia hill country (Appalachia/Blue Ridge) to Nebraska in the early 1900's. They found the giant sky and lack of trees really disturbing. They were also still clearing prairie for farmland when they could easily ride the railroad to 20 miles from the homestead. On the other hand, there's a bunch of oral history that when settlers came to the coastal Pacific Northwest, they found the dark of the trees disturbing so they started clearing land.

At least the settlers heading to the prairie had a good handle on how far it was to where they were going. Unlike, say, the earliest European explorers and the earliest indigenous tribes.
 
boatgeek said:
I'm reading a book right now about a person who emigrated from the Virginia hill country (Appalachia/Blue Ridge) to Nebraska in the early 1900's. They found the giant sky and lack of trees really disturbing.
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I dislike it when we go to the beach, it’s disturbing for the geography you spend your entire life in just disappear like that. I guess it’s like what Homer hickam said, these old mountains become part of you.

Ps we actually made a bunch of money because all the settlers needed supplies before they crossed into the prairie and the Appalachians were the best place. Daniel boon worked at a hat shop in my town.
 
dr wogz said:
I've drive across my country a number of times (with some trips passing thru the US..)

Leaving Dryden / Thunder Bay [Western point of Lake Superiors], and passing thru Winnipeg I had a thought. and this thought really made me wonder when I was cruising thru Saskatchewan. And how big the prairies really are..

I thought: what did the original prairie & western settlers think when they set out to colonize this vast flat-land.. They got into their covered wagons & headed west. (and they make, what, 20-30 miles in a day..)
Day one.. still flat..
Day two, still very flat, nothing on the horizon..
Day 14: still flat, no change.. I believe we are going west still..
Day 26, still flat & no change.. How big is this continent?!?!?!?
day 46, still flat, but some hills can be seen... up ahead..
day 56, now hilly, and finally something different on the horizon!
Day 66, still hilly, and some major mountains up a head!!


.....
Click to expand...
I heard a comedian once that did an entire routine about (American) settlers heading West. The two jokes that I remember are these:

1) Do you know why so many ranches have broken wagon wheels at the end of the driveway? Because someone was heading west in their big Conestoga wagon, a wheel broke, the folks looked around and said, "Well, this looks like a good spot!"

2) Do you know why Denver is such a big city? Because all those wagon trains were heading for California and the west coast, they spent months crossing the plains, they get as far as Denver, take one look at those mountains, and said, "Screw that."
 
There used to be several "sayings" at Minot AFB....

"If you look to the west, you can see the back of your head."

"Minot is a great place to meet the most beautiful girls in the world. There is one behind every tree..."

"The wind doesn't blow at Minot, ND...it sucks."

The list goes on.
 
NTP2 said:
I took a train to DC for vacation, I agree it’s the best way for that sort of travel I’d even recommend it for cross country travel.
Click to expand...

It gets tired the second day of such travel, and I only went from Toledo, Ohio to Santa Fe. Was most of it fun? Yes the first time but I would fly If I needed to go to Santa Fe again.

{and that was on the Super Chief Double Decker out of CHI, after the switch over from TOL to CHI}
 
An interesting side effect of the salvage operations. I have a customer with some projects that will be going through US Coast Guard review in a few weeks. They wanted to know if USCG could speed up the reviews to get the boat working faster. USCG replied that nope, all available manpower in that office is working the bridge salvage, so there's no extra available to speed up reviews.
 
dr wogz said:
I thought: what did the original prairie & western settlers think when they set out to colonize this vast flat-land.. They got into their covered wagons & headed west. (and they make, what, 20-30 miles in a day..)
Day one.. still flat..
Day two, still very flat, nothing on the horizon..
Day 14: still flat, no change.. I believe we are going west still..



.....
Click to expand...
I have a pretty good idea. A couple of years ago I walked the length of the Oregon Trail. One surprise was that Kansas involved a LOT of climbing (into and out of drainages, fifty or a hundred feet at a time). Things weren't really flat until I reached the Platte River.

Most people on the Trail walked, I believe that putting one foot in front of the other nearly every day, for 2000 miles, was (and still is) a big part of the challenge. That said, thousands of 8 year-olds did it (many barefoot).

ScottBluff.jpg

(Scott's Bluff, my covered wagon is the second in line, the little tiny one)

https://trailjournals.com/oregontrail
 

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In other news on the subject of the thread:
From that point onwards, absence of the bridge will become mostly a commuter/traffic problem.
Driving North-South around (hardly anyone goes into) Baltimore will be a bit worse than the usual. Outside of the usual I-95 corridor drivers, the rest of the country wont care and will move on.

IMHO,
a
 
Last edited:
The NTSB released its preliminary report this afternoon:

https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/Documents/DCA24MM031_PreliminaryReport 3.pdf

The initial blackout was caused by breakers at the high-voltage (6600 VAC) to low-voltage (480 VAC) transformer tripping. Loss of 480 VAC power took down the ship's lights but more importantly hydraulic steering pumps and the main engine's lube oil and cooling pumps. Loss of oil and cooling water pressure caused an automatic engine shutdown. After power was restored, the breakers at the main generators themselves tripped, causing a second loss of power just before the ship hit the bridge. That may not have appeared to be a blackout because the emergency generator was running and connected at this point, so some lights stayed on.
 
Doing a little fact checking of myself. I feel pretty good about my guesses based on pictures from far away.

From #87:
boatgeek said:
So if it was loaded down to its load line, it would have weighed 148,000 and change metric tons. Of course, it probably wasn't since most ships are fully loaded coming to the US (bringing in the $3 plastic crap of legend) and somewhat more lightly loaded leaving. How much lighter? :questions: We don't really know. However, lightship is around 32,000 tons, so we know it's definitely not 10,000 tons. Hazarding a guess based on where the bottom paint line is, I'd say it's likely around half loaded or around 90,000 tons.
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And from #242:
boatgeek said:
That's a good catch. Checking the registration data again, it has a 50' load line (maximum) draft. Since it was showing quite a bit of red bottom paint on departure, it was almost certainly running at least 5-10 feet lighter than that.
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Per the NTSB, the Dali was carrying 4,680 containers, a total of 56,675 MT of cargo for ~89,000 MT total displacement, and had a draft of 40 feet.
 
I have two questions, both about the cargo.

1) Will every single container be opened and inspected, even the apparently undamaged ones?

2) I saw comments online some of the containers might actually hold stolen cars leaving the country, I'm no expert on that but it might grow into an interesting side story?
 
rcktnut said:
https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/Documents/DCA24MM031_PreliminaryReport 3.pdf

Seems like the electrical problems they had 10 hours before departure (page 13- 2.2.1) had something to do with the failure after departure.
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At first glance, that seems unrelated, since the power outages were related to accidentally shutting down the online generator, followed by the second generator losing fuel pressure and going offline. By that time, the first generator was back up again. The blackouts right before hitting the bridge were from breakers opening unexpectedly. The only potential causal link I see was that after the blackouts, they switched from one high voltage to low voltage transformer to the other. The breakers around the "new" transformer were the initial failure point.

All of that said, I would appreciate input from people who know more than me about electrical systems.
 
cvanc said:
I have two questions, both about the cargo.

1) Will every single container be opened and inspected, even the apparently undamaged ones?

2) I saw comments online some of the containers might actually hold stolen cars leaving the country, I'm no expert on that but it might grow into an interesting side story?
Click to expand...
1) I doubt all those containers would be opened. No real reason to do so. CBP just doesn't have the manpower for that unless they suspect real issues, but they are typically more concerned with imports than exports. Undamaged boxes will be moved along as intended as quickly as they can get them on a ship going in the right direction. With the bow damage, I doubt they will stay on that ship. Offload them and reload to other ships. The only exceptions are if a cargo may have spoiled by the time they expect it to be delivered. Then the shipper might ask for it to be diverted back to them or something. But that won't be very likely.

Side note - The ship will likely undergo temporary repairs and seek special permission to proceed directly to a shipyard that can handle it and make the repairs. There is one in the Bahamas that might be able to, but cruise ships are typically their main priority. They won't want to tie up the drydocks for as long as it will take to repair that thing. So they might get permission to proceed to China, Korea or Singapore where they have cheap steel, labor, and big drydocks. These arrangements would probably already be in place by now.

2) Stolen cars? Well, yeah, there probably are a bunch of them on there, but honestly, that's nothing new. Most large container ships leaving the US going towards 3rd world countries (even if not going there directly) will probably have a few I'd imagine. It's big business, especially to Africa, and hard to police. I know what you're going to say - Just open the container and run the vin numbers. First, there are a lot (like 6 figures lots) of containers moving through US ports every day. That would require more manpower than port & CBP officials want to devote to that, since the vast majority of containers are perfectly legit. Second, smugglers aren't that stupid. The cars will be "washed" of their numbers (at least the easy to access ones). Some car carrying containers will be hard to identify too. Says it's toilet paper, but there are 2 stolen cars hidden in there. That kind of thing is not as easy to detect as you'd think. See point #1 earlier in this paragraph. And yes, some containers are scanned (like an x-ray) but that's limited, and focused on imports.
 

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