Tornados and Railroads?
- Thread starter boleyd
- Start date
Nothing for locos. Here's a couple videos of trains getting flipped in Texas and Kansas:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iQz9KX7z_g
https://weather.com/storms/severe/video/damaging-tornado-blows-through-northwest-kansas-0
This one from Illinois is pretty interesting. Looking back from the loco, cars start to blow off the track, but the rest of the cars come up and hit the loco! That was an F2 tornado.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VakBHlqXi1g
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iQz9KX7z_g
https://weather.com/storms/severe/video/damaging-tornado-blows-through-northwest-kansas-0
This one from Illinois is pretty interesting. Looking back from the loco, cars start to blow off the track, but the rest of the cars come up and hit the loco! That was an F2 tornado.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VakBHlqXi1g
The EF2 tornado that pushed the freight cars off the tracks behind the locomotive is estimated to have windspeeds between 111 to 135 mph /179 to 217 kph.
The EF rating is applied after the fact and not at the time the tornado is in progress and is based on the kind of damage caused by the storm. What's interesting about the EF ratings is there could be, what could possibly be, a devastating EF4 tornado, but is given an EF0 rating because there was no damage due to the location of the storm.
The Joplin, MO tornado from May 2011 was severe enough to pull houses off of foundations and to destroy a hospital. That was rated as an EF5 due to the damage, deaths and other factors! What's sad is that some of the houses wouldn't have been damaged as they were if they were bolted to their foundations. The housing developers cheated and didn't use lag bolts on these houses that were flattened and pushed off their foundations.
Tornados are interesting critters. I've seen them not only on video but also in real life. I witnessed the birth of one in Roger Mills County, OK that started as a couple of whisps of dirt in a field and turned into a raging funnel that took off over us and flew on to knock out a house! It squished the house like a box being stepped on by a toddler.
If you look at that video, you'll notice that the train was on a trestle. That can also add to the damage due to the winds lifting up the freight cars while on the bridge.
A number of years ago, a freight was hit near Kearny, NE. The tornado and subsequent rear flank down draft (RFD) winds were strong enough to knock over some tank cars on a siding. The RFD winds are the winds that follow behind the tornado or a supercell thunderstorm like the wake behind a boat as the water rushes in behind as boat passes. The RFD winds can be just as or more damaging than a tornado, and I've witnessed and seen them as high as 120 mph / 193 kph.
The EF rating is applied after the fact and not at the time the tornado is in progress and is based on the kind of damage caused by the storm. What's interesting about the EF ratings is there could be, what could possibly be, a devastating EF4 tornado, but is given an EF0 rating because there was no damage due to the location of the storm.
The Joplin, MO tornado from May 2011 was severe enough to pull houses off of foundations and to destroy a hospital. That was rated as an EF5 due to the damage, deaths and other factors! What's sad is that some of the houses wouldn't have been damaged as they were if they were bolted to their foundations. The housing developers cheated and didn't use lag bolts on these houses that were flattened and pushed off their foundations.
Tornados are interesting critters. I've seen them not only on video but also in real life. I witnessed the birth of one in Roger Mills County, OK that started as a couple of whisps of dirt in a field and turned into a raging funnel that took off over us and flew on to knock out a house! It squished the house like a box being stepped on by a toddler.
If you look at that video, you'll notice that the train was on a trestle. That can also add to the damage due to the winds lifting up the freight cars while on the bridge.
A number of years ago, a freight was hit near Kearny, NE. The tornado and subsequent rear flank down draft (RFD) winds were strong enough to knock over some tank cars on a siding. The RFD winds are the winds that follow behind the tornado or a supercell thunderstorm like the wake behind a boat as the water rushes in behind as boat passes. The RFD winds can be just as or more damaging than a tornado, and I've witnessed and seen them as high as 120 mph / 193 kph.
runnerup1080
Banned
Kinzua Viaduct
Edit: I missed you asking about a locomotive. anyway...
I heard that the bridge seen in the photo is apart of the line for a (now defunct) tourist railway
Last edited:
Yup. After the bridge was destroyed, the Knox and Kane closed. The line was a small short line that served the glass industry that was located in the valley but became a tourist line after that industry faded away. When the bridge was destroyed, that put them out of business.
There was a tornado in South Moravia (Czech Republic) in 2021, which destroyed some railway installations.
I am linking the German version of Wikipedia, because it has more pictures: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tornado_in_Südmähren_2021 . The Czech one has much more pictures.
And a link, referring to the damage at the railway installations: https://www.lok-report.de/news/euro...nach-verheerenden-unwettern-unterbrochen.html
Regards
Swordfish
I am linking the German version of Wikipedia, because it has more pictures: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tornado_in_Südmähren_2021 . The Czech one has much more pictures.
And a link, referring to the damage at the railway installations: https://www.lok-report.de/news/euro...nach-verheerenden-unwettern-unterbrochen.html
Regards
Swordfish
In the spring of 2009, I was out Storm Chasing again with Silver Lining Tours www.silverliningtours.com who I did all my chasing with from 2008 thru 2013 and again in 2016. We were up in Nebraska and South Dakota where we saw some very large supercells and some tornadoes. The BNSF was present across the area and in one location, all the freights came to a stop to wait out the storms prior to resuming operation. In another location, they weren't so lucky. An empty grain train was toppled over on its side from a "small" tornado. The locomotives were still upright but about a dozen grain hoppers were on their sides. Looking at the damage, it was as if a cat walked across a model railroad and flipped the hoppers over with its paws. This wasn't the only damage caused by this EF1 or EF2 tornado. A signal cabinet was trashed as if someone stomped on it and there some tank cars rolled over on their sides in the yard.
When I mention supercells and severe storms. It's these that can produce the big tornados that can easily flip over a train.
https://youtu.be/Amkt_KHJP3A
I've seen storms similar to these in real life. The video is sped up substantially, FYI.
https://youtu.be/Amkt_KHJP3A
I've seen storms similar to these in real life. The video is sped up substantially, FYI.
So the tornado was the main reason for them shutting down because crossing the bridge was the main attraction? The Chinese locomotive went to the Valley Railroad in Essex, CT where it was redone into a New Haven steam locomotive with a new cab. #38 went to the Everett Railroad. Coaches were sold or scrapped. There was a fire in the Kane enginehouse I read that damaged both steam locomotives but nothing that isn't repairable. The Valley crew did a complete rebuild of the Chinese locomotive. The tourist operation opened in 1987 and there were two lengths, 96 mile round trip from Marienville, and 32 mile round trip from Kane. There were also a few rare mileage excursions south of Marienville toward Lucinda, Clarion, etc. The Oil Creek and Titusville which started in 1986 on a former PRR line is still running tourist trains though and they have a caboose motel at the Titusville station and they also haul freight to service industries in Titusville.
Yeah, I had read that in Trains Magazine ages ago about the tornado taking out the bridge and ending their tourist attraction. I have a feeling it was more than that, but that main attraction brought in a lot of revenue for them. The region in that part of Pennsylvania really got hammered over the years as industries pulled out and coal mines dried up. The old Franklin and Clarion is another line that's gone now too. I'm glad to hear that there's still a bit of business on a portion of the line.
Looking at topo maps and Google Earth, the Franklin and Clarion would make a nice little route to build some day along with the Knox and Kane. Maybe that can be another project but there's that thing called time that gets in the way outside of the usual forever moving goalposts in Trainz.