damn,
they are right. they DO sound like freight trains 
Seeing that tank car, possibly loaded with a flammable substance, coming toward the locomotive with sparks flying everywhere, was fairly heart-attack inducing.
Anyone know why a video camera would be mounted on a freight train? Security?
And coincidentally, that freight train sounded just like a tornado.
To AuntiePam, maybe it was done for the most expensive episode of Mythbusters ever!
Seriously, I wonder how many people got hurt on that train.
Wow, I misread that one. I was trying to figure out how Toronto could hit a train…
Why would that Pulp Fiction dude need to rob a train?
It was part of a rare outbreak of tornadoes in January. January! :eek:
Sort of. It’s an event recorder generally used in investigation of grade crossing accidents, or other things like running a signal. Each locomotive has one, and is always running. This one just happened to be in the railing unit with the cab pointed to the rear of the train.
They were probably worried about getting hit by a rare January meteor and wanted a record of it.
In other words, while the nature of this accident is unusual, this is pretty much exactly the kind of thing it was mounted there for. Cool!
I saw this and, at first, wasn’t sure it was real. It looked like something from some disaster movie!
Impressive bit of video, and I’m really, really, really, glad I wasn’t on that train!!
For whatever reason, I did not find the video particularly scary or spectacular. I guess I was expecting a train car to be picked up and flung about or something. Seemed a little anti-climactic to me. I’m sorry for the people who got hurt, of course - I’m not trying to downplay the seriousness.
This video is of a train running from a tornado - no wreck, thankfully. I never had thought about trains and tornadoes, but if you’re on a train you’re kind of stuck, aren’t you?
Who else clicked on this thread thinking it was going to be about the aircraft called the Tornado?
OK, maybe it’s 'cause I used to work for a railroad and know the masses involved, but, I for one thought it was pretty impressive. The tornado apparently overturned the first 12 cars behind the locomotive. Empty weight of an average 50-foot freight car is 50-60,000 pounds; if they were loads, each weighed 200-250,000 pounds. Length of the derailed segment, assuming 50-foot cars: about 600 feet, give or take.
The derailed cars were lifted enough by the wind that they apparently left the track without significantly damaging the track structure. The remainder of the train, which might have been anywhere from 30-60 cars or so and appeared to be going at least 30mph, stayed on the rails and continued to roll under its own momentum. The brakes were most likely set in emergency, as the air lines would have parted during the derailment, and the lead car lost one of its wheelsets (bogies) by snagging on the derailed cars a couple hundred feet before impact. Despite this, the remainder of the train covered the entire 600-foot stretch cleared by the derailed cars, and was still going at a good clip when it slammed into the now-stopped locomotives.
Lotta force there. As I said, I was impressed.