Violet Town Railway Disaster
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Violet Town Railway Disaster
The Violet Town rail accident, also known as the Southern Aurora disaster, was a railway accident that occurred on 7 February 1969 following the incapacitation of the driver of one of the trains, near the McDiarmids Road crossing, approximately 1 km south of Violet Town, Victoria, Australia. The crash resulted in nine deaths and 117 injuries. Background The ''Southern Aurora'' was an overnight express service between the two largest Australian cities, Melbourne and Sydney. The service began in 1962 with the opening of the North East standard gauge line in Victoria, which enabled direct rail traffic between the two capitals for the first time. Owned and operated jointly by the Victorian Railways (VR) and New South Wales Government Railways (NSWGR), the ''Southern Aurora'' ran in both directions each night with first-class sleeping carriages making up the entire train. Disputes between VR and NSWGR during the design and construction phase of the passenger carriages had ...
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State Library Victoria
State Library Victoria (SLV) is the state library of Victoria, Australia. Located in Melbourne, it was established in 1854 as the Melbourne Public Library, making it Australia's oldest public library and one of the first free libraries in the world. It is also Australia's busiest library and, as of 2018, the world's fourth-most-visited library. The library has remained on the same site in the central business district since it was established fronting Swanston Street, and over time has greatly expanded to now cover a block bounded also by La Trobe, Russell, and Little Lonsdale streets. The library's collection consists of over four million items, which in addition to books includes manuscripts, paintings, maps, photographs and newspapers, with a special focus on material from Victoria, including the diaries of Melbourne founders John Batman and John Pascoe Fawkner, the folios of Captain James Cook, and the armour of Ned Kelly. History 19th century In 1853, the decision to ...
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Crashworthiness
Crashworthiness is the ability of a structure to protect its occupants during an impact. This is commonly tested when investigating the safety of aircraft and vehicles. Depending on the nature of the impact and the vehicle involved, different criteria are used to determine the crashworthiness of the structure. Crashworthiness may be assessed either prospectively, using computer models (e.g., LS-DYNA, PAM-CRASH, MSC Dytran, MADYMO) or experiments, or retrospectively by analyzing crash outcomes. Several criteria are used to assess crashworthiness prospectively, including the deformation patterns of the vehicle structure, the acceleration experienced by the vehicle during an impact, and the probability of injury predicted by human body models. Injury probability is defined using criteria, which are mechanical parameters (e.g., force, acceleration, or deformation) that correlate with injury risk. A common injury criterion is the head impact criterion (HIC). Crashworthiness is asse ...
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Benalla
Benalla is a small city located on the Broken River gateway to the High Country north-eastern region of Victoria, Australia, about north east of the state capital Melbourne. At the the population was 10,822. It is the administrative centre for the Rural City of Benalla local government area. History Prior to the European settlement of Australia, the Benalla region was populated by the Taungurung people, an Indigenous Australian people. A 1906 history recounts that prior to white settlement "as many as 400 blacks would meet together in the vicinity of Benalla to hold a corrobboree". The area was first sighted by Europeans during an expedition of Hamilton Hume and William Hovell in 1824 and was noted as an agricultural settlement called "Swampy". The expedition was followed by that of Major Thomas Mitchell in 1834. Rev. Joseph Docker settled in 1838 creating a pastoral run called ''Benalta Run'', said to be from an Aboriginal word for musk duck. Docker's property was int ...
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Railroad Car
A railroad car, railcar (American and Canadian English), railway wagon, railway carriage, railway truck, railwagon, railcarriage or railtruck (British English and UIC), also called a train car, train wagon, train carriage or train truck, is a vehicle used for the carrying of cargo or passengers on a rail transport system (a railroad/railway). Such cars, when coupled together and hauled by one or more locomotives, form a train. Alternatively, some passenger cars are self-propelled in which case they may be either single railcars or make up multiple units. The term "car" is commonly used by itself in American English when a rail context is implicit. Indian English sometimes uses "bogie" in the same manner, though the term has other meanings in other variants of English. In American English, "railcar" is a generic term for a railway vehicle; in other countries "railcar" refers specifically to a self-propelled, powered, railway vehicle. Although some cars exist for the railroa ...
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Conductor (rail)
A conductor (North American English) or guard (Commonwealth English) is a train crew member responsible for operational and safety duties that do not involve actual operation of the train/locomotive. The ''conductor'' title is most common in North American railway operations, but the role is common worldwide under various job titles. In Commonwealth English, a conductor is also known as guard or train manager. The responsibilities of a conductor or guard typically include the following: * Ensuring that the train follows applicable safety rules and practices * Making sure that the train stays on schedule starting from the stations * Opening and closing power operated doors * Selling and checking tickets, and other customer service duties * Ensuring that any cars and cargo are picked up and dropped off properly * Completing en-route paperwork * Directing the train's movement while operating in reverse * Coupling or uncoupling cars * Assisting with the setting out or picking up o ...
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Fireman (steam Engine)
A fireman, stoker or watertender is a person whose occupation it is to tend the fire for the running of a boiler, heating a building, or powering a steam engine. Much of the job is hard physical labor, such as shoveling fuel, typically coal, into the boiler's firebox. On steam locomotives the title ''fireman'' is usually used, while on steamships and stationary steam engines, such as those driving saw mills, the title is usually ''stoker'' (although the British Merchant Navy did use ''fireman''). The German word ''Heizer'' is equivalent and in Dutch the word ''stoker'' is mostly used too. The United States Navy referred to them as ''watertenders''. Nautical Royal Navy The Royal Navy used the rank structure ordinary stoker, stoker, leading stoker, stoker petty officer and chief stoker. The non-substantive (trade) badge for stokers was a ship's propeller. Stoker remains the colloquial term used to refer to a marine engineering rating, despite the decommissioning of the la ...
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Centralized Traffic Control
Centralized traffic control (CTC) is a form of railway signalling that originated in North America. CTC consolidates train routing decisions that were previously carried out by local signal operators or the train crews themselves. The system consists of a centralized train dispatcher's office that controls railroad interlockings and traffic flows in portions of the rail system designated as CTC territory. One hallmark of CTC is a control panel with a graphical depiction of the railroad. On this panel, the dispatcher can keep track of trains' locations across the territory that the dispatcher controls. Larger railroads may have multiple dispatcher's offices and even multiple dispatchers for each operating division. These offices are usually located near the busiest yards or stations, and their operational qualities can be compared to air traffic towers. Background Key to the concept of CTC is the notion of ''traffic control'' as it applies to railroads. Trains moving in opposite ...
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Railroad Switch
A railroad switch (), turnout, or ''set ofpoints () is a mechanical installation enabling railway trains to be guided from one track to another, such as at a railway junction or where a spur or siding branches off. The most common type of switch consists of a pair of linked tapering rails, known as ''points'' (''switch rails'' or ''point blades''), lying between the diverging outer rails (the ''stock rails''). These points can be moved laterally into one of two positions to direct a train coming from the point blades toward the straight path or the diverging path. A train moving from the narrow end toward the point blades (i.e. it will be directed to one of the two paths, depending on the position of the points) is said to be executing a ''facing-point movement''. For many types of switch, a train coming from either of the converging directions will pass through the switch regardless of the position of the points, as the vehicle's wheels will force the points to move. ...
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Railway Signalling
Railway signalling (), also called railroad signaling (), is a system used to control the movement of railway traffic. Trains move on fixed rails, making them uniquely susceptible to collision. This susceptibility is exacerbated by the enormous weight and inertia of a train, which makes it difficult to quickly stop when encountering an obstacle. In the UK, the Regulation of Railways Act 1889 introduced a series of requirements on matters such as the implementation of interlocked block signalling and other safety measures as a direct result of the Armagh rail disaster in that year. Most forms of train control involve movement authority being passed from those responsible for each section of a rail network (e.g. a signalman or stationmaster) to the train crew. The set of rules and the physical equipment used to accomplish this determine what is known as the ''method of working'' (UK), ''method of operation'' (US) or ''safeworking'' (Aus.). Not all these methods require the use ...
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Albury
Albury () is a major regional city in New South Wales, Australia. It is located on the Hume Highway and the northern side of the Murray River. Albury is the seat of local government for the council area which also bears the city's name – the City of Albury. It is on the Victoria-New South Wales border. Albury has an urban population of 49,172 and is separated from its twin city in Victoria, Wodonga, by the Murray River. Together, the two cities form an urban area with a population of 93,603 at June 2018. Estimated resident population, 30 June 2018. It is from the state capital Sydney and from the Victorian capital Melbourne. Said to be named after a village in England, Albury developed as a major transport link between New South Wales and Victoria and was proclaimed a city in 1946. History The Wiradjuri people were the first known humans to occupy the area, (Wiradjuri northern dialect pronunciation iraːjd̪uːraj or Wirraayjuurray people (Wiradjuri southern dialect pr ...
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Passing Loop
A passing loop (UK usage) or passing siding (North America) (also called a crossing loop, crossing place, refuge loop or, colloquially, a hole) is a place on a single line railway or tramway, often located at or near a station, where trains or trams travelling in opposite directions can pass each other. Trains/trams going in the same direction can also overtake, provided that the signalling arrangement allows it. A passing loop is double-ended and connected to the main track at both ends, though a dead end siding known as a refuge siding, which is much less convenient, can be used. A similar arrangement is used on the gauntlet track of cable railways and funiculars, and in passing places on single-track roads. Ideally, the loop should be longer than all trains needing to cross at that point. Unless the loop is of sufficient length to be dynamic, the first train to arrive must stop or move very slowly, while the second to arrive may pass at speed. If one train is too long for ...
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Freight Railways In Melbourne
The rail network of Melbourne, Australia, has a significant number of railway lines and yards serving freight traffic. Rail transport in Victoria is heavily focused on Melbourne, and, as a consequence, much of the state's rail freight passes through the metropolitan network. The lines are of two gauges: and . Because the standard gauge lines were developed to facilitate interstate freight decades after the establishment of the original broad gauge network, they are used almost exclusively by freight services; while some broad gauge lines are used exclusively for freight, but many are shared with the suburban and regional passenger networks operated by Metro Trains Melbourne and V/Line respectively. Although a limited number of electric freight services historically operated in the metropolitan area, a lack of electrical infrastructure on Victorian mainlines means that no freight services in Melbourne now use electric traction, despite some services operating over the electri ...
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