If you were in a government Cyber-warning center

Sat Apr 27 15:43:39 UTC 2002

>From: Joel Baker <lucifer at lightbearer.com>

> > C) How deep do you want it? ATT put their #5 TCC cable down 4';
> > no easy task. {But then, we paid for it...}. Will that help
> > when a locomotive lands on it? If it doesn't... it's much harder
> > to fix.
>
>The average locomotive is something above 100 tons. >
>It's also relatively boxy, nearly flat. Flip it over, cause the front bit
>to go do into the dirt, and it will make a *lovely* plow.

When I was working for a company that was majorly laying fiber, I had to 
attend rail safety courses for each rail line that we would be working on.  
I learned a couple interesting things that I thought I'd share...

1) fiber can not be laid in the rail bed.  The bed can not be disturbed.  If 
you think about it, those plows or diggerd disturb the earth, and never 
compact the earth back to the way it was previously.  If this was done in 
the bed, it would weaken it, and cause the rail line to be undermined 
(literally) and possible cause a derailment.  I forget the exact distance it 
had to be from teh outer-most rail, but I believe it was in excess of 20 
feet.

2) train derailments rarely are the direct cause of fiber cuts.  When a 
train derails, it will only distrub the surface of the ground, but rarely 
anything over 6 inches to a foot of soil will be distrubed.

3) fiber cuts are usually a result of the cleanup of a derailment.  If the 
train was carrying chemicals, ot the engine's fuel contaminated the ground, 
the EPA requires that this soil be removed and disposed of in a special 
facility.  Since this can go as far as 6 feet in depth to get all the soil, 
this is where the fiber is usually cut.  If the fiber is not located and 
marked correctly, or the fiber company is not allowed in to mark it 
(dangerous spill), the cleanup crew is likely to dig it up with their 
backhoes.  (gas lines suffer fron the same problems as the fiber)

4) Pole mounted fiber is usually disturbed as a direct result of the 
derailment.  Trin hits the pole, pole goes down.  Not much can be done about 
this.

After taking these courses, I decided that I was not going to volunteer to 
go to any sites located on railways.  Not because of the fiber cuts, but the 
other safety issues.  Luckially, since I was not on the fiber team, or the 
sonet (OC192/DWDM) team, it was not required that I go there.

YMMV

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