Study on passenger train vehicle fires

The fire aspects of passenger train vehicles for two of the railway lines (labelled as A and B) in Hong Kong are discussed. Train compartments of railway line A are of enclosed construction whereas vehicles in railway line B are opened to each other. Reference is made to the smoke filling process as this is identified to be the most important aspect in a fire. Simulations with the fire model ASET were performed in train vehicles for railway line A to study the probable smoke temperature and smoke layer interface height for different fires. The fire zone model CFAST and the CORRIDOR menu of the fire protection engineers' tool FPEtool are used to study the fire environment in the train vehicles for railway line B. Results confirmed that smoke is the key factor to consider. Recommendations for providing better fire protection design and fire safety management are made.