Railworks America

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... stela.html

The Renfre Talgo - note the one picture where the prime mover and generator is up on the bank.

Current hypothesis is that the train was traveling twice the legal speed limit and it was an accident? To me if you're going twice the speed limit, that's quite deliberate. I'm pretty sure there would be a frantic call to the dispatcher if the train was doing twice the speed limit unintentionally.

Sad day.

Wonder where they are in the after life.

dfcfu342 wrote:Current hypothesis is that the train was traveling twice the legal speed limit and it was an accident? To me if you're going twice the speed limit, that's quite deliberate. I'm pretty sure there would be a frantic call to the dispatcher if the train was doing twice the speed limit unintentionally.

Murder-Suicide by train? I'm sure that would be a first of it's kind!

Because of their high speed, this type of passenger trail derailment is far less survivable.

dfcfu342 wrote:Current hypothesis is that the train was traveling twice the legal speed limit and it was an accident? To me if you're going twice the speed limit, that's quite deliberate. I'm pretty sure there would be a frantic call to the dispatcher if the train was doing twice the speed limit unintentionally.

No ATC with automatic emergency application on overspeed on this classic line?

On a side note, with Hamburg-Hannover out today, the RSC blurb doesn't mention the Meschede crash in which a 100 people died when an ICE1 carriage lost a tire at 120 MpH.
The wheel's thread/tire broke and the whole train back from there derailed and rammed a bridge on the next switch. The carriages piled up and were buried under the bridge's remains.
Emergeny forces weren't able to open the carriages with disc cutters due to their composite manufacture and it also came to light that glueing a carbody to an underframe made the whole superstructure come off.

There is actually excellent (strange use of the word though) video footage of this crash occurring, I've just seen it on Sky News's website. The cause of the derailment is clearly a vast overspeed, easily discernible by the naked eye given the reported speed restriction of 50mph / 80km/h around this curve. The reason for this vast overspeed is where the investigation needs to lie.

What a tragedy.

dfcfu342 wrote:Current hypothesis is that the train was traveling twice the legal speed limit and it was an accident? To me if you're going twice the speed limit, that's quite deliberate. ...

It could also be a case of egregious negligence, as it was with the Chase, MD, wreck, when the engineer of a Conrail train decided to pull out in front of an oncoming Amtrak express train. The Conrail engineer was quite stoned at the time, which was a violation Rule G, a rule that had been well known to generations of U.S. railroaders for at least three quarters of a century, and which apparently was completely unknown to the politicians and regulators who were given a great deal of airtime to posture about it. Likewise, is could have been case of "distracted driving," such as we recently saw in the Chatsworth wreck: the current range of electronic entertainment and communications devices, which make Dick Tracy's two-way wrist TV look like a Cracker Jack toy, can have deadly consequences when used in the wrong place and time.

If, in fact, the train was moving at double the track speed - and from the condition of the wreck, it's a very believable hypothesis - it is certainly a testament to the stability and the ride quality of the current generation of Talgo stock that he train stayed on the rails that long. It is also a testament to the solid construction of these sets that there was as little damage to them as there apparently was, based on what I've seen from the published photos, apart from the two cars that caught fire. While I agree that a safety device with an automatic brake application on overspeed would be a good idea, I can tell you from experience that any safety system can be defeated by somebody who is determined enough. I sometimes wonder whether the increasing sophistication of safety systems hasn't made it easier for less-disciplined personnel to qualify as operators; and having been in train service with the lives and safety of several hundred people having been my responsibility, I can tell you that this prospect makes me profoundly uncomfortable. At some point, the industry is going to have to come to terms with the human factor, and at some point, the regulatory and political sectors are going to have to back them up on this, even though more layers of more expensive safety technology look more impressive on the sound byte of the night.

_o_OOOO_oo-Kanawha wrote:On a side note, with Hamburg-Hannover out today, the RSC blurb doesn't mention the Meschede crash in which a 100 people died when an ICE1 carriage lost a tire at 120 MpH.

I think it would of been inappropriate if they did mention it. No disrespect to those who died, but I don't see the need to bring up such a tragic event with the release of a train simulator route.

johnmckenzie wrote:There is actually excellent (strange use of the word though) video footage of this crash occurring, I've just seen it on Sky News's website. The cause of the derailment is clearly a vast overspeed, easily discernible by the naked eye given the reported speed restriction of 50mph / 80km/h around this curve. The reason for this vast overspeed is where the investigation needs to lie.

What a tragedy.

I've looked at that footage several times, if you watch the first carrige, it starts up into the air before the turn.... It appears to be overrunning the engine as though the engine was in hard braking. of course, with the rear wheelset off the tracks, it derailed.