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Message 1394564 - Posted: 25 Jul 2013, 4:52:53 UTC

Pilgrims used to walk to Santiago de Compostela (El Camino de Santiago). But you need time and good legs. Now they can take a train. I feel very sad.
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Message 1394566 - Posted: 25 Jul 2013, 5:06:23 UTC - in response to Message 1394531.  

I've read of a train accident in Spain, near Santiago de Compostela in Galicia. More than 60 dead.
Tullio

Terrible tragedy. One of the carriages isn't even on the railroad property it ended up in the middle of a street. Another is so badly mangled you can't tell what it is. From the photos I'm sure everyone on the train will have at least some injuries.

Reports are it was high speed. Speeds of up to 310 km/h (193 mph). Don't know how fast it was going at the time.

ke = 1/2 * m * v^2

How fast is too fast?

Perhaps this will be the wake up call that the carriages need considerably more crash safety built into them as we have done with automobiles. Crumple and crush zones, energy absorption, seat belts, air bags, roll cages, whatever it takes.

Must have been shoddy maintenance of the track then, the French haven't had such problems, nor has Germany.
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Message 1394570 - Posted: 25 Jul 2013, 5:24:14 UTC

Don't speculate on the cause of the crash, wait until there is a public announcement.
As to structural safety, yes trains could be built to similar standards as cars, with all the secondary safety features they have, but the mass would increase dramatically, as would the restrictions on passenger movement, luggage stowage etc. Actually to apply car structural standards to trains would be of no benefit, as it would place emphasis on the wrong areas. Looking at the available pictures it would appear that much of the damage, and so casualties, is the result of carriages hitting the bridge wing walls and pillars, which are pretty solid lumps of concrete (drive you car into a modern motorway bridge at 300kph and see what it looks like - no, get a crash dummy to do the driving, you probably wouldn't survive)
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Message 1394580 - Posted: 25 Jul 2013, 6:21:37 UTC

France had a recent accident at Bretigny-sur-Orge on July 12, with 6 dead. But Google train accidents and see there are many of them worldwide.
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Message 1394655 - Posted: 25 Jul 2013, 12:31:46 UTC

Idiots jumping train barriers is just natural selection in action. Since first-world humans don't tend to get eaten by predators or die of cold over winter these days they had to improvise.

A good solution would be to fit trains with cow catchers to scoop the car out of the way, that way the train doesn't get held up and block the line inconveniencing everyone else.
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Message 1394656 - Posted: 25 Jul 2013, 12:36:39 UTC

It looks like the train was going at 180 km/h where it should have gone at 80 km/h. The result is obvious.
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Message 1394669 - Posted: 25 Jul 2013, 13:23:48 UTC

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Message 1394683 - Posted: 25 Jul 2013, 14:28:02 UTC - in response to Message 1394669.  

I saw the video of the Spanish Passenger train on TV, something wasn't right, that's for sure. Where it happened has had terrorist activity from some Basques for years wanting an independent country carved out of Spain and part of France too and that's a fact. Now unlike here in the US, the railroad ties in Europe from what I've read use bolts and large nuts to hold the rail to what's known as a fish plate, which holds the rail to the ties, here in the US, railroads use spikes on wooden ties, those spikes are about 5"-6" long instead of bolts, their harder to remove than bolts/nuts, as long as the ties are fresh, most class 1 railroads in the US try and keep their MOW operations on the move replacing rail and ties nearly all the time, but they have a lot of track to maintain and the rails really take a beating cause of all the stress put on them cause of all the trains going over the rails. I can't say much about the smaller railroads, some have terrible track conditions and so move at really slow speeds to keep from derailing their trains due to a lack of maintenance, which for them isn't cheap or inexpensive, but that's beyond My knowledge. Some track today is actually replaced as a single piece, it's called panel track, if you've ever seen model railroad sectional track, then you've seen panel track that some railroads have used.
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Message 1394745 - Posted: 25 Jul 2013, 15:45:08 UTC - in response to Message 1394655.  

A good solution would be to fit trains with cow catchers to scoop the car out of the way, that way the train doesn't get held up and block the line inconveniencing everyone else.

Nice idea, but it doesn't work in practice. The vehicle tends to get hung up on something and crushed rather than thrown out of the way.

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Message 1394756 - Posted: 25 Jul 2013, 16:09:09 UTC - in response to Message 1394531.  

Reports are it was high speed. Speeds of up to 310 km/h (193 mph). Don't know how fast it was going at the time.

ke = 1/2 * m * v^2

How fast is too fast?

As mentioned, it was going 180 when it should have been going 80. The driver knew he was going too fast and talked about it on the radio. No reason for that speed has been given, that I've heard.

Perhaps this will be the wake up call that the carriages need considerably more crash safety built into them as we have done with automobiles. Crumple and crush zones, energy absorption, seat belts, air bags, roll cages, whatever it takes.

America has considerably higher standards for crash safety than most of the world. This is mainly due to passenger trains running on the same tracks as freight: the theory is that you need a heavier passenger car to stand up to a collision with a freight train. The high speed trains being designed for California will be restricted to normal speed when on shared tracks and only be allowed their maximum speed on their private high speed right of way; the reason for this does include the track construction and maintenance standards, but also has to do with collision strength. Similarly, where urban light rail systems share tracks with freight railroads (such as San Diego), they are not allowed to be on the track at the same time; the freight usually has to do its work at night when the light rail system is shut down.

These higher standards are part of the reason HSR will be so expensive in the US. We can't just take a European or Asian train and plunk it down on our rails, even with a few tweaks. It needs major design changes to meet our standards. This need to almost "reinvent the wheel" drives up the costs, not to mention actual higher production costs for the additional steel, and the extra fuel to move it at high speed. There is also a movement toward crumple zones rather than strictly relying on crush resistance alone.

High speed rail advocates prefer collision avoidance with automated safety systems over increasing the crash standards. It will be interesting to see why the train in Spain was even able to go at more than double its allowed speed.

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Message 1394758 - Posted: 25 Jul 2013, 16:23:07 UTC - in response to Message 1394756.  

Reports are it was high speed. Speeds of up to 310 km/h (193 mph). Don't know how fast it was going at the time.

ke = 1/2 * m * v^2

How fast is too fast?

As mentioned, it was going 180 when it should have been going 80. The driver knew he was going too fast and talked about it on the radio. No reason for that speed has been given, that I've heard.

Perhaps this will be the wake up call that the carriages need considerably more crash safety built into them as we have done with automobiles. Crumple and crush zones, energy absorption, seat belts, air bags, roll cages, whatever it takes.

America has considerably higher standards for crash safety than most of the world. This is mainly due to passenger trains running on the same tracks as freight: the theory is that you need a heavier passenger car to stand up to a collision with a freight train. The high speed trains being designed for California will be restricted to normal speed when on shared tracks and only be allowed their maximum speed on their private high speed right of way; the reason for this does include the track construction and maintenance standards, but also has to do with collision strength. Similarly, where urban light rail systems share tracks with freight railroads (such as San Diego), they are not allowed to be on the track at the same time; the freight usually has to do its work at night when the light rail system is shut down.

These higher standards are part of the reason HSR will be so expensive in the US. We can't just take a European or Asian train and plunk it down on our rails, even with a few tweaks. It needs major design changes to meet our standards. This need to almost "reinvent the wheel" drives up the costs, not to mention actual higher production costs for the additional steel, and the extra fuel to move it at high speed. There is also a movement toward crumple zones rather than strictly relying on crush resistance alone.

High speed rail advocates prefer collision avoidance with automated safety systems over increasing the crash standards. It will be interesting to see why the train in Spain was even able to go at more than double its allowed speed.

Some think and have asked elsewhere, why is it so expensive? You just explained it, at least partly, the rest devolves to labor costs, the value of the US Dollar vs other currencies, the cost of materials, lawsuits/lawyers(thrown in for good measure by Me) and the cost of land(if any cost for land as some land is Government owned or is held in trust for the people of the USA), the US spends Billions of dollars on interstate highway construction per year and/or maintenance every year and an unknown amount on airport construction and maintenance, plus the airways are tightly controlled when it comes to airliners and is pretty full, the radar screens can only hold so much detail and aircraft cause of in flight safety concerns and that all costs real money, and yet some don't want to spend Government money on infrastructure with private contractors which would create jobs...
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Message 1394760 - Posted: 25 Jul 2013, 16:34:34 UTC - in response to Message 1394683.  

I saw the video of the Spanish Passenger train on TV, something wasn't right, that's for sure. Where it happened has had terrorist activity from some Basques for years wanting an independent country carved out of Spain and part of France too and that's a fact.

I just heard terrorism has been ruled out.

Now unlike here in the US, the railroad ties in Europe from what I've read use bolts and large nuts to hold the rail to what's known as a fish plate, which holds the rail to the ties, here in the US, railroads use spikes on wooden ties, those spikes are about 5"-6" long instead of bolts, their harder to remove than bolts/nuts, as long as the ties are fresh, most class 1 railroads in the US try and keep their MOW operations on the move replacing rail and ties nearly all the time, but they have a lot of track to maintain and the rails really take a beating cause of all the stress put on them cause of all the trains going over the rails. I can't say much about the smaller railroads, some have terrible track conditions and so move at really slow speeds to keep from derailing their trains due to a lack of maintenance, which for them isn't cheap or inexpensive, but that's beyond My knowledge. Some track today is actually replaced as a single piece, it's called panel track, if you've ever seen model railroad sectional track, then you've seen panel track that some railroads have used.

US railroads have fairly recently gone to screws as well. I would expect them to actually hold better than spikes because of their threads. For high performance and lower maintenance, concrete ties are sometimes used. This is mostly for high speed passenger, but sometimes the freight railroads use them in critical areas, such as sharp curves or high-volume lines. Quality control with the manufacture of concrete ties has been a problem. Amtrak has had to replace miles of them that failed prematurely, and sued the maker. Union Pacific installed defective concrete ties on the Chicago-St. Louis route and replaced them a year later because they *might* fail.

Most tracks you see are in maintenance classes, I believe 1 through 5. Federal standards determine the minimum maintenance requirements for each class (although a railroad can call a track a lower class if it wants to; even a brand new track that's up to class 5 can be called class 1 if the company wants to). The classes in turn determine the maximum allowable speed on that track. (The type of traffic control system in use -- CTC, automatic block signals, Track Warrant Control, etc. -- also figures into what class a track is.) At the bottom end, below class 1, is "exempted" track, which is pretty crappy, with speeds of 10 mph or less. For high speed, there is also class 6. Most of Amtrak's Northeast Corridor is class 6 (the exceptions being where they can't go fast anyway). I'll try to find a web page to point you to that explains this. (There is a page about track on wikipedia, but I didn't find one specifically about maintenance classes.)

Note that track classes are not related to railroad classes, which are based on revenue. There are 7 Class 1 railroads in the US, plus Amtrak.

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Message 1394785 - Posted: 25 Jul 2013, 17:24:04 UTC
Last modified: 25 Jul 2013, 17:32:36 UTC

A fishplate is used to join the lengths of track together.



But most new track these days is welded using thermite in Europe.

track welding

And most sleepers (ties) are concrete.
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Message 1394791 - Posted: 25 Jul 2013, 17:34:44 UTC - in response to Message 1394756.  

High speed rail advocates prefer collision avoidance with automated safety systems over increasing the crash standards. It will be interesting to see why the train in Spain was even able to go at more than double its allowed speed.


BBC interview with train expert, who is baffled
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Message 1394793 - Posted: 25 Jul 2013, 17:40:29 UTC - in response to Message 1394791.  

High speed rail advocates prefer collision avoidance with automated safety systems over increasing the crash standards. It will be interesting to see why the train in Spain was even able to go at more than double its allowed speed.


BBC interview with train expert, who is baffled

Baffling indeed.

My '90 Olds Cierra quits winding at about 95 mph.
No more HP. The tach says it should go further, but reality says nope.
It's all done at 95. Windage and such.
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Message 1394940 - Posted: 25 Jul 2013, 23:18:25 UTC - in response to Message 1394793.  

It seems that the crashed Spanish train's speed indicator was showing 190km/h after the crash and video evidence is suggesting somewhere between 160-180km/h.

The big question is why was the driver of the train doing that speed in a restricted 80km/h zone.

Cheers.
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Message 1394946 - Posted: 25 Jul 2013, 23:28:07 UTC - in response to Message 1394793.  

High speed rail advocates prefer collision avoidance with automated safety systems over increasing the crash standards. It will be interesting to see why the train in Spain was even able to go at more than double its allowed speed.


BBC interview with train expert, who is baffled

Baffling indeed.

My '90 Olds Cierra quits winding at about 95 mph.
No more HP. The tach says it should go further, but reality says nope.
It's all done at 95. Windage and such.

I didn't mean able in that sense. I'm sure the train is quite able to go at least as fast as it was in fact going.* The question is why a safety system didn't kick in to slow or stop it when it approached a speed restriction.

FWIW, I found out last fall that my '08 Chevy Trailblazer can go at least 90. I didn't try to do more than that. Didn't feel like meeting one of Indiana's finest.


*The current world speed record for conventional steel wheel on steel rail, set by a specially modified French TGV, is what it is not because the train maxed out but because the driver had to slow for a curve he was approaching.

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Message 1394986 - Posted: 26 Jul 2013, 0:15:35 UTC - in response to Message 1394946.  

High speed rail advocates prefer collision avoidance with automated safety systems over increasing the crash standards. It will be interesting to see why the train in Spain was even able to go at more than double its allowed speed.


BBC interview with train expert, who is baffled

Baffling indeed.

My '90 Olds Cierra quits winding at about 95 mph.
No more HP. The tach says it should go further, but reality says nope.
It's all done at 95. Windage and such.

I didn't mean able in that sense. I'm sure the train is quite able to go at least as fast as it was in fact going.* The question is why a safety system didn't kick in to slow or stop it when it approached a speed restriction.

FWIW, I found out last fall that my '08 Chevy Trailblazer can go at least 90. I didn't try to do more than that. Didn't feel like meeting one of Indiana's finest.


*The current world speed record for conventional steel wheel on steel rail, set by a specially modified French TGV, is what it is not because the train maxed out but because the driver had to slow for a curve he was approaching.

I watched that on youtube, that's quite a feat for the TGV.

My car is limited to 105Mph by the present computer, it's a 1999 Ford Escort zx2 sport Hot Coupe and it was only made for 2 years, if I had the s/r computer, that top speed wouldn't be 105Mph...
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Message 1395060 - Posted: 26 Jul 2013, 5:10:04 UTC

Its not "quite a feat for the TGV", on a few grounds, first its not a TGV its a Talgo S730, second its top speed is 250kph, so 190kph is just romping a long nicely. The speed limit at the location of the accident is only 80kph. Its also worth noting that this is a new section of track, built to avoid an even sharper curve.
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Message 1395066 - Posted: 26 Jul 2013, 5:36:05 UTC - in response to Message 1395060.  
Last modified: 26 Jul 2013, 5:39:21 UTC

Its not "quite a feat for the TGV", on a few grounds, first its not a TGV its a Talgo S730, second its top speed is 250kph, so 190kph is just romping a long nicely. The speed limit at the location of the accident is only 80kph. Its also worth noting that this is a new section of track, built to avoid an even sharper curve.

I was commenting about the French HSR speed record of 574.8kph or 357mph(NY Times) Rob, the French used a modified TGV, not a Talgo also ran...

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