Spanish Train Wreck
Apparently caused by horribly excessive speeding:
One of the drivers was trapped in his cabin and told the railway station by radio that the train entered the bend at 190 kilometres per hour (120 mph), reported newspaper El Pais.
The speed limit on that section of track is 80km/h (50mph).
‘We’re only human! We’re only human!’ he told the station, the newspaper said, citing sources close to the investigation. ‘I hope there are no dead, because this will fall on my conscience.’
At last count the number of dead was 78.
Video of the crash seems to corroborate the theory that high speed caused the accident:
yeah we’re gonna need you to be a lil more careful than that but high speed rail is still the future
that’s what food stamp says and he’s super smart about all the tomorrows
happyfeet (8ce051) — 7/25/2013 @ 8:01 amHigh speed rail has led to disatrous crashes in China.
Now we have tw recent crashes that were very much more dangerous than an airplane crash, this one and a previous one of freight train carrying oil in Canada, which destroyed part of a town in Quebec.
Sammy Finkelman (be6791) — 7/25/2013 @ 8:54 amI’m a locomotive engineer and this is my two cents.
It looks like it was a permanent slow. If so, the engineer should have been slowing down out of habit. If it was one that didn’t do that territory very often then he might have been distracted by something (texting, phone call, fatigue or just lost). Who knows what the rules are for being qualified over a territory over there.
I get a 30 day suspension when I go ten mph over the limit on my freight train, but the fastest I can go is 70 on some trains.
BradnSA (69f417) — 7/25/2013 @ 9:25 amLuckily, California’s $100 billion high-speed rail form Bakersfield to Salinas will have no riders, so the crashes won’t be that bad. We’re just building it because we have all that extra money to burn.
And to create a legacy for Governor Moonbeam.
Kevin M (bf8ad7) — 7/25/2013 @ 9:25 amComment by Kevin M (bf8ad7) — 7/25/2013 @ 9:25 am
It doesn’t go to Salinas, but to Modesto.
If you look carefully at the video, you can see the first “revenue” car coming “up” off of the tracks as the train enters the curve, and then pulling the much heavier locomotive off. Too much speed, and not enough “super elevation” since the curve wasn’t designed for that amount of speed.
askeptic (b8ab92) — 7/25/2013 @ 2:26 pmThis one’s going to go down to “pilot error”.
i’m sure glad i don’t have to ride a high speed death train every day just to get to work
i just tootle a few blocks down the road in my scoot scoot
it’s not very daring but we git it done
happyfeet (8ce051) — 7/25/2013 @ 9:03 pmIf they took the idiot, put him in a head vice, chop his head off in La Puerta del Sol, make it prime time, then put it on You Tube ….. guarantee it would be another 100 years before some Union Bozo like him would be so careless.
Creepy Ass Cracka (82aae8) — 7/25/2013 @ 9:40 pmi suspect the most egregious carelessness was on the part of the spaintard legislators what voted to spend a kazillion spaindollars on a death train
happyfeet (8ce051) — 7/25/2013 @ 9:47 pmThere was no reason to allow the possibility of human error for this. A governor to slow down the train as it approached the curve, triggered either by transponders or even mechanical trippers on the track, is very, very old technology. Those poor people.
nk (875f57) — 7/25/2013 @ 10:06 pmtransponders can’t collect a pension though and they certainly can’t pay union dues
transponders are bourgeois
happyfeet (8ce051) — 7/25/2013 @ 10:10 pmTransponders can co-exist with featherbedding, even be close friends actually.
nk (875f57) — 7/25/2013 @ 10:41 pmThere was no reason. (Parse that sentence, giving “reason” every sense of the term.)
nk (875f57) — 7/25/2013 @ 10:42 pmThe trains are equipped with some form of “fail safe” system to keep speed levels within programmed parameters. It has been reported that the system either failed, or was in-operative.
askeptic (2bb434) — 7/25/2013 @ 11:23 pmThe first thing that goes when the budget is tight is maintenance.
Is there a lesson there about the transportation infrastructure of the US?
Nah, we’d never overspend on personnel to the detriment of keeping the system running.
BradnSA
I used to ride freight trains out west… up from SB to Washington (dangerous hobo jungles there), over to Wyoming and down through Utah across Salt Lake (great route), through Las Vegas and down through the broiling barren Mojave into the yard at LA (long ghetto hike there too) and the train crews were nearly always professional and usually courteous.
Several locomotive engineers slowed up a little to let me hop on… got me out of some tough spots.
I will never forget the power and rumble of the locomotives even at idle. I’d hop off at night entering a yard like the one in Oakland to avoid the bulls and hike off to the outbound yard using my ears and the rumble under my feet to get direction.
That and watching out for the amateur black nationalists that were shooting dice in front of the projects that backed up to the tracks. I thought I was going to be killed just for sport. Getting beat for not bringing money… “*boom* little white MF next time bring money you wanna walk through the black nation*boom* Well that worked out OK
I don’t know what was more dangerous… the trains, the hump yards, shifting loads, the other riders (some seriously deranged and dangerous) the bulls… or the hike through the ghetto.
I’d vote:
1. Other riders and hobo jungle
2. Hike through ghetto. Oakland gets the nod for most dangerous.
3. The bulls (they used to be slow but mean. They usually didn’t hit more than 5-6 times but then would dump everything in the backpack out on the curb, kick it about and take away my self defense tools, kick me in the ass and drive away. Which sucked because I had to do the lone white boy hike through the ghetto unarmed. I usually did it with a 3/4 steel pipe up my sleeve. All’s well that ends well.)
Anyway, thanks to you for carrying on the legacy of all the solid men who worked the trains back in the 70’s…
PS I miss the caboose
SteveG (794291) — 7/25/2013 @ 11:26 pmThis train crash, and the nose first plane landing a couple days ago, and the SFO plane crash: all apparently human error. People are getting sloppy in their jobs.
gp (0c542c) — 7/26/2013 @ 5:34 amgp, the human error may very well start way above the operators. Maintenance, as happyfeet and askeptic suggest, or even higher. I have made it a point never to fly on a plane out of JFK for more than twenty years and now I’m thinking LaGuardia too.
nk (875f57) — 7/26/2013 @ 5:45 amWe all screw up as we are only human. Most of the problems come from distractions that range from texting to not paying attention.
The fallout for me from when the commuter train ran into the freight train several years ago led to federal policies about using phones and internet while running the train.
If I am found talking on the phone, texting or using the internet I face a suspension from work as well as a fine from the government. If I am caught a second time I lose my federal security clearance to haul hazmat materials, effectively firing me from my job.
This particular wreck is a big deal because not only are the railroads trying to go to one man crews (which might have led to the Quebec accident), but to fully automatic trains. This will happen at some point, but the technology is years away and it just doesn’t work correctly right now. This accident will just make politicians try to fast track unproven technology.
BradnSA (69f417) — 7/26/2013 @ 12:08 pmThis train driver drove that rouyte about 60 times before. He likes to speed, though, as fast as he is allowed to, and boast about how fast he is going.
The particular stretch of tracks where the crash occured is where the train has to slow down in teh space of les sthan one kilometer, from 200 kilometers an hour to 80 kilometers an hour.
There is a continent wide auutomatic signaling system called the European Rail Traffic Management System, which automatically appliues the brakes if the train is speeding, but the train goes off the system right at that location where it hjas to slow down drastically, and switches to the local Spanish Automatic Braking and Signals Announcement. ERTMS is not typically used in urban areas.
That Spanish system also feautures automatic braking, but relies on electronic beacons to monitor the train’s speed, and none had been installed on that stretch of track!
A spokeswoman for ADIF
Sammy Finkelman (d22d64) — 7/29/2013 @ 9:59 amSpokeswoman for ADIF explained not used when trains enter into urban areas.
Sammy Finkelman (d22d64) — 7/29/2013 @ 9:59 amWSJ Europe update:
The driver was talking on his cell phone…. with a suoperviser: a controller—from the state train company Renfe. Some minutes before the derailment that killed 79 and injured scores more, Mr. Garzon had received a call offering him directions on the route.
And they continued yakking?
Sammy Finkelman (d22d64) — 7/30/2013 @ 12:05 pmFigured it was something like that. Surprised that they communicate like that with only one person in the cab. Things like this are why rail labor is fighting one man crews so hard.
BradnSA (f34a47) — 7/30/2013 @ 3:33 pmTwo more things about the crash:
1) On the audiotape, sounds of paper rustling can be heard – evidentally the driver was consulting a map.
2) The alarm went off 3 times.
Most likely, I would think, the driver paid attention the first time but if so the alarm came too late to help.
Somebody probably didn’t figure out that the standard point at which an alarm would be set would not work there because of the rapid slowdown the train had to make. It was an unusual stretch of tracks – the speed had to be reduced from 200 kilometers to 80 kilometers per hour in a very short distance.
There were no automatic brakes in that set of tracks because belonged to the city system, and it hadn’t been installed there. The European wide system, which the train was coming off, did have automatic brakes when the speed is too great.
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Sammy Finkelman (d22d64) — 8/6/2013 @ 1:44 pm