Terrible wreck during a very busy holiday time. Peter

Very tragic and disturbing,my sympathy is with the victims and their families.
All we do in life holds a certain risk,even sitting at home holds the risk of a plane crashing on your house,we are living close to the airport of Rotterdam and a lot of landing planes pass over our area,also at night.
Sitting in a train is no different,there comes a day you just have bad luck,knowing that in general our transport systems are very safe.
The cause of the crash could be various,ranging from a broken axle to miscommunication about the allowed speed.
Despite of electronic systems a lot of communication is still on paper or expressed verbally.
Only recently a Dutch train driver drove a train with loaded chemical tank cars from Rotterdam to Antwerp,driving at 100 km/h where only 40 km/h was allowed,the train derailed and some cars burst open,results were disastreous,innocent people killed in their sleep.

Over the next hour we will be travelling by train to Middelburg for the weekend.
I am not scared.

It is a familiar story all over the world.. When times are hard, maintenance is the first thing that is cut..

It is a shame that the decision makers are not the victims of their own cuts..

My old CEO told us a story about a company (I think that it was du Pont).. There used to be lots of accidents in the factory making explosives - so it was decided to move the management and their families closer to the factories. Amazingly, there was a huge improvement in the standard of safety after that decision..

The really sad thing is that it takes a tragedy like this, before there is an amazing injection of funds into maintenance..

3.00 PM today the result is: 4 persons were dead. 8 injured persons remain hospitalized, some of them very seriously wounded
.....
At the time of the derailment the train was traveling at 139km / h ..., about 10 km / h below its normal speed. The driver is not to blame, his train was supposed to travel at 150Km/h...
The cause of the derailment seems to be the unstowing of a splice bar on a switch ....but....a fast train passed 20 minutes before without problem.
Switchs are regularly inspected...
The last maintenance visit of this turnout was on July 4th (last week). At this stage of investigation it is said that the inspection team didn't notice anything wrong...nothing was mentionned...

To put speculation aside, the investigation has narrowed the cause of the derailment to a loose 10Kg fishplate jammed into the frog of a point located just before the station ...
They are wondering how 4 huge bolts could loosen/shear all at the same time like that, intentional "vandalism" has not been ruled out ...

6 deaths, 14 injured including 2 in critical condition ...
Experienced train engineer credited with limiting the damage by instinctively setting off all necessary alarms to shut down the site, thus avoiding any other trains colliding into the wreck.

Some video simulations can be seen here (narrative is in French):
http://www.francetvinfo....ine-du-drame_369336.html

Photos of the fishplate published by SNCF below :







Nasty ...

Y

Edited by user 16 July 2013 18:56:01(UTC)  | Reason: spelling : "shear" (thanks jvuye ;)

Yes Jacques,

As you probably know from constant news reports here, and according to the SNCF, that specific fishplate and point were checked 10 days before the crash.

So, three subjects of inquiry (with both technical and legal aspects) are underway:
- Faulty maintenance; badly tightened bolts or insufficient sub-support
- Material fatigue (partly explaining the shearing effect you describe); which theoretically should have been observed by maintenance
- A malicious act

Haven't heard about the vibrations from the underpass ... but many facts are being brought to light in real time with surprises everyday ...
According to the SNCF, facing accusations from all sides of pouring money into TGVs at the expense of standard routes, an accident of this magnitude hasn't happened in over 30 years ... train travel remains safe overall.

As you say, we'll know soon I think.

Y

The train was passing through the points in the trailing direction.(i.e. the lines were converging from the point of view of the train) Points traversed in the trailing direction do not pose any guidance challenges for the wheelsets, and it is common all over the world to pass through them at road speed. Facing points are a different matter, and depending on the type and construction of point there are usually restrictions in place for traversing diverging points in the curved drection. There may or may not be restrictions in place for the "straight through" route.

It would certainly have a very bad impact on travel time and fue economy if trains had to slow down for every point they came across...

Cheers,
Rick

Rick,

You surely must agree with me that not all switches (points) can be passed with high speeds.
On Dutch mainlines it is very uncommon to build in switches which can be passed at high speeds,for obvious reasons.
Even for switches intended to change lanes from say right to left there will be a speed limit in force.

Paul.