# Fatal Talgo Derailment in Spain



## jis

See _At least 20 killed as train derails in Spain_.


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## sitzplatz17

Wow that looks really bad. Thoughts go out to all those involved.

Looks like it was a high-speed AVE train. First time in awhile we've had any really bad high speed train accidents in Europe.


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## Anderson

Sorry to hear about that.

If I had to guess, there's at least a passing chance track condition is found to be at fault. Spain's finances have been a basket case over the last few years, so I would not be shocked if they were shorting the maintenance _a la _Railtrack in the UK back in the 90s.


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## jis

Here is an article from_ Huffington Post:_

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/24/spain-train-derailment-santiago-de-compostela_n_3646813.html

and here is one from _BBC_:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-23442018



sitzplatz17 said:


> Wow that looks really bad. Thoughts go out to all those involved.
> Looks like it was a high-speed AVE train. First time in awhile we've had any really bad high speed train accidents in Europe.


Yes, it looks suspiciously like an AVE Class 102 from the little one can make out from the crumpled mess. But for the life of me, I can't figure out what happened to the other end of the train. It seems to have gone missing. Unless of course it was a loco hauled Talgo, which it does not look like from the little of the power head that you can see at one end in one of the photos.


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## jis

This BBC video: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-23444848 gives us some more information. It was an Alvia not an AVE so Class 120 or 130. And for the first time we can also see where the other end of the train is.


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## DET63

Train Crash In Spain: 'Up To 45 Killed'



> *Witnesses describe the horrific sight of bodies on the tracks after carriages carrying more than 200 people derailed.*
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> The number of people dead after a train derailed in one of Spain's worst rail disasters has reportedly risen as high as 45.
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> Many more are said to be critically injured and Spanish media reported emergency services were attempting to rescue several people still trapped inside carriages.
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> Lines of bodies covered with blankets were seen at the side of the tracks.
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> The crash happened as the train carrying 218 passengers plus crew approached Santiago de Compostela, a popular pilgrimage city in the northwestern region of Galicia.


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## transit54

The NYT is reporting that the train was traveling about double the posted speed for the area - they stated the limit was 50 and the train was operating at 110 MPH:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/25/world/europe/scores-are-feared-dead-as-high-speed-train-derails-in-spain.html?hp

Very unfortunate accident. Obviously much more will come out once a full investigation takes place, but I'd have to imagine that this system would have a speed limiting system much like Amtrak does on the NEC, so I wonder what went wrong here.


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## Swadian Hardcore

That is some serious speeding if it's true. This could also be caused by high heat bending the tracks. Maybe the track was designed for fast speeds but heat restrictions reduced the limit.

Bloomberg reports that at least 77 people are now dead  : http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-24/spanish-train-derailment-kills-45-47-people-feijoo-says-on-rtve.html

This slew of railway accidents, both fatal and non-fatal, could reduce the train's reputation worldwide as a media shock.


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## Paulus

No ERTMS where this occurred, but rather a legacy system called ASFA which, according to a Google translated Spanish wiki page, seems similar to BNSF's ATS.


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## George Harris

Swadian Hardcore said:


> That is some serious speeding if it's true. This could also be caused by high heat bending the tracks. Maybe the track was designed for fast speeds but heat restrictions reduced the limit.
> Bloomberg reports that at least 77 people are now dead  : http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-24/spanish-train-derailment-kills-45-47-people-feijoo-says-on-rtve.html
> 
> This slew of railway accidents, both fatal and non-fatal, could reduce the train's reputation worldwide as a media shock.


A kink would have been visible and talked about,, even if not in any of the published pictures. Inclined to believe serious overspeed. What I find unnerving is how mangled the coaches are from what is apparently overturning without significant collisions with other trains or major structures.


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## Texan Eagle

This article (in Spanish) mentions that the train was going at 180 km/hr on the curve that had a speed restriction of 80 km/hr. I am completely ignorant about Spanish railways, can someone who is more knowledgeable please explain how this is possible? Are there no checks in place in Spain about overspeeding trains, and is overspeeding common in this country?

I know in India which has a relatively technologically-backward rail system compared to rest of the world, even there overspeeding is taken very very seriously and there are never cases of the engineer going more than 5-10 km/hr above posted limit. I find it hard to believe that a European country with high speed rail has no safety checks to detect and prevent overspeeding, or I could be completely wrong in my assumption since we don't know all the details yet. Someone who knows more than me, please explain.


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## wendtsc

Latest is 77 dead, 130 injured. Truly tragic. They obviously aren't yet focused on a cause as rescue and recovery is much more important at this time, but a few things stand out to me. If speed was the cause and the train was traveling at twice the posted limit as some are already claiming, does that mean Spain had no PTC system on this line? Second, 77 dead out of only 222 aboard on a train traveling at 110mph built to European safety standards. So, maybe the FRA is right after all and the rest of the world is wrong. Third, is it possible this crash was much worse than it needed to be because of the Talgo design's reliance on single-axle articulated bogies, further compounded by adjustable axles designed to adjust on the fly to multiple gauges? The Talgo design basically amounts to a high-tech passenger version of a Roadrailer consist which in this case was operating in push mode. Essentially, like pushing a Roadrailer train backwards at 110mph through a sharp curve. Tragedy perhaps made more tragic because of questionable design and operating assumptions.


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## cirdan

George Harris said:


> Swadian Hardcore said:
> 
> 
> 
> That is some serious speeding if it's true. This could also be caused by high heat bending the tracks. Maybe the track was designed for fast speeds but heat restrictions reduced the limit.
> Bloomberg reports that at least 77 people are now dead  : http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-24/spanish-train-derailment-kills-45-47-people-feijoo-says-on-rtve.html
> 
> This slew of railway accidents, both fatal and non-fatal, could reduce the train's reputation worldwide as a media shock.
> 
> 
> 
> A kink would have been visible and talked about,, even if not in any of the published pictures. Inclined to believe serious overspeed. What I find unnerving is how mangled the coaches are from what is apparently overturning without significant collisions with other trains or major structures.
Click to expand...

Actually, many look worse than they really are.

The reason is that these cars have aerodynamic farings which are just bolted on plates of thin metal at the end of the car, and additionally on the roof of the end cars. They are not part of the integral coach structure. So with the exception of the severely damaged cars, the others look worse than they really are as mostly it is these fraings that have come away or been crumpled.


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## jis

This article has a short CCTV segment showing the derailment taking place.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/spain-train-crash-shocking-cctv-2087329

Actually at least two of the cars pretty much got demolished, at least from one end. Way more damage than a few bent farings.

It appears that the drawbars connecting the cars did not hold up too well at all. Too much of the train separated very early. But then going at 100+ through a 50mph curve and derailing at that speed is not your typical derailment either.

BTW, Amtrak did manage to run a fully loaded AEM-7+Amfleets through the Elizabeth curve at close to 100mph once luckily without derailing. After that the approach medium signal protecting the curve was put into effect, thus enforcing the 45mph that is currently in place.



wendtsc said:


> The Talgo design basically amounts to a high-tech passenger version of a Roadrailer consist which in this case was operating in push mode. Essentially, like pushing a Roadrailer train backwards at 110mph through a sharp curve.


RENFE Class 730s which are RENFE Class 130s with their pure electric power heads replaced by dual mode power heads have no "push" mode. There is a power head at each end like in the Acelas. There is a HV bus along the roof that connects the two power heads, thus only one pantograph is up at any time in AC electrified areas. In non-electrified areas the power heads operate as a gensets using MTU diesels installed in the adjacent trailer car to get their power from. The Bo-Bo power heads are manufactured by Bombardier. Max speed on Standard Gauge is 160mph (25kV, 2.4Mw), on Broad Gauge is 140mph (3kV 2.0Mw), both under electric power, and 110mph in Diesel mode (1.8Mw).
BTW, using the length of the train of 600' you can tell from the video, assuming real time clocking that the train was traveling faster than 102mph when it entered the curve


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## sitzplatz17

jis said:


> This BBC video: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-23444848 gives us some more information. It was an Alvia not an AVE so Class 120 or 130. And for the first time we can also see where the other end of the train is.


Thank you, you're correct.



wendtsc said:


> Latest is 77 dead, 130 injured. Truly tragic. They obviously aren't yet focused on a cause as rescue and recovery is much more important at this time, but a few things stand out to me. If speed was the cause and the train was traveling at twice the posted limit as some are already claiming, does that mean Spain had no PTC system on this line? Second, 77 dead out of only 222 aboard on a train traveling at 110mph built to European safety standards. So, maybe the FRA is right after all and the rest of the world is wrong. Third, is it possible this crash was much worse than it needed to be because of the Talgo design's reliance on single-axle articulated bogies, further compounded by adjustable axles designed to adjust on the fly to multiple gauges? The Talgo design basically amounts to a high-tech passenger version of a Roadrailer consist which in this case was operating in push mode. Essentially, like pushing a Roadrailer train backwards at 110mph through a sharp curve. Tragedy perhaps made more tragic because of questionable design and operating assumptions.


77 (now i believe 78) from 222 is an extremely high number. That's over 1/3 of all the passengers on board. I think there will have to be some intense questions asked about the crashworthiness of these train sets.

I'm sure the FRA is keeping a close eye on this as we do have Talgo sets here in the states as well.


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## Paulus

sitzplatz17 said:


> 77 (now i believe 78) from 222 is an extremely high number. That's over 1/3 of all the passengers on board. I think there will have to be some intense questions asked about the crashworthiness of these train sets.


It went into a concrete wall at over 100mph; that's not something you can design against. You can really only beef up the signaling for it (upgrading to ERTMS instead of ASFS in that section for instance) in order to prevent that situation from occurring in the first place. It's worth considering that it's a similar percentage as the Eschede disaster, which was fairly similar (high speed derailment into concrete, though that one was accompanied by the bridge collapsing onto them).


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## afigg

of the stunning CCTV footage of the derailment. The images show what appear to be a walkway at the base of the concrete wall. So it was not just a flat concrete wall that the cars slammed into and were ground against. I suspect the edge of the concrete walkway acted as an cutting edge tearing open the coach cars. Sure looks like a derailment caused purely by excessive speed for the curve.
Terrible accident with a high percentage of fatalities for the number of passengers. One that looks to be all but certain to have long term consequences in automatic speed control and car structural integrity design; at least in Europe, if not elsewhere.


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## the_traveler

What I heard on the news today was that part of the reason is the federal budget. When they put on high(er) screed trains, the tracks were not realigned to allow higher speeds thru the curves. That still does not account for the fact the train attempted the curve at twice the speed limit.

European trains are not built the same as US trains. That is why the ICE and X-2000 had to receive exemptions from the FRA to operate in the US. Even today, the Spanish manufactured Talgos on the Cascades operate under an exemption. (The WI built Talgos are built to US standards, thus no exemption needed.)


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## jis

afigg said:


> Terrible accident with a high percentage of fatalities for the number of passengers. One that looks to be all but certain to have long term consequences in automatic speed control and car structural integrity design; at least in Europe, if not elsewhere.


The thing that struck me is that this curve on which the accident happened, happens to be the first curve after the train leaves the ERTMS protected high speed line. I am surprised that the ERTMS does not enforce a speed reduction before the train leaves the high speed line (then again maybe it does, to the straight line speed limit for the non high speed line). As I recall, on the French LGV TVM430 system on the LGV forces a speed reduction before the train leaves the LGV to classic tracks. At the face of it, it seems like either something failed or something was poorly designed and implemented in the control systems at the edge of the high speed network.

Here is a somewhat well informed article on this matter. On the whole it is somewhat baffling how this happened apparently.


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## Bob Dylan

RIP and Quick healing to the Injured! I didnt read and watch all the various Reports so will ask: Was the Engineer(s) Killed?

I know nothing about safety and engineering standards for foreign equipment so will rely on our Member experts!

On first glance this seems obviously a case of Over Speeding for the Conditions but of course the Official Government Report will someday spell it out in detail! I wonder if the NW Talgos that received the Waivers will be under Closer Scrutiny from the Governments now? The few times I've ridden on them they were a nice Riide but did seem flimsier than Amfleets and Horizions??


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## jis

jimhudson said:


> RIP and Quick healing to the Injured! I didnt read and watch all the various Reports so will ask: Was the Engineer(s) Killed? I know nothing about safety and engineering standards for foreign equipment so will rely on our Member experts!


Both Engineer(s) survived, and have already been interviewed by the accident investigators. They acknowledged that they were over speeding, and according to one report, one of them may be facing some criminal charges.


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## Bob Dylan

jis said:


> jimhudson said:
> 
> 
> 
> RIP and Quick healing to the Injured! I didnt read and watch all the various Reports so will ask: Was the Engineer(s) Killed? I know nothing about safety and engineering standards for foreign equipment so will rely on our Member experts!
> 
> 
> 
> Both Engineer(s) survived, and have already been interviewed by the accident investigators. They acknowledged that they were over speeding, and according to one report, one of them may be facing some criminal charges.
Click to expand...

:hi: Thanks jis! At least they didnt run off after the Crash like that Moron Cruise Ship Captain in the Med and the Bus Drivers used to do in Mexico in the Bad Old Days!


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## George Harris

When looking at this thing, remember that it did not hit this wall square on. It hit a glancing blow as was sliding along it. That makes it difficult to understand the extent of the damage. One posibility is that the power unit plowed into the ballast making it slow much faster greatly increasing the impact of the following lightly built cars. Even with that the damage seems excessive and the death toll all but unbelievable. Another factor is ballasted track itself makes the plowing in of equipment possible which concrete slab does not. Look at the two Shinkansen design trains that derailed in earthquakes on concrete slab track. Both slid to a stop on the concrete, stayed more or less in line and everyone walked off with nothing more than bumps and bruises despite derailing at over 100 mph in both cases.

That is my main concern about the Northwest US Talgos. They are effectively a string of soda cans between a pair of bricks. If they ever hit something at any thing but low speed that is what I suspect the results will look like.


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## SP&S

Oh the humanity! And I do not say that lightly.

I'd still get on a Cascades without hesitation. Our most recent trip started on the LSL then the EB and finally on the Cascades so the comparison is fresh in my mind. The Talgo was a very nice train but it didn't have anywhere near as much there there as either a viewliner or a superliner.

Hopefully some serious safety questions (both preventability and survivability) will be raised and answered because of this.


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## VentureForth

wendtsc said:


> Latest is 77 dead, 130 injured. Truly tragic. They obviously aren't yet focused on a cause as rescue and recovery is much more important at this time, but a few things stand out to me. If speed was the cause and the train was traveling at twice the posted limit as some are already claiming, does that mean Spain had no PTC system on this line? Second, 77 dead out of only 222 aboard on a train traveling at 110mph built to European safety standards. So, maybe the FRA is right after all and the rest of the world is wrong. Third, is it possible this crash was much worse than it needed to be because of the Talgo design's reliance on single-axle articulated bogies, further compounded by adjustable axles designed to adjust on the fly to multiple gauges? The Talgo design basically amounts to a high-tech passenger version of a Roadrailer consist which in this case was operating in push mode. Essentially, like pushing a Roadrailer train backwards at 110mph through a sharp curve. Tragedy perhaps made more tragic because of questionable design and operating assumptions.


If the train was operating within the parameters of the legally set limit for the section, the probability of the crash would have been reduced to almost nothing and if it still crashed, it would have had much less damage.

You can't build something that is invincible. You build it to the parameters established by its operational limitations. Even if this train was going 200 KPH on track that it was allowed to do so, the likelyhood of a crash was limited, and if there was one, it wouldn't be catastrophic because it wouldn't involve the centrifugal failures.


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## jis

George Harris said:


> When looking at this thing, remember that it did not hit this wall square on. It hit a glancing blow as was sliding along it. That makes it difficult to understand the extent of the damage. One posibility is that the power unit plowed into the ballast making it slow much faster greatly increasing the impact of the following lightly built cars. Even with that the damage seems excessive and the death toll all but unbelievable. Another factor is ballasted track itself makes the plowing in of equipment possible which concrete slab does not. Look at the two Shinkansen design trains that derailed in earthquakes on concrete slab track. Both slid to a stop on the concrete, stayed more or less in line and everyone walked off with nothing more than bumps and bruises despite derailing at over 100 mph in both cases.


I must admit that I don't have any working theory on the dynamics of this thing. The front power head and several cars are separated from each other, but in line in order they originally were in the train, sitting in a ditch a ways beyond the bridge. The rear of the train seems to have piled on upon itself with one car having jumped up and landed upright on the road more than 10' above the RoW and reportedly some 40' removed from it!
The power heads are both quite intact. Keep in mind that the cars immediately adjacent to the two power heads have an MTU diesel unit mounted in them to provide power for the train in non electrified territory. This might have played a significant role in that I seem to see the car immediately behind the lead power head is the one that appears to derail first. I suspect the dynamics folks in the safety board will be asking some serious questions about the weight distribution and relative buff strengths of individual units. Sort of the same concerns that you mention in your message George.

I like your characterization of a string of tin cans between a pair of bricks.

Incidentally FRA's new regulation adds energy management to the equation. I am not sure how much it reduces buff strength. But I am sure it does not reduce it below that required by TGVs which is in the range of 800klb the last I heard, which is the similar to that required for Tier 1 equipment in the US. The whole kerfuffle re FRA had to do more with the unrealistic requirements for Tier II, is what I understood. However, I could have understood wrong.


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## wendtsc

George Harris said:


> Swadian Hardcore said:
> 
> 
> 
> That is some serious speeding if it's true. This could also be caused by high heat bending the tracks. Maybe the track was designed for fast speeds but heat restrictions reduced the limit.
> Bloomberg reports that at least 77 people are now dead  : http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-24/spanish-train-derailment-kills-45-47-people-feijoo-says-on-rtve.html
> 
> This slew of railway accidents, both fatal and non-fatal, could reduce the train's reputation worldwide as a media shock.
> 
> 
> 
> A kink would have been visible and talked about,, even if not in any of the published pictures. Inclined to believe serious overspeed. What I find unnerving is how mangled the coaches are from what is apparently overturning without significant collisions with other trains or major structures.
Click to expand...

Its more than a little unnerving, its downright criminal. Talgo convinced WSDOT and Amtrak to push for FRA waivers because they said their Series VI trains were built to EU standards and were therefore safer than traditional Amtrak equipment. Yet, here we have almost a 50% fatality rate and a 100% injury (or worse) rate on a train that derailed at well below its design speed. This clearly shows European trains (talgo in particular) are not safe at speeds of 90mph and over and probably still very deadly at the current 79mph limit set by the FRA. Given how the Talgo coaches crumpled in this accident which was basically just a derailment, imagine if instead this had been a Cascades train in Washington derailing near or colliding with an American freight train on a much more crowded and compressed American ROW. We could easily be talking about death rates of 70 to 80% or higher. 150 deaths would result in the immediate end of all passenger train service in the US. The railroad equivalent of a Three Mile Island.

Given Talgos' safety promises and public ridicule of FRA safety standards, they should be immediately held accountable for the risk they have been placing Amtrak riders at in the Pacific Northwest for the last 20 years. WSDOT and ODOT should immediately demand Series VI Talgos pulled from service and the FRA should demand one be immediately sent to Colorado where it will be subjected to a real "live-fire" crash test to show if the waivers are justified. Likewise, one of the two remaining Series VIII trains parked in Wisconsin should be sent for the same "live-fire" test. If it passes, Talgo should give the remaining Series VIII train to WSDOT as a free replacement for the Series VI train. If the Series VI train fails the test, which we know it will because of this accident, Talgo will replace at their expense all of the remaining Series VI trains in use in the US within 5 years. If the Series VIII (which Talgo insists meet FRA standards) results in fatality rates above 10% in the first 3 coaches or over the entire train at Talgos claimed safe operational speed, then Talgo should be required to replace every Talgo trainset in operation in the US with one that meets every FRA specifiation and at no time will Talgo be allowed to request or negotiate for special design considerations or design compromises. Any time in the design/build process, the FRA requires a change, Talgo will make the exact change the FRA requires without question. If Talgo refuses this agreement, they will be barred from doing any future business in the US in any way, including subcontracting or even as a parts supplier.

Furthermore, while HSR crashes are rare in Europe, given the death tolls when they do happen and considering in almost every case the excessive amount of carnage was the result of design compromises, all European companies hoping to continue to do business in the US will fully meet all FRA requirements without question or compromise. At no time will they be allowed to argue for the substitution of EU or International standards for American FRA safety standards. Given the survivability demonstrated in Germany, the Alps and now Spain, clearly any further attempts to compromise our safety for the sake of using foreign HSR designs must stop now!


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## Swadian Hardcore

According to the YouTube video, it looks like the second unit, I think a power car, derailed first,, while the rest of the train followed behind it. The lead power car was apparently pulled off the tracks when the second unit derailed. The lead power car seems quite intact for such a deadly accident.



wendtsc said:


> George Harris said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Swadian Hardcore said:
> 
> 
> 
> That is some serious speeding if it's true. This could also be caused by high heat bending the tracks. Maybe the track was designed for fast speeds but heat restrictions reduced the limit.
> Bloomberg reports that at least 77 people are now dead  : http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-24/spanish-train-derailment-kills-45-47-people-feijoo-says-on-rtve.html
> 
> This slew of railway accidents, both fatal and non-fatal, could reduce the train's reputation worldwide as a media shock.
> 
> 
> 
> A kink would have been visible and talked about,, even if not in any of the published pictures. Inclined to believe serious overspeed. What I find unnerving is how mangled the coaches are from what is apparently overturning without significant collisions with other trains or major structures.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> Its more than a little unnerving, its downright criminal. Talgo convinced WSDOT and Amtrak to push for FRA waivers because they said their Series VI trains were built to EU standards and were therefore safer than traditional Amtrak equipment. Yet, here we have almost a 50% fatality rate and a 100% injury (or worse) rate on a train that derailed at well below its design speed. This clearly shows European trains (talgo in particular) are not safe at speeds of 90mph and over and probably still very deadly at the current 79mph limit set by the FRA. Given how the Talgo coaches crumpled in this accident which was basically just a derailment, imagine if instead this had been a Cascades train in Washington derailing near or colliding with an American freight train on a much more crowded and compressed American ROW. We could easily be talking about death rates of 70 to 80% or higher. 150 deaths would result in the immediate end of all passenger train service in the US. The railroad equivalent of a Three Mile Island.
> 
> Given Talgos' safety promises and public ridicule of FRA safety standards, they should be immediately held accountable for the risk they have been placing Amtrak riders at in the Pacific Northwest for the last 20 years. WSDOT and ODOT should immediately demand Series VI Talgos pulled from service and the FRA should demand one be immediately sent to Colorado where it will be subjected to a real "live-fire" crash test to show if the waivers are justified. Likewise, one of the two remaining Series VIII trains parked in Wisconsin should be sent for the same "live-fire" test. If it passes, Talgo should give the remaining Series VIII train to WSDOT as a free replacement for the Series VI train. If the Series VI train fails the test, which we know it will because of this accident, Talgo will replace at their expense all of the remaining Series VI trains in use in the US within 5 years. If the Series VIII (which Talgo insists meet FRA standards) results in fatality rates above 10% in the first 3 coaches or over the entire train at Talgos claimed safe operational speed, then Talgo should be required to replace every Talgo trainset in operation in the US with one that meets every FRA specifiation and at no time will Talgo be allowed to request or negotiate for special design considerations or design compromises. Any time in the design/build process, the FRA requires a change, Talgo will make the exact change the FRA requires without question. If Talgo refuses this agreement, they will be barred from doing any future business in the US in any way, including subcontracting or even as a parts supplier.
> 
> Furthermore, while HSR crashes are rare in Europe, given the death tolls when they do happen and considering in almost every case the excessive amount of carnage was the result of design compromises, all European companies hoping to continue to do business in the US will fully meet all FRA requirements without question or compromise. At no time will they be allowed to argue for the substitution of EU or International standards for American FRA safety standards. Given the survivability demonstrated in Germany, the Alps and now Spain, clearly any further attempts to compromise our safety for the sake of using foreign HSR designs must stop now!
Click to expand...

Bravo! I agree that safety should never be compromised for speed, attractiveness, or low operating costs. These safety compromises are not only exibited in European trains, but all types of transport vehicles. This is why I refuse to ride Megabus, and I usually ride the slower old-fashioned IC trains rather than the fast ICE in Germany.

I know accidents are rare, but there's other reasons why I avoid those options.


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## Paulus

wendtsc said:


> Its more than a little unnerving, its downright criminal. Talgo convinced WSDOT and Amtrak to push for FRA waivers because they said their Series VI trains were built to EU standards and were therefore safer than traditional Amtrak equipment. Yet, here we have almost a 50% fatality rate and a 100% injury (or worse) rate on a train that derailed at well below its design speed. This clearly shows European trains (talgo in particular) are not safe at speeds of 90mph and over and probably still very deadly at the current 79mph limit set by the FRA. Given how the Talgo coaches crumpled in this accident which was basically just a derailment, imagine if instead this had been a Cascades train in Washington derailing near or colliding with an American freight train on a much more crowded and compressed American ROW. We could easily be talking about death rates of 70 to 80% or higher. 150 deaths would result in the immediate end of all passenger train service in the US. The railroad equivalent of a Three Mile Island.


This was not just a derailment. This was a derailment into a concrete wall at 120mph. That's beyond the design survivability of any equipment anywhere in the world and for good reason: It is not practical to design to survive it. Even if you magically held all the cars together, you would see a massive death toll from injuries incurred bouncing around the compartment.



> <snip ITG nonsense>


 Your ideas on what Talgo ought to do are arrant nonsense and would serve only to destroy Amtrak Cascades. Heck, let's have a quick little study of historical American crash standards.


Do you honestly think that American equipment would somehow be more survivable when slamming into a bridge and having it collapse onto it? Also, which Alps crash are you referring to?

Here is also a study by Caltrain on safety of UIC compliant sets


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## railiner

jimhudson said:


> jis said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> jimhudson said:
> 
> 
> 
> RIP and Quick healing to the Injured! I didnt read and watch all the various Reports so will ask: Was the Engineer(s) Killed? I know nothing about safety and engineering standards for foreign equipment so will rely on our Member experts!
> 
> 
> 
> Both Engineer(s) survived, and have already been interviewed by the accident investigators. They acknowledged that they were over speeding, and according to one report, one of them may be facing some criminal charges.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> :hi: Thanks jis! At least they didnt run off after the Crash like that Moron Cruise Ship Captain in the Med and the Bus Drivers used to do in Mexico in the Bad Old Days!
Click to expand...

I heard a report on the news earlier, that one of the involved engineers had actually posted a youtube video bragging about his speed. Didn't hear more details, and don't know if this is true or not. But if so, I can sure understand the criminal charges....


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## wendtsc

VentureForth said:


> wendtsc said:
> 
> 
> 
> Latest is 77 dead, 130 injured. Truly tragic. They obviously aren't yet focused on a cause as rescue and recovery is much more important at this time, but a few things stand out to me. If speed was the cause and the train was traveling at twice the posted limit as some are already claiming, does that mean Spain had no PTC system on this line? Second, 77 dead out of only 222 aboard on a train traveling at 110mph built to European safety standards. So, maybe the FRA is right after all and the rest of the world is wrong. Third, is it possible this crash was much worse than it needed to be because of the Talgo design's reliance on single-axle articulated bogies, further compounded by adjustable axles designed to adjust on the fly to multiple gauges? The Talgo design basically amounts to a high-tech passenger version of a Roadrailer consist which in this case was operating in push mode. Essentially, like pushing a Roadrailer train backwards at 110mph through a sharp curve. Tragedy perhaps made more tragic because of questionable design and operating assumptions.
> 
> 
> 
> If the train was operating within the parameters of the legally set limit for the section, the probability of the crash would have been reduced to almost nothing and if it still crashed, it would have had much less damage.
> 
> You can't build something that is invincible. You build it to the parameters established by its operational limitations. Even if this train was going 200 KPH on track that it was allowed to do so, the likelyhood of a crash was limited, and if there was one, it wouldn't be catastrophic because it wouldn't involve the centrifugal failures.
Click to expand...

The focus on speeding as a cause of the accident is completely beside the point. The survivability is what counts because we know accidents are going to eventually happen and given that this train is designed to operate at speeds well excess of 130mph, it should have been much more survivable at 110. What if instead of a 50mph curve the train hit a sun kink on a straightaway with a regular speed limit of 125? Your willingness to compromise safety in a crash because likelyhood of crashes are limited is very disturbing. By the logic of only building to operational limitations, US automakers shouldn't be accountable for any crashworthiness of their cars above 55/65mph. This IS NOT accepted practice in any design field as architects, structurual engineers, aerospace engineers and naval architest are all required to design buildings, bridges, planes, ships with safety parameters usually well beyond (often twice) regular operational limitations. Boeing can build a plane that can crash into a runway, break apart and burst into flames (clearly not invincible) yet 306 out of 307 survive the crash, because Boeing designed seats and cabin interiors to survive crash forces of up to 16Gs and went beyond safety minimums! Talgo on the other hand has documented history of asking for waivers and exemptions from safety minimums. How can you sweep that under the rug?

Secondly, the argument about centrifugal failures being unique because of the location of the accident does not hold up. Since Talgo relies on a single set of floating axleless wheels in an articulated Jacobs bogie suspended under one end of each coach and is further complicated by the machanics that allow for variable wheel gauge, even in a straight on accident because of the extremely limited number of wheel flange to rail contact points (only 2 per coach) and the lack of rigid axles, there is virtually no resistance to any lateral movements no matter how slight any initial force might be. Think of it as trying to make an emergency stop in a car traveling 40mph on a frozen lake without turning sideways. In other words, the train is always going to end up trying to go sideways because even the simple act of falling sideways off a railhead will create enough lateral force to trigger a cascading lateral acceleration. And because of the train's light weight and weak structural design, it will alway result in folding and crumpling both horizontally and vertically as demostrated in virtually every train derailment with speeds greater than 40mph. In fact, in this case the location of the retaining wall may have actually prevented even more deaths since the cars were prevented from swinging even further out of alignment which would have resulted in even more twisting and folding of the cars.

Thirdly, as proven by just about every rail accident in history, the zones of greatest danger are the areas within 15 feet of the end of every car because this is the point where collision forces are focused and along with the weight of the train have to be absorbed or deflected. In the case of the Talgo design, because of the extreme shortness of the coaches and the greatly increased number of connections compared to traditional Amtrak or even Japanese or German HSR equipment, virtually the entire Talgo trainset falls within these danger zones. Incidentally, 110mph also happens to be the speed of Amtrak Colonial 94 when it collided with the Conrail train on the NCE in Maryland in 1987. In that accident there were over 600 passengers riding in old Amtrak Amfleet cars (built to the FRA standards Talgo has publicly scoffed at), but only 16 people died.

Traditional FRA Safety Standards + Amfleet coaches + 110 MPH + collision with freight train + 600 passengers = 16 Dead

Modern European HSR Standards + Talgo equipment + 110 MPH + single train derailment + 220 passengers = 78 Dead

The heavy deathtoll is clear evidence of European operators, builders and safety regulators choosing expediency over public safety. There is no way anyone should be giving them "a pass."


----------



## George Harris

"This was not just a derailment. This was a derailment into a concrete wall at 120mph. That's beyond the design survivability of any equipment anywhere in the world and for good reason: It is not practical to design to survive it. Even if you magically held all the cars together, you would see a massive death toll from injuries incurred bouncing [/q]around the compartment."

It may have collided with a concrete was, but it *did not hit it square on*. Read what I wrote above. It turned into it at a low angle and slid along it . For that sort of collision, that much damage and casualties is unbelievable.

"Do you honestly think that American equipment would somehow be more survivable when slamming into a bridge and having it collapse onto it?"

Yes.


----------



## Paulus

wendtsc said:


> The focus on speeding as a cause of the accident is completely beside the point. The survivability is what counts because we know accidents are going to eventually happen


All accidents are preventable.



> and given that this train is designed to operate at speeds well excess of 130mph, it should have been much more survivable at 110.


That's an utterly nonsense argument. Do you think airplanes should be survivable in a 300 mile per hour impact? If not, why not? They're designed to fly significantly faster than that after all.



> What if instead of a 50mph curve the train hit a sun kink on a straightaway with a regular speed limit of 125?


It probably would have been just fine actually. It's not the derailment that kills you, it's the high speed impact with something else.



> Your willingness to compromise safety in a crash because likelyhood of crashes are limited is very disturbing. By the logic of only building to operational limitations, US automakers shouldn't be accountable for any crashworthiness of their cars above 55/65mph.


Correct me if I'm wrong, but automakers aren't even held accountable for crashworthiness at 55/65 miles per hour. IIHS tests only go to 40mph.



> This IS NOT accepted practice in any design field as architects, structurual engineers, aerospace engineers and naval architest are all required to design buildings, bridges, planes, ships with safety parameters usually well beyond (often twice) regular operational limitations. Boeing can build a plane that can crash into a runway, break apart and burst into flames (clearly not invincible) yet 306 out of 307 survive the crash, because Boeing designed seats and cabin interiors to survive crash forces of up to 16Gs and went beyond safety minimums! Talgo on the other hand has documented history of asking for waivers and exemptions from safety minimums. How can you sweep that under the rug?


 For starters, all the passengers in the plane were seated and strapped in; they also had significantly easier emergency crew access. As it was, an extra hundred feet short and we'd be telling an entirely different story about Flight 214.



> Incidentally, 110mph also happens to be the speed of Amtrak Colonial 94 when it collided with the Conrail train on the NCE in Maryland in 1987. In that accident there were over 600 passengers riding in old Amtrak Amfleet cars (built to the FRA standards Talgo has publicly scoffed at), but only 16 people died.
> Traditional FRA Safety Standards + Amfleet coaches + 110 MPH + collision with freight train + 600 passengers = 16 Dead
> 
> Modern European HSR Standards + Talgo equipment + 110 MPH + single train derailment + 220 passengers = 78 Dead
> 
> The heavy deathtoll is clear evidence of European operators, builders and safety regulators choosing expediency over public safety. There is no way anyone should be giving them "a pass."


And had the front cars been occupied in Chase, instead of nearly or completely empty, the death toll would have been significantly higher, as every report acknowledges. Both Amtrak locomotives and the head three cars were destroyed in that collision. Quoth the NTSB:



> The lead car of train 94 was so thoroughly crushed that had the car been occupied,almost none aboard could have survived the crash. Fortunately,the car served as a buffer much as a baggage car would. It was also fortunate that there were only 25 passengers aboard the second car, which had 84 seats. More than half the passengers in this car were fatally injured, and the emergency response personnel had great difficulty in extricating injured passengers. Had the car been filled to capacity, as were most of the cars to the rear, the toll of fatally-injured passengers would have been much higher. More than 450 people aboard train 94 were injured.


----------



## chakk

"The railroad equivalent of a Three Mile Island"?????

Nobody died in Three Mile Island.

The bigger reason that new nuclear power construction went moribund after TMI was the deteorating financial condition of the industry, in which many utilities felt that they could not "bet their company" on the very expensive construction of one power plant, for which none of the costs could be included in the rate base until the plant was operational and generating electricity.

150 or more people have never been killed in a single American railroad accident. But that number has been exceeded many times in accidents in other parts of the world.


----------



## George Harris

Paulus said:


> wendtsc said:
> 
> 
> 
> The focus on speeding as a cause of the accident is completely beside the point. The survivability is what counts because we know accidents are going to eventually happen
> 
> 
> 
> All accidents are preventable.
Click to expand...

All accidents may be preventable, but not all accidents are prevented. We must live in the real world and deal with occupant protection and survivability


----------



## Paulus

George Harris said:


> Paulus said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> wendtsc said:
> 
> 
> 
> The focus on speeding as a cause of the accident is completely beside the point. The survivability is what counts because we know accidents are going to eventually happen
> 
> 
> 
> All accidents are preventable.
> 
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> All accidents may be preventable, but not all accidents are prevented. We must live in the real world and deal with occupant protection and survivability
Click to expand...

To the extent that it is reasonable and not counterproductive. Consider for instance mandatory bicycle helmet laws. A very marginal gain in individual rider safety accompanied by major drops in ridership with a net increase in risk according to the research. However, we do know that this accident was preventable so to design for survivability here is a bit odd. Better, and far cheaper, to spend the money to prevent the accident in the first place.


----------



## wendtsc

First off, sorry about the TRIPLE posting I got a databse glitch error. If there is a moderator out there, please feel free to remove the two extra posts...

But now to response to some of those critical of my stance on expecting more from Talgo and the clarify what I meant by "push" mode.

First, requiring Talgo to replace at their cost equipment that clearly does not meet FRA guidelines (which is indisputable because they had to get waivers) because of evidence (the high fatality rate) that Talgo's claim of adequate alternate safety measures designed into the equipment are clearly false is not nonsense! We have taken this kind of action many times in the past. Its why we don't have hotels and department stores collapsing for no reason and why we don't have thousands of deaths every time there is an earthquake. When structural engineers in Kansas City decided to allow a contractor to take shortcuts with a design of a skyway that eliminated the required safety margins for building for twice normal operational loads and hundreds lost their lives, our government made sure that everyone lost their licenses and no one involved in the desing or building were EVER allowed to desing or build buildings again. Simply asking Talgo to prove the safety of their trains after such a horrific accident is completely reasonable. We demanded Boeing ground an entire flight of 787s (rightly so) even though not one person was killed and the incidents were (thankfully) relatively minor. So, again how is asking Talgo to now comply with our regulations or go home (after showing they were wrong about the safety of their trains) nonsense? They need to be held to the same standards of review we hold everyone else in this country. This accident has brought HSR and HrSR safety to the forefront and our federal and state governments need to react to keep the public's trust, otherwise if this happens again (in the US), none of us will ever see HSR in this country. If anything, my suggestions of Talgo and future European contractors meeting our safety standards without question is the minimum we should be doing considering the political ground that all Rail transit in this country rests on.

The second issue was my use of the "push" mode term. I wasn't using this term in the traditional railroad sense of commuter style "push-pul" in terms of the power, but in reference to the difference in the configuration of the Talgo coaches themselves. Talgo coaches are constructed assymetrically compared to virtually every other passenger train currently operating. Each coach has only one set of wheels on just the back end of the car. (This reduced number of wheels results in added challenges when it comes to braking and is the other major reason for the "cabbage" cars needing to be added to provide more "weighted" braking power to keep the Talgo coaches from bunching up and pushing sideways.) The front end of each car is supported by the car in front of it. Very similar to Roadrailers. The result is kind of like a series of wheel barrels with the handles of one resting on the front of the wheel barrel behind it or like a camping trailer behind your car. So, when I say pulling in reference to a Talgo, I mean that the cars are being pulled like you would pull a trailer, and when I say push, I mean the Talgo train is moving in the direction you usually go with a wheel barrel, meaning wheels and axle first. What makes it possible for Talgo to push or pull this string of wheel barrels is because its on rails. You could never do this on a highway, just ask a long haul UPS driver how easy it is to back up with two or three trailers.

Now granted, in normal operation in Spain, Talgos are operated with a power unit on each end, so the forces on these "wheel barrels" are almost always "pulling" so the actual orientation doesn't make that much difference, that is until you try to stop quickly or enter a curve while not under throttle. The analogy to bricks and soda cans is exactly right! When you go into braking or ar coasting into a curve the weight of the power unit at the back is going to try to push the cars in the middle to the outside of the track and because of the assymetrical design of Talgo trains the forces can be different depending on the direction of travel. Now if you imagine that the weight of the rear power unit has now come off the tracks and is pulling the back "or handle ends" of our wheel barrels off the track, you can begin to see where some assumptions made about Talgos performing equally in either direction are flawed. Now to make things worse, I the US Talgos truly are operated in push-pull mode (both my definition in terms of coach orientation and power orientation). In this case, we truly are trying to push a string of UPS trailers backwards! Irregularities in track profile and allignment could easily cause unforseen forces that the train would have to deal with in a completely different way depending on the direction the coaches are facing and this would be a multiplier on top of the already more complex operational parameter requierd for standard push-pull power operations using passenger cars with standard symetrical designs. Hence the comparison to pushing Roadrailers at 100mph, backwards! Ohh and don't forget, not only are you pushing a string of one wheeled soda cans, but you are also trying to push a brick in front of that string!

And that is why we need to go back to 2 two-axled trucks per coach like on the Acela, the ICE, and the Shinkansen as recommended coincidently by the FRA.


----------



## cirdan

I don't know where this is leading comparing automakers to Talgo and somehow claiming that automakers are the example to be followed.

How many deaths per passenger mile on highways versus trains?

Yet if somebody speeds or drives drunk or anything like that and somebody gets killed, you don't normally blame the auto maker. You blame the guy who directly caused the accident.

Yet if somebody uses a train in a way and situation for which it was not designed, it's Talgo's fault apparently.

What's the difference?

If you were really interested in reducing deaths per passenger mile you wouldn't be barking at Talgo but at the auto industry.


----------



## cirdan

wendtsc said:


> The second issue was my use of the "push" mode term. I wasn't using this term in the traditional railroad sense of commuter style "push-pul" in terms of the power, but in reference to the difference in the configuration of the Talgo coaches themselves. Talgo coaches are constructed assymetrically compared to virtually every other passenger train currently operating. Each coach has only one set of wheels on just the back end of the car. (This reduced number of wheels results in added challenges when it comes to braking and is the other major reason for the "cabbage" cars needing to be added to provide more "weighted" braking power to keep the Talgo coaches from bunching up and pushing sideways.) The front end of each car is supported by the car in front of it. Very similar to Roadrailers. The result is kind of like a series of wheel barrels with the handles of one resting on the front of the wheel barrel behind it or like a camping trailer behind your car. So, when I say pulling in reference to a Talgo, I mean that the cars are being pulled like you would pull a trailer, and when I say push, I mean the Talgo train is moving in the direction you usually go with a wheel barrel, meaning wheels and axle first. What makes it possible for Talgo to push or pull this string of wheel barrels is because its on rails. You could never do this on a highway, just ask a long haul UPS driver how easy it is to back up with two or three trailers.


 I don't think the wheelbarrow comparsion is totally appropriate. The dynamics of rail vehicles are different to those of road vehicles. Think of a long freight going around Tehacapi Loop. You can get the locomotives crossing the tail of the train. The rail wheel and coupler interfaces transmit forces in a different way to roiad vehicles. Try pulling a long chain of road trailers around in a cricle like that and you'd more likely than not end with a fine mess all in a big heap.

The bricks and can analgy is more valid though. Acela also this disadvantage. If for some reason the front power car was suddenly decelerated, the heavy rear power car would push the train forcing the intermediate coaches to jacknife. Now this is why the TGV uses Jacobs bogies and the whole buffing structure of the car is optimized to not jacknife but to interlock so a derailed train does not become a string of cans but becomes one long stick. There have been several high speed derailments with TGVs in France that illustarted this principle well.

Now the present accident showed that the Talgo train also jacknifed despite using flat-ended short-coupled coaches that should really interlock. So if anything, this does not proves that the talgo concept as such is flawed, but that the interlocking ability may need to be looked at. It could of couse be that being in a curve this mechanism was outside of its axis of action (and the designers assumed nobody would take a curve that fast), and had the derailment happened on straight track, that the cars would have interlocked very neatly. But this is conjecture. We have to await the investigation results.


----------



## jis

Interesting article on the investigation from _the Guardian_

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/26/spain-train-crash-investigators-black-boxes


----------



## train_person

wendtsc said:


> George Harris said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Swadian Hardcore said:
> 
> 
> 
> That is some serious speeding if it's true. This could also be caused by high heat bending the tracks. Maybe the track was designed for fast speeds but heat restrictions reduced the limit.
> Bloomberg reports that at least 77 people are now dead  : http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-24/spanish-train-derailment-kills-45-47-people-feijoo-says-on-rtve.html
> 
> This slew of railway accidents, both fatal and non-fatal, could reduce the train's reputation worldwide as a media shock.
> 
> 
> 
> A kink would have been visible and talked about,, even if not in any of the published pictures. Inclined to believe serious overspeed. What I find unnerving is how mangled the coaches are from what is apparently overturning without significant collisions with other trains or major structures.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> Its more than a little unnerving, its downright criminal. Talgo convinced WSDOT and Amtrak to push for FRA waivers because they said their Series VI trains were built to EU standards and were therefore safer than traditional Amtrak equipment. Yet, here we have almost a 50% fatality rate and a 100% injury (or worse) rate on a train that derailed at well below its design speed. This clearly shows European trains (talgo in particular) are not safe at speeds of 90mph and over and probably still very deadly at the current 79mph limit set by the FRA. Given how the Talgo coaches crumpled in this accident which was basically just a derailment, imagine if instead this had been a Cascades train in Washington derailing near or colliding with an American freight train on a much more crowded and compressed American ROW. We could easily be talking about death rates of 70 to 80% or higher. 150 deaths would result in the immediate end of all passenger train service in the US. The railroad equivalent of a Three Mile Island.
> 
> Given Talgos' safety promises and public ridicule of FRA safety standards, they should be immediately held accountable for the risk they have been placing Amtrak riders at in the Pacific Northwest for the last 20 years. WSDOT and ODOT should immediately demand Series VI Talgos pulled from service and the FRA should demand one be immediately sent to Colorado where it will be subjected to a real "live-fire" crash test to show if the waivers are justified. Likewise, one of the two remaining Series VIII trains parked in Wisconsin should be sent for the same "live-fire" test. If it passes, Talgo should give the remaining Series VIII train to WSDOT as a free replacement for the Series VI train. If the Series VI train fails the test, which we know it will because of this accident, Talgo will replace at their expense all of the remaining Series VI trains in use in the US within 5 years. If the Series VIII (which Talgo insists meet FRA standards) results in fatality rates above 10% in the first 3 coaches or over the entire train at Talgos claimed safe operational speed, then Talgo should be required to replace every Talgo trainset in operation in the US with one that meets every FRA specifiation and at no time will Talgo be allowed to request or negotiate for special design considerations or design compromises. Any time in the design/build process, the FRA requires a change, Talgo will make the exact change the FRA requires without question. If Talgo refuses this agreement, they will be barred from doing any future business in the US in any way, including subcontracting or even as a parts supplier.
> 
> Furthermore, while HSR crashes are rare in Europe, given the death tolls when they do happen and considering in almost every case the excessive amount of carnage was the result of design compromises, all European companies hoping to continue to do business in the US will fully meet all FRA requirements without question or compromise. At no time will they be allowed to argue for the substitution of EU or International standards for American FRA safety standards. Given the survivability demonstrated in Germany, the Alps and now Spain, clearly any further attempts to compromise our safety for the sake of using foreign HSR designs must stop now!
Click to expand...

Nothing like an over reaction..... If you want rail travel in the US to be really 'safer', start a campaign to stop the hundreds of the terminally stupid who drive out in front of oncoming trains at grade crossings every day/month/year. One day one of those fools is going to cause the mother of all stack ups.

One more point. You seem to have missed it by a country mile. If a manufacturer asks for an exemption from a set of standards from a regulatory body, then surely it is the regulatory body at fault if it later proves to be a wrong decision.

Anyway, I always thought it better to survive a crash by not actually having the crash in the first place, rather than set over hysterical standards for what happens in the ten seconds after the crash.


----------



## AlanB

wendtsc said:


> Its more than a little unnerving, its downright criminal. Talgo convinced WSDOT and Amtrak to push for FRA waivers because they said their Series VI trains were built to EU standards and were therefore safer than traditional Amtrak equipment.


WSDOT and Amtrak applied for a waiver because the FRA changed the crash standards for the US after the Talgo trains had been ordered and were already under construction. And that is why the FRA granted them a waiver, with conditions like buffer cars, because they had changed the standards while the trainsets were being built.


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## leemell

The press is reporting that the engineer was arrested for negligent homicide and is not talking to investigators. One other possibility that no one has discussed is that he is suicidal.


----------



## DET63

Police accuse Spain train crash driver of 'reckless homicide,' minister says


> *Santiago de Compostela, Spain (CNN)* -- Police in Spain have accused the driver of a train that derailed in northwestern Spain, killing at least 78 people, of "reckless homicide," the country's interior minister said Saturday.
> The judge has until Sunday evening local time to decide whether to press formal charges against Francisco Jose Garzon, Interior Minister Jorge Fernandez Diaz told reporters in Santiago de Compostela.
> 
> The driver, who spent the past two days under detention in hospital, guarded by police, is now at the police headquarters, he said.
> 
> The data recorders from the train are still with police, he added.


----------



## VentureForth

I'm suprised they let him out on bail, being potentially suicidal. Quite honestly, I've hemmed and hawwed at what I think about this driver. The media wants to portray him as a Macho Braggardicio with the "I wanna set of radar guns" quote. But when you read the whole quote in context, it appears that he is just a man who is extremely proud of his job. The other point that will no doubtedly be investigated is his phone call with dispatch. Why would he call them to tell them he's speeding? Perhaps for some reason, the train wouldn't slow down. Who knows? It could be either way. He seems to be a cross between the arrogant Captain Scheletto from the Costa Concordia and the railfan Robert Sanchez from the Metrolink disaster.


----------



## UK trainman

cirdan said:


> wendtsc said:
> 
> 
> 
> The second issue was my use of the "push" mode term. I wasn't using this term in the traditional railroad sense of commuter style "push-pul" in terms of the power, but in reference to the difference in the configuration of the Talgo coaches themselves. Talgo coaches are constructed assymetrically compared to virtually every other passenger train currently operating. Each coach has only one set of wheels on just the back end of the car. (This reduced number of wheels results in added challenges when it comes to braking and is the other major reason for the "cabbage" cars needing to be added to provide more "weighted" braking power to keep the Talgo coaches from bunching up and pushing sideways.) The front end of each car is supported by the car in front of it. Very similar to Roadrailers. The result is kind of like a series of wheel barrels with the handles of one resting on the front of the wheel barrel behind it or like a camping trailer behind your car. So, when I say pulling in reference to a Talgo, I mean that the cars are being pulled like you would pull a trailer, and when I say push, I mean the Talgo train is moving in the direction you usually go with a wheel barrel, meaning wheels and axle first. What makes it possible for Talgo to push or pull this string of wheel barrels is because its on rails. You could never do this on a highway, just ask a long haul UPS driver how easy it is to back up with two or three trailers.
> 
> 
> 
> I don't think the wheelbarrow comparsion is totally appropriate. The dynamics of rail vehicles are different to those of road vehicles. Think of a long freight going around Tehacapi Loop. You can get the locomotives crossing the tail of the train. The rail wheel and coupler interfaces transmit forces in a different way to roiad vehicles. Try pulling a long chain of road trailers around in a cricle like that and you'd more likely than not end with a fine mess all in a big heap.
> 
> The bricks and can analgy is more valid though. Acela also this disadvantage. If for some reason the front power car was suddenly decelerated, the heavy rear power car would push the train forcing the intermediate coaches to jacknife. Now this is why the TGV uses Jacobs bogies and the whole buffing structure of the car is optimized to not jacknife but to interlock so a derailed train does not become a string of cans but becomes one long stick. There have been several high speed derailments with TGVs in France that illustarted this principle well.
> 
> Now the present accident showed that the Talgo train also jacknifed despite using flat-ended short-coupled coaches that should really interlock. So if anything, this does not proves that the talgo concept as such is flawed, but that the interlocking ability may need to be looked at. It could of couse be that being in a curve this mechanism was outside of its axis of action (and the designers assumed nobody would take a curve that fast), and had the derailment happened on straight track, that the cars would have interlocked very neatly. But this is conjecture. We have to await the investigation results.
Click to expand...

The Talgo does not use Jacobs bogies. There is only one set of wheels beneath each end of a coach. Also the wheels are not conected by a rigid axle so there is no coning effect to steer the wheel. The bogie requires active steering to negotiate curves.


----------



## cirdan

This article may provide more insight into the talgo coning system.

http://www.epo.org/learning-events/european-inventor/finalists/2013/gomez/feature.html


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## leemell

There was press report a little while ago saying that at the time of the accident the engineer was on the phone and consulting paperwork in the cab.


----------



## CHamilton

leemell said:


> There was press report a little while ago saying that at the time of the accident the engineer was on the phone and consulting paperwork in the cab.


Spain train driver was on the phone doing 95 mph



> MADRID -- A Spanish court says "black box" data recorders show that a train conductor was on the phone and traveling at 95 mph (153 kph), almost twice the speed limit, when the vehicle derailed, killing 79 people.
> 
> Investigators say the train had been going as fast as 119 mph (192 kph) shortly before the derailment and that the conductor activated the brakes "seconds before the crash.”
> 
> In a statement, the court said Tuesday that the conductor was talking on the phone to an official of national rail company Renfe when the crash happened and apparently was consulting a paper document at the time.


----------



## RRUserious

Today's news says the driver was talking or texting on a mobile phone. The USA has had some headon collisions with the same cause, hasn't it? Can't they jam phones in the operator's space? And can't they just say drivers will be fired if they use a phone while on duty?


----------



## DET63

RRUserious said:


> Today's news says the driver was talking or texting on a mobile phone. The USA has had some headon collisions with the same cause, hasn't it? Can't they jam phones in the operator's space? And can't they just say drivers will be fired if they use a phone while on duty?


Perhaps the train operator thought the call was part of doing his duty:



> In a statement, the court said Tuesday that the conductor was talking on the phone to an official of national rail company Renfe when the crash happened and apparently was consulting a paper document at the time.


----------



## jis

DET63 said:


> RRUserious said:
> 
> 
> 
> Today's news says the driver was talking or texting on a mobile phone. The USA has had some headon collisions with the same cause, hasn't it? Can't they jam phones in the operator's space? And can't they just say drivers will be fired if they use a phone while on duty?
> 
> 
> 
> Perhaps the train operator thought the call was part of doing his duty:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> In a statement, the court said Tuesday that the conductor was talking on the phone to an official of national rail company Renfe when the crash happened and apparently was consulting a paper document at the time.
> 
> Click to expand...
Click to expand...

This is why in the US the Engineer is required to stop the train before copying down a Form D or any other written authorization, if there is a single person in the cab.


----------



## hake

Apart from casual curiosity over the past fifty years, I'd never taken much notice of Talgo trains until the frightful accident at Santiago. The video of the destruction of the oncoming train is ghastly and the break-up and destruction of the train is unbelievable. I watched the video with fascinated horror.

What provision was made by RENFE for progressive transition of the radius of the fatal curve and provision of super-elevation to mitigate the effects of over-speed round such curves on vehicle behaviour?

However, it is inherent Talgo vehicle design flaws that really concern me. Call me conservative if you like but I set great store by the use of separate collision-worthy deformation-resistant cars connected by couplings of such strength as to be capable of holding the cars apart but in formation in high speed derailments. Further, the use of sub-vehicle assemblies in the form of well-designed strong four-wheeled bogies promotes good alignment of the axles with respect to the direction of travel in instances of duress such as when a train is travelling round a curve at excessive speed.

Single axles à la Talgo are susceptible to being steered by the misalignment of the travel of the cars to which each wheel set is intimately and rigidly (by comparison with bogies) attached. The car derails and the axle follows it because it is directly aligned to the car. Bogies are far better able to continue to conform to the alignment of the track.

Cars must be held in line, upright and have a strong tendency to be able to conform to the alignment of the track. The Talgo at Santiago was unable to achieve this.


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## VentureForth

The engineer was on a radio phone, not a personal phone getting instructions on his approach to Santiago de Compostela. He apparently knew he was going too fast as he tried to slow down from 115 MPH to 95 MPH - but according to that same article, the brake need to be applied almost 2 1/2 miles ahead of the speed change. Apparently he only applied the brakes "seconds" before impact.


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## jis

VentureForth said:


> The engineer was on a radio phone, not a personal phone getting instructions on his approach to Santiago de Compostela. He apparently knew he was going too fast as he tried to slow down from 115 MPH to 95 MPH - but according to that same article, the brake need to be applied almost 2 1/2 miles ahead of the speed change. Apparently he only applied the brakes "seconds" before impact.


Sudden application of brakes under those circumstances could itself be a causative factor in the derailment.


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## RRUserious

jis said:


> VentureForth said:
> 
> 
> 
> The engineer was on a radio phone, not a personal phone getting instructions on his approach to Santiago de Compostela. He apparently knew he was going too fast as he tried to slow down from 115 MPH to 95 MPH - but according to that same article, the brake need to be applied almost 2 1/2 miles ahead of the speed change. Apparently he only applied the brakes "seconds" before impact.
> 
> 
> 
> Sudden application of brakes under those circumstances could itself be a causative factor in the derailment.
Click to expand...

And his reason for being way overspeed was?


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## hake

José Luis López Gómez, inventor of a high-speed train guidance system: his work is ingenious but surely unnecessary when the reliability proven Jacob-type bogie is available.

Why persist with such a hotch-potch system as Talgo with its many weaknesses when demonstrably safe and intrinsically simpler systems such as are used by TGV are available? The answer is presumably to be found in national pride and its associated politics.

The knowledgeable contributions to this forum by others have opened my eyes. When travelling on trains outside the UK, I will be most careful to avoid travelling on Talgos.


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## Guest

A train being pushed is inherently unstable because the formation is under compression and so subject to buckling loads. A train being pulled is inherently stable because the formation is under tension and so tends to be stiff. Give me a locomotive at the front every time!

The Santiago video seems to show that the appalling physical events of the disaster commenced when a vehicle just behind the lead power vehicle was being squeezed off the curve before dragging the rest of the train off with it.

I have some modest personal knowledge of catastrophic railway disasters. I was very close to the Harrow and Wealdstone accident, resulting in 112 dead, on 8 October 1952. That many more did not die was thanks to a detachment of Yank military paramedics, who just happened to be passing the site, and helped so many badly hurt people as if they were wounded on the battlefield. They changed British practice of dealing with the seriously injured forever. Previously, British practice was to put the injured into ambulances and get them to hospital where treatment would commence. Thanks guys.


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## hake

Report from UK Guardian Newspaper on 31 July 2013

SPANISH TRAIN'S BLACK BOXES REVEAL DRIVER WAS ON PHONE TO RAIL FIRM

Court says Francisco Garzón was responding to call from RENFE controller when train derailed, raising questions about firm's role in disaster

The driver of the high-speed train involved in last week's Spanish train disaster was responding to a phone call from the rail company when the crash took place, according to a preliminary investigation released on Tuesday. The driver, Francisco Garzón, has been provisionally charged with multiple counts of negligent homicide.

The train, operated by Spain's national rail company, RENFE, left the track and slammed into a wall as it was approaching Santiago de Compostela on a journey from Madrid to Ferrol in north-western Spain. The death toll from the accident stands at 79.

In an official statement, the court handling the case said that "minutes before the derailment, [Garzón] received a call on his professional telephone to signal to him the route he had to take on arriving in Ferrol. It appears, from the content of the conversation and the background noise, that the driver consulted a plan or some similar paper document."

The person on the other end of the telephone "appears to have been a controller", the statement said. The existence of the conversation emerged from an inspection of the "black boxes", which began in the presence of the investigating magistrate on Tuesday morning.

The statement said the train was travelling at 192km/h (119mph) shortly before the crash. It added that "a brake was activated seconds before the accident" and that "it is estimated that at the moment the train left the tracks it was travelling at 153km/h." The speed limit on the bend where the train derailed was 80km/h.

News of the call Garzón took adds a new dimension to the investigation and for the first time raises questions about Renfe's role. Garzón who was only a few kilometres from Santiago del Compostela station when he answered the telephone, could have been called when the train was stationary.

Since the disaster, the heads of RENFE and the network operator, ADIF, have put the responsibility squarely on Garzón. But the driver's union has expressed concern that he was being blamed before the analysis of data from the onboard recorders.

Garzón was charged when he appeared before the investigating magistrate on Sunday. He was freed from custody on condition that he surrendered his passport and agreed to report to the court once a week.

Spanish news agencies, quoting police and court sources, said that he admitted he had acted recklessly. But, according to subsequent versions, he said he was confused as to which bit of the route he was travelling on.

The Spanish daily El País said one of the first people to speak to Garzón after the crash was the police inspector who took command of operations at the scene. The paper said that, in the report he later submitted, the police commander recalled that he had asked the driver how he was.

He quoted Garzón as replying: "I'm slightly injured. But I'm not what is important. What's important are the passengers." Then, on three occasions, he said: "I've ****ed it."

Colleagues and neighbours of Garzón came forward to defend him, describing him as a responsible and cautious driver. Juan Jesús García Fraile of the railway workers' union cautioned that, without the data from the black boxes, "we do not know what happened".

The view taken of the crash could have important financial repercussions. Spain has been a pioneer of high-speed rail traffic and has an important railway construction industry. RENFE is among firms bidding for a 13bn (£11.2bn) contract to build a high-speed rail link in Brazil. The terms of the tender reportedly exclude firms involved in the running of systems where an accident has taken place in the preceding five years.


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## cirdan

RRUserious said:


> Today's news says the driver was talking or texting on a mobile phone. The USA has had some headon collisions with the same cause, hasn't it? Can't they jam phones in the operator's space? And can't they just say drivers will be fired if they use a phone while on duty?


 It wasn't a private phone call. He was talking to the scheduler about some change in the schedule. Apparently the scheduler wanted the train to take a different line / track than normal and was discussing this with the engineer.


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## cirdan

hake said:


> José Luis López Gómez, inventor of a high-speed train guidance system: his work is ingenious but surely unnecessary when the reliability proven Jacob-type bogie is available.
> Why persist with such a hotch-potch system as Talgo with its many weaknesses when demonstrably safe and intrinsically simpler systems such as are used by TGV are available? The answer is presumably to be found in national pride and its associated politics.
> 
> The knowledgeable contributions to this forum by others have opened my eyes. When travelling on trains outside the UK, I will be most careful to avoid travelling on Talgos.


Talgos are not intrinsically unsafe. Talgo technology has been around since the 1930s and as far as I know this has been the first major accident involving such a train. You cannot compare a TGV to a Talgo. It's horses for courses. A TGV is a fast train for a fast track. On slow tracks it is a costly lumbering power-sucking behemoth. A Talgo is designed more for transitionsl system running on both high and low speed tracks and transitioning between them, and notably running faster on slow / conventional lines than regular trains with bogies. If you watch line-speed restrictions in Spain you almost invariably see that Talgos have their own speed limits that are 10 to 20 km/h above those of regular passenger trains. Their light weights and axle loads means they can safely traverse curves at more elevated speeds while their passive tilt technology increases passenger comfort while using a fraction of the tilting energy and being far more intrinsically fail-safe that the ultra expensive hi-tech active tilt technologies used on the tilting trains of other countries. And because for historical reasons, Spain uses a different track gauge than other European countries, and the mixing of the two gauges calls for trains that can traverse between the two systems, Talgo trains are pretty much ideal. A TGV can do none of these things, and yes, RENFE does own some TGVs and uses them on certain services. So calling this protectionism is missing the point entirely. Any train will derail if driven through a curve at double the speed limit. In fact when it comes to track failures such as track elements fgailing under a train (Gerard's Cross etc) I'd far rather be in a talgo as a bogie / truck is not guided but hunts its own way and in a curve will seek to go straight ahead. If the track failed under the middle of a Talgo, the following axle would follow the previous car and the rest of the train would follow the curve rather than cutting staright ahead as happened in the above incidents.


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## RRUserious

Wow, the story in today's paper makes this crash sound more and more like so many disastrous plane crashes. I'm thinking specifically of the most deadly crash in history in the Canary Islands. Heavy fog on the runway, poor communications with the control tower, pilot edgy about losing time. Hits the throttle and plows into another full plane sitting on the runway. The bit about trying to read a plan on paper while the train careens ahead at twice the speed it should have been at shows a train system out of control. This was an accident waiting to happen. Probably not the first case of unsafe operation, but the train operators just ran out of luck.


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## NW cannonball

RRUserious said:


> Wow, the story in today's paper makes this crash sound more and more like so many disastrous plane crashes. I'm thinking specifically of the most deadly crash in history in the Canary Islands. Heavy fog on the runway, poor communications with the control tower, pilot edgy about losing time. Hits the throttle and plows into another full plane sitting on the runway. The bit about trying to read a plan on paper while the train careens ahead at twice the speed it should have been at shows a train system out of control. This was an accident waiting to happen. Probably not the first case of unsafe operation, but the train operators just ran out of luck.


Agree - like so many disastrous plane crashes -- and train crashes -- several unexpected failures combine - and then -

Inadequate train control, operator complacency, distraction, failure of situational awareness, communication problems adding to those -- failure of hardware and software safeguards -

Wait for the official report.


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## RRUserious

They say disasters are when several things line up and synchronize. I don't know how many things there are with trains, but behavior considered "acceptable" by operators ceases to be safe when something else happens, too. Fatal crashes are when you get to look at the "things we do all the time" and realize how lucky operators are that those things didn't cost lives.


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## WhoozOn1st

This NY Times item reports that the crashed Talgo's engineer responded to warnings in the cab by making three brake applications before, and as, the derailment occurred.

Spain: Alarms Warned Train’s Driver Before Accident - http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/03/world/europe/spain-alarms-warned-trains-driver-before-accident.html?ref=todayspaper

"At least three alarms went off inside the train that crashed last week in northwestern Spain moments before it derailed, prompting the panicked driver to activate the brakes three times even as he talked on the telephone with another employee, an examination of the train’s two black boxes released Friday revealed."


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## RRUserious

Too late? Or malfunctioning brakes?


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## jis

Clearly too little too late. But whether that was due to brake malfuction or the driver not bothering to verify the results of his action on the actual speed we have no way of knowing without more info.

There appears to be a similarity between this crash and the Asiana one. In the latter they were going through the right motions without bothering to monitor speed, and apparently in the former he was also going through the motions of brake application without monitoring speed until he was in the curve and it was too late. (That is assuming that the braking system was working as it was supposed to.


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## RRUserious

Does anything on trains give the engineer a better chance than passengers of escaping injury or death?


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## Ryan

Not particularly. Given that the engineer is in the front, they're probably more likely to be injured when running into something. Chase, Bayou Canot, Capitol Limited/MARC collision are just a few...

Edit: Came across this link while reading about Bayou Canot - firsthand account from one of the conductors. Short, but EXCELLENT read that puts a human face on the disaster:

http://www.gcwriters.org/destruction_of_amtrak.htm


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## hake

cirdan said:


> hake said:
> 
> 
> 
> José Luis López Gómez, inventor of a high-speed train guidance system: his work is ingenious but surely unnecessary when the reliability proven Jacob-type bogie is available.
> 
> Why persist with such a hotch-potch system as Talgo with its many weaknesses when demonstrably safe and intrinsically simpler systems such as are used by TGV are available? The answer is presumably to be found in national pride and its associated politics.
> 
> The knowledgeable contributions to this forum by others have opened my eyes. When travelling on trains outside the UK, I will be most careful to avoid travelling on Talgos.
> 
> 
> 
> Talgos are not intrinsically unsafe. Talgo technology has been around since the 1930s and as far as I know this has been the first major accident involving such a train. You cannot compare a TGV to a Talgo. It's horses for courses. A TGV is a fast train for a fast track. On slow tracks it is a costly lumbering power-sucking behemoth. A Talgo is designed more for transitionsl system running on both high and low speed tracks and transitioning between them, and notably running faster on slow / conventional lines than regular trains with bogies. If you watch line-speed restrictions in Spain you almost invariably see that Talgos have their own speed limits that are 10 to 20 km/h above those of regular passenger trains. Their light weights and axle loads means they can safely traverse curves at more elevated speeds while their passive tilt technology increases passenger comfort while using a fraction of the tilting energy and being far more intrinsically fail-safe that the ultra expensive hi-tech active tilt technologies used on the tilting trains of other countries. And because for historical reasons, Spain uses a different track gauge than other European countries, and the mixing of the two gauges calls for trains that can traverse between the two systems, Talgo trains are pretty much ideal. A TGV can do none of these things, and yes, RENFE does own some TGVs and uses them on certain services. So calling this protectionism is missing the point entirely. Any train will derail if driven through a curve at double the speed limit. In fact when it comes to track failures such as track elements fgailing under a train (Gerard's Cross etc) I'd far rather be in a talgo as a bogie / truck is not guided but hunts its own way and in a curve will seek to go straight ahead. If the track failed under the middle of a Talgo, the following axle would follow the previous car and the rest of the train would follow the curve rather than cutting staright ahead as happened in the above incidents.
Click to expand...

The video of the incident appears to show that the first vehicle to leave the track was a Talgo vehicle. The front bogie equipped power car appears to have been wrenched off the track by the violence of what was happening behind it. Who knows if bogie equipped rolling stock would have held the curve? It looks clear to me that a Talgo left the track first.


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## Swadian Hardcore

Ryan said:


> Not particularly. Given that the engineer is in the front, they're probably more likely to be injured when running into something. Chase, Bayou Canot, Capitol Limited/MARC collision are just a few...
> Edit: Came across this link while reading about Bayou Canot - firsthand account from one of the conductors. Short, but EXCELLENT read that puts a human face on the disaster:
> 
> http://www.gcwriters.org/destruction_of_amtrak.htm


I think the only reason this engineer survided while so many passenger died is because the leading unit was not the first to leave track, and it was pulled off by the cars behind it. When pulled off, it seems that the rear of the leading unit impacted first, with the front following in, so the engineer suffered less force than in a collision.


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## jis

hake said:


> The video of the incident appears to show that the first vehicle to leave the track was a Talgo vehicle. The front bogie equipped power car appears to have been wrenched off the track by the violence of what was happening behind it. Who knows if bogie equipped rolling stock would have held the curve? It looks clear to me that a Talgo left the track first.


The speculation in the European rail community has been that the second car which has a MTU genset mounted in it to provide power in non-electrified territory to these Class 730s was the first to derail, possibly due to its odd weight distribution. It is also those two cars at each end that caught fire due to diesel fuel leaking and getting ignited.


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## RRUserious

What a weird way to construct a train.


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## George Harris

Swadian Hardcore said:


> Ryan said:
> 
> 
> 
> Not particularly. Given that the engineer is in the front, they're probably more likely to be injured when running into something. Chase, Bayou Canot, Capitol Limited/MARC collision are just a few...
> Edit: Came across this link while reading about Bayou Canot - firsthand account from one of the conductors. Short, but EXCELLENT read that puts a human face on the disaster:
> 
> http://www.gcwriters.org/destruction_of_amtrak.htm
> 
> 
> 
> I think the only reason this engineer survided while so many passenger died is because the leading unit was not the first to leave track, and it was pulled off by the cars behind it. When pulled off, it seems that the rear of the leading unit impacted first, with the front following in, so the engineer suffered less force than in a collision.
Click to expand...

Look at the video. As the heavy lead diesel plows into the ballast, the passenger carrying cars were pushed into it by a combination of momentum and the trailing diesel unit. A string of soda cans crushed between two bricks.


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## RRUserious

In a related matter, my Swiss friend says Swiss engineers run red lights on their mountain railways routinely. They do it and get away with it and then one day a guy does it and has a headon collision. Do authorities discipline staff who do risky things?


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## jis

RRUserious said:


> In a related matter, my Swiss friend says Swiss engineers run red lights on their mountain railways routinely. They do it and get away with it and then one day a guy does it and has a headon collision. Do authorities discipline staff who do risky things?


Unless your friends are familiar with the rulebook that describes what each of the signal aspect means, they have no way of knowing whether it is legal to pass a red signal under certain circumstances or not.

For example, under NORAC rules in the US, a block signal can be passed at restricting speed after stopping at it (and for certain freight trains they are now even allowed to roll past one at restricting speed). This is done many dozens of times, safely, each day on the NEC, specially on the main line tracks leading into Penn Station from LI, where you will see a line of LIRR and Amtrak trains proceeding slowly essentially nose to tail. Same is the case through the Hudson tubes. Although in Hudson tubes they may be going faster than a crawl because they are actually under block signal control using extremely short blocks, and no trackside signals. They can see the allowed speed at any time on the APU of the cab signaling system in the cab.

Anyway, Red over Red (or simple single Red with no other numbers or lights on) means absolute stop at Home signals. But just a red at a block signal (with a number under the signal head) essentially means proceed at restricting speed ready and able to stop at any obstruction on the track.

Just to illustrate how difficult it can be for a novice unfamiliar with the rules to understand what is going on...... Just yesterday when I arrived at Metropark on an Acela, an NJT train was holding at the Home Signal at Menlo on track 1 for the Acela to cross over from track 2 to track 1 in front of it and make the station platform. What the NJT was seeing at the signal was a Red with no other light on the signal lit and no number plate on the signal - meaning Home Signal, "absolute stop". The Acela had red over flashing green meaning Limited Clear cross over at cab speed and then clear ahead. So it crossed over and stopped at the platform.

As soon as the Acela cleared the interlocking, the dispatcher reset the switch and "fleeted" track 1 straight, which means essentially what was an absolute Home signal, turned into a Block signal, denoted by a white number plate light lighting up next to and slightly below the signal head. As soon as that happened, the NJT train started off at slow speed and crawled upto the end of the platform right behind the Acela.

As soon as the Acela left, the NJT crawled in behind it maybe 100 yards separating them, to make the platform.

Someone unfamiliar with the rules would have been going berserk thinking a red signal was passed by the engineer. "_Man did you see that? He just passed a red signal. He really ought to be disciplined. It is so unsafe to pass a red signal_" etc. etc. 

Well, yes. He did pass a red signal, that by the rule book in force is supposed to be passed. That is the way it is supposed to work, and it is perfectly safe as long as the rules are followed.


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## jis

George Harris said:


> Look at the video. As the heavy lead diesel plows into the ballast, the passenger carrying cars were pushed into it by a combination of momentum and the trailing diesel unit. A string of soda cans crushed between two bricks.


It should be quite revealing to see the actual sequence that they come up with in the investigation.
The front 4 or so cars actually went way past the bridge and lodged themselves in the gully by the track. The pileup was starting at about the 5th car. Don;t know the exact mechanism that caused one of those cars to get lodged more firmly in the ballast than the others and cause the rest to pile in onto it.

So it looks like it was more of a case of several soda cans crushed between a lodged soda can and a brick, with one sode can jumping up and out of the way too!


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## Swadian Hardcore

George Harris said:


> Swadian Hardcore said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Ryan said:
> 
> 
> 
> Not particularly. Given that the engineer is in the front, they're probably more likely to be injured when running into something. Chase, Bayou Canot, Capitol Limited/MARC collision are just a few...
> Edit: Came across this link while reading about Bayou Canot - firsthand account from one of the conductors. Short, but EXCELLENT read that puts a human face on the disaster:
> 
> http://www.gcwriters.org/destruction_of_amtrak.htm
> 
> 
> 
> I think the only reason this engineer survided while so many passengers died is because the leading unit was not the first to leave track, and it was pulled off by the cars behind it. When pulled off, it seems that the rear of the leading unit impacted first, with the front following in, so the engineer suffered less force than in a collision.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> Look at the video. As the heavy lead diesel plows into the ballast, the passenger carrying cars were pushed into it by a combination of momentum and the trailing diesel unit. A string of soda cans crushed between two bricks.
Click to expand...

I don't get how this correalates to the security video. Elaborate?


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## hake

The video appears to show that the third vehicle (a passenger car and presumably a single axle talgo type vehicle) was forced up and sideways towards the outside of the curve. It looked as if the train formation was subject to buckling (presumably due to compressive stresses in rear). Could it have been that the braking effort was stronger in the leading vehicles than at the rear of the train? What is the delay of braking effect in talgo rear vehicles compared with the lead vehicles, especially when a very strong brake application is made?

Many years ago, I worked on control systems. This led me to distrust active control systems (such as talgo wheelsets are reported to controlled by) in certain situations where extreme duress operating conditions are possible. What befell this talgo was surely outside a predictable performance envelope and so wheelset control system behaviour could not be safely anticipated. The behaviour of passive systems can be more realistically be forecasted. Simplicity is a virtue and there are likely too many variables in the talgo model, brilliantly ingenious though the work of José Luis López Gómez might be. Give me nice predictable bogie system anytime.

I would also observe that a talgo possesses fewer axles than a bogie equipped train. Flange forces are therefore likely to be greater with a consequent greater possibility that wheels will cross over the railhead. In that exceptional circumstance, I would far prefer wheels and axles to be single assemblies. One must always design for the exceptional circumstance.


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## cirdan

RRUserious said:


> Does anything on trains give the engineer a better chance than passengers of escaping injury or death?


 Often, when a crash is imminent, engineers can jump out of the train, or can leave their cab and seek refuge inside the locomotive, an area where chnaces of survival are greater. On cab cars they can run inside the passenger compartment. So if you ever see an engineer running from the cab and through the passenger area, you'd be well advised to run with him.


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## Bob Dylan

cirdan said:


> RRUserious said:
> 
> 
> 
> Does anything on trains give the engineer a better chance than passengers of escaping injury or death?
> 
> 
> 
> Often, when a crash is imminent, engineers can jump out of the train, or can leave their cab and seek refuge inside the locomotive, an area where chnaces of survival are greater. On cab cars they can run inside the passenger compartment. So if you ever see an engineer running from the cab and through the passenger area, you'd be well advised to run with him.
Click to expand...

Similar to if you see a Pilot come out of the Cockpit with a Parachute you're in a heap of trouble!


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## RRUserious

jimhudson said:


> cirdan said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> RRUserious said:
> 
> 
> 
> Does anything on trains give the engineer a better chance than passengers of escaping injury or death?
> 
> 
> 
> Often, when a crash is imminent, engineers can jump out of the train, or can leave their cab and seek refuge inside the locomotive, an area where chnaces of survival are greater. On cab cars they can run inside the passenger compartment. So if you ever see an engineer running from the cab and through the passenger area, you'd be well advised to run with him.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> Similar to if you see a Pilot come out of the Cockpit with a Parachute you're in a heap of trouble!
Click to expand...

Pretty humorous. Makes me wonder if that has ever happened since the 1930s when commercial airline travel started off. We know that the captain of the Costa Concordia left his ship with passengers still on board. But a airline captain parachuting from a crashing plane?


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## Swadian Hardcore

cirdan said:


> RRUserious said:
> 
> 
> 
> Does anything on trains give the engineer a better chance than passengers of escaping injury or death?
> 
> 
> 
> Often, when a crash is imminent, engineers can jump out of the train, or can leave their cab and seek refuge inside the locomotive, an area where chnaces of survival are greater. On cab cars they can run inside the passenger compartment. So if you ever see an engineer running from the cab and through the passenger area, you'd be well advised to run with him.
Click to expand...

Like at the 1988 Paris train collision? When the brakes failed on a commuter train and the engineer ran back to the last car with all his passengers before the train smahed into another commuter train pakred in the station.


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## RRUserious

I guess when all you can do is save your life, it seems pretty sensible to do that.


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## John Bredin

Yes, but have the courtesy to do your best Gandalf or Dr. Who imitation and yell RUN!!! as you run for your own life.


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## RRUserious

Or "follow me as fast as you can move!!!"


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