Sideways to Victory.

[mudskipper]

Just googled the Clapham crash (1988) - 35 killed and 500 injured. There's 80 dead in this one already.

[Mich the Tester]

Fortunately not, whilst it's not exactly luxury, at least it's a proper dmu & not a slightly modified bus on rails.

I'm sure most of the world's train operators have special committees with a brief of 'how to make things bloody awful for the paying passenger'. Exceptions are the Swiss railways, the Canadians and the Aussies. Americans make an effort, but it's ruined by the first class passengers; I found myself on a train in first class that was full of born-agains and the bar was empty except for two people drinking herbal tea that tried to introduce me to Jesus before tey even knew my name and said the second class carriages were full of Satan's followers, so I immediately went into the second class bar and found a crowd of black folks enjoying beer and wine and having a good laugh; they told me 'don't go first class if you want to stay sane', stuck a bottle of beer in front of me and a jolly good time was had by all.

One thing with Spain; instead of the high speed trains you can use the night trains, many of which are really good; we've been on Paris to Madrid and Madrid to Lisbon, two person sleeping compartment with shower, decent evening meal served up by a stunning young lady from Bilbao who gave us some powerful Basque liqueur to help us sleep, then a solid breakfast at sunrise.

[SimonMac]

BBC News - Spain train driver 'on phone' at time of deadly crash

[Paddy]

As with airline crashes, many are due to cost cutting and pressure of time.
The crashes in the UK have mainly been due to poor maintenance.
The Spanish train appears not to have fail safe braking fitted and the driver could have been trying to make up time. The phone call was from a controller.
The Swiss accident will no doubt be a signalling failure.