Sideways to Victory.

[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.

[SimonMac]

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

[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.

[mudskipper]

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

[barrydidit]

Is it one of those chunks of diesel powered poo that British Rail used to run and were basically underpowered buses on rails?

Pacer (train) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I remember using those to go from Redditch to Birmingham and back. These are not fond memories. Althought I think the trains were even older and slower than the ones in the linky. Truly awful.

The ones in the linky are the 'refurbished' ones which ply the route from Huddersfield to Sheffield (also leeds-sheffield via barnsley maybe?). They are utter tulip. However, they did replace something even worse which is the same thing, but with the bus seats on. 3 passengers one side of the isle, 2 the other.

Those bus ones still exist - they drag them out for the ale trail service.

[Mich the Tester]

You ought to see the POS I catch in the morning.

A slug would overtake it.

Is it one of those chunks of diesel powered poo that British Rail used to run and were basically underpowered buses on rails?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacer_(train)

I remember using those to go from Redditch to Birmingham and back. These are not fond memories. Althought I think the trains were even older and slower than the ones in the linky. Truly awful.

[tranceporter]

You ought to see the POS I catch in the morning.

A slug would overtake it.

I would have thought you take HST? non?

[Mich the Tester]

You ought to see the POS I catch in the morning.

A slug would overtake it.

Well the Spanish can always say 'at least we can get a train to go fast enough to crash at 190kmh'.

[Mich the Tester]

Except that's not the high speed version, it's the luxury slower version.

Which begs even more questions.

Odd.

Well if that's a slow version it also begs the question what we should call the Dutch 'intercities' and ' fast trains' that go 130 kmh while this Spanish train was going 190. Slug trains? Snail rail?

[Mich the Tester]

That's quite fast.

So... nutter? Drunk? Asleep? Distracted by Albanian mistress?

Apparently signalling hadn't been adapted to high speeds. In a high speed train, if you try to follow the speed signs it's probably too late to slow down.

[VectraMan]

That's quite fast.

So... nutter? Drunk? Asleep? Distracted by Albanian mistress?

[SimonMac]

poor bastards.



Are they sure about that?

I assume they mean he admitted it after the accident, not that he was still driving it after the accident!

[barrydidit]

poor bastards.

Spanish national newspaper El Pais has reported that the train operator admitted he had been driving the train at 180 km/h immediately after the incident.

Are they sure about that?

[zeitghost]

Just do try not to do it whilst driving a train, it really doesn't end well.



Santiago de Compostela train crash: Video footage emerges showing the moment train derails and kills 78 - Europe - World - The Independent