Thank you dadoftwingirls, for showing that part of the miricle of the small loss of life was the presence of our uniformed service members and the close hospitals ready for casualty victims.
By the survivor of an earlier derailment, about Amtrak dragging it’s feet on safety reforms with the aid of Congress.
I don’t get this safety mechanism. Aren’t they making it way more complicated than needs to be? Why not just program something on the train to slow down at certain points like at mile x slow down to speed y? That would be much easier to install and maintain than something on the track. Some satellite system they were talking about after the last incident. Trains go on a line, you don’t need a satellite to see where the train is.
^^ You would think that it would be pretty cheap/quick/easy to set up such a system for a train. Compared to navigation systems for roads and cars, train tracks and the trains themselves are fixed, well-known, and well-regulated. I don’t understand why it’s so expensive and difficult at all.
^I think because they try to go high tech when they don’t need it. In the simplest scenario, they could install an alarm on the train to slow down at mile x. $3 a piece?
Wow, I had no idea about that liability cap. That is nowhere near enough when one considers lost wages alone in a major accident.
It sounds like they have finally reopened I-5 today.
Yet another train track accident: https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/04/us/amtrak-south-carolina-crash/index.html
This one could have been worse (in my town). The CSX freight train was parked on side track and didn’t have any crew aboard. Multiple tracks there. Hasn’t been determined if Amtrak was on same track or close enough to sideswipe. Two people killed were Amtrak crew in engine. There are so many rural areas where trains travel in SC - not a commuter thing - ended up good (as something like this can be) because it happened near town and level one trauma hospital that was well able to handle influx of patients.
Before this, the worse SC crash was one near Aiken where a freight train derailed. Don’t remember if crew injured, but was very bad because of cargo. Chlorine gas escaped and many in town affected. The CSX train today was thankfully empty.
These things terrify me because I live in a train town. When I was in high school, some kids tried to beat a train with their car and lost. Everyone in the car died. They then put up a barrier in between the two lanes which make it impossible to go around the gates.
Looks like the SC crash likely caused by switch in the wrong position that routed Amtrak train onto side line where CSX train was parked.
@romanigypsyeyes We had the same thing happen in HS. Trains run through most small towns in SC and only have crossing arms at larger road crossings. One of my HS friends lost a sibling who was in a car that tried to beat a train.
In the Seattle area, they’ve just suspended Amtrak service north of the city (opposite direction from the derailment this thread was originally about) due to risk of mudslides.
There was apparently a mudslide that closed the tracks a few days ago. The train is supposed to be back in operation tomorrow. We shall see. Traffic was nasty today.