The number of people dead after a train derailed in one of Spain’s worst rail disasters has reportedly risen as high as 77.
Many more are said to be critically injured and Spanish media reported emergency services were attempting to rescue several people still trapped inside carriages.
http://news.sky.com/story/1120030/spain-train-crash-dozens-killed-and-injured
The BBC World Service is reporting that the train went through a curve too fast and hit a wall. They have ruled out a “technical fault” with the train itself. There were more than 300 people on board and the cars rolled over several times. Most systems like this have an automatic stop feature that will intervene and prevent the train from reaching a dangerous speed. This line apparentky did not have that.The passengers were going to attend the religous Festival of Saint James, whom I’m guessing, was the half brother of Jesus and wrote the book in the New Testament named for him. Alot of questions need to be answered like why the train was moving too fast and why nothing happened to stop it. Spain had been exporting it’s HSR technology to other countries. That will probably be negatively affected.
It was caught on video. It looks like the second locomotive derailed first:
Very heartbreaking tragedy. One of the BBC reports stated that the driver (engineer) admitted to speeding through the curve. My condolences to those families.
On a technical note; I notice that the passenger cars appear to be the “Talgo” style similar to what Amtrak has been using in the western US. The electric locomotive looks identical in body style to the type used on the French TGV “bullet” trains.
The one thing that bothers me about the Talgo cars is their small size. For passenger rail when it comes to safety in collisions…size does seem to matter.
This is a terrible tragedy and my thoughts and prayers go out to the victims and their families.
Seeing this of course brought this question to my mind.
It seems to me that one of the complaints I’ve heard from US HSR proponents that the FRA crashworthiness standards are too tough and add excess weight. I wonder if that line of thinking will change. This train seemed to almost disintegrate on impact. The of course unanswerable question is would a train built to FRA standard have fared better in that type of crash. At least in terms of injury and loss of life.
That is a good point but an Acela trainset run at 118 MPH into a curve restricted to 50 MPH might very well also result in major loss of life…
Go take a look at the Chase MD crash pix. Similar speeds. Similar results. Chase would have been an order of magnitude worse had the lead car not been empty.
I actually think the Talgo equipment held up pretty well. Looks like a lot of the problem came from a few cars. Something raked through the side of one of the cars (a cat pole, perhaps?), destroying everything in it’s wake.
Energy goes up with speed squared. Energy is what does all the damage. At high speeds, best you can do is try to manage the energy dissipation a bit, buy you’re fighting a losing battle to a large degree in any case.
The FRA stds are from another era. I don’t think anyone knows how well they work at really high speeds. I’m inclined to think they aren’t helpful for two reasons. One is that they don’t allow deformation as a mechanism to dissipate crash energy. Second is their higher weight can act as a “hammer” to deliver a crushing blow to the relatively weak side of another car.
Not completely related, but interesting video http://youtu.be/fPF4fBGNK0U
National Public Radio is reporting that the driver of the train has been arrested. Also, survillence video and the train’s black box are being examined for other evidence.