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Japanese passenger train derailed by deep snow
Normal people know enough to slow down in a snow storm. Apparently the operators of high speed trains are not normal people. Of course, having little weight on the rails when compared to an average North American freight train isn’t helping either.
Investigation into cause will probably indicate “SNOW” had a serious effect. American/Canadian/European railroads have more experience with snow, easy to get this issue addressed. More inspections, reduce speed, and if need be invest in equipment to clear right-of-way of snow, including the flangeway.
Investigation into cause will probably indicate “SNOW” had a serious effect. American/Canadian/European railroads have more experience with snow, easy to get this issue addressed. More inspections, reduce speed, and if need be invest in equipment to clear right-of-way of snow, including the flangeway.
Japan gets plenty of snow as well. (My friend who lives there has posted pictures of it 10+ feet deep.) They have more than enough experience with it to know what they are doing, as evidenced by the fact that derailments such as this happen so rarely.
Japanese National Railways was privatized in the late 80’s into the JR companies. The operator of the Akita shinkansen is JR East. Also JR & JNR pretty much wrote the book on highspeed railway operations considering they were the first to do it (tokaido Shinkansen turns 50 next year).
Passengers remained on board for Six hours… Cheers! Here in the U.S. – All 130 would appear on Good Morning America with their lawyers, family Et al…
Doesn’t look like enough snow in the picture to derail a train!