[kosko]

(07-25-2013 07:26 PM)Super Etoile Wrote:  

(07-25-2013 07:38 AM)SexyBack Wrote:  

You'd think a high speed track like that had automated systems in place that override any speeding attempt by the train engineer. Clearly something has gone awfully awfully wrong here.

The Driver is screwed, as once they analyse the black box It'll be clear he was going too fast.

Why he was going too fast is an interesting question. The way the train line was designed contributed to the accident imo (and will mean RENFE copping involuntary manslaughter charges). The high speed a few km from the station has a max speed of 200 kph. When the High Speed line ends the max speed drops to 80 kph. the problem here is that the signalling systems change as well. On the High Speed line the signalling would have slowed down the train in time, but on the regular line this wouldn't happen (In Spain, ironically this wouldn't have happened in Portugal either)

Now I haven't been to that part of Spain, but someone on another site posted a video of the line. You're on the 200 kph line and the High Speed line ends just after a tunnel, and just before a left bend (where the crash happened) From what I can see, if you miss your braking point, because of where the signalling systems change over you are fucked. Either the High Speed signalling should have continued beyond that bend, or it should have been programmed to slow the train down at least 1 Km before that bend. Because it wasn't:

1) The driver is going to jail for a long time (Luckily he's still alive so finding out what really happened should be easy)
2) Some managers at RENFE are going to jail/getting fined big time
3) Expect to see this on a future episode of "Seconds From Disaster".

So the driver and/or the system was fucked up.

Most of the time on train systems the signalling system does indeed have some type of trigger to freeze or at least alert the driver. Generally they would of been prompted well before in the tunnel portion. The gap after the tunnel would of generally been a buffer point in which the driver or the system would of been able to halt shit if things go wrong. I am just talking off knowledge of Subway or EMU technology which is similar, just at slower speeds with more sensitive signalling due to more frequencies on the lines.

Even hood technology Amtrak Acela has automatic safety systems in place, and its the ghetto version of "High-speed" rail compared to its European and Asian counterparts.

I take the impression that higher speeds past signal targets have to be overridden by somebody higher up then the driver in the cabin? There in most cases would be a central node with somebody sitting at a desk seeing a flashing red marker on the routing for a operator that is fucking up and if the system isn't doing to down-speed then the system manager would. Its easy to blame the dope at the controls but if he didn't know that he was approaching the lower-speed portion how can we fully blame him, he is going 200+ miles/hr somebody with a better big-picture vantage point has to make that call (both are idiots).

In Quebec, Canada a lazy freight corp (MM&A Railways) in the states was running a line in rural Quebec and got sloppy with its checks and system management and this happened:




Some dope forgot to put down breaks and a train basically went back down and smashed into another train down the line and blew up half the town in the process.

You would think its easy to control a train that goes in a strait line with a few curves but I guess not. I blame lazy crops cutting corners and rolling the dice on the fact that its to easy to cut corners with these types of operations. Its just when something does go wrong its always 100% of the time a major fuck up with many casualties.