Its up to 68 deaths now actually. I never had issues with spanish trains, but it seems they are having some major problems recently. If i can immediately remember the last mass casuality train accident off the top of my head then its happening too often. The last one wasnt even a year ago. 46 deaths that time. Like wtf are you doing with your train systems for it to fuck up this badly twice in one year???
Apparently bad rail welding and wrongly configured automatic rail fault detection thresholds in that case. For this new one it will take a while to know for sure i guess but it looks like human error during the signalling.
There the accident was caused by illogical placement of different train protection areas. The fast section had a modern high-speed train protection system and where there was a curve, and therefore a slower section, the track was protected by the older Spanish train protection system.
The last piece of information from the high-speed system should of course be “curve ahead, slow down”, but because the crew installing it was looking only at the map of the high-speed section, they failed to notice that where the section ends, there is something immediately beyond. For them it was a straight stretch of railway that then continues “wherever” beyond the “relevant section”.
There was a physical trackside sign warning about the curve, but good luck spotting a trackside sign at a speed of 250 km/h, especially when the in-cab device telling you what speed to drive says “250 km/h until further notice by the in-cab device”.
Of course, where the high-speed section ends and the older section begins, there is a train protection transmission saying “in a couple hundred metres the maximum speed is 80 km/h”, but at point there’s nothing left to do except slow the train down to decrease the magnitude of the disaster.
sounds like a repeat of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santiago_de_Compostela_derailment
Its up to 68 deaths now actually. I never had issues with spanish trains, but it seems they are having some major problems recently. If i can immediately remember the last mass casuality train accident off the top of my head then its happening too often. The last one wasnt even a year ago. 46 deaths that time. Like wtf are you doing with your train systems for it to fuck up this badly twice in one year???
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Adamuz_rail_disaster
Apparently bad rail welding and wrongly configured automatic rail fault detection thresholds in that case. For this new one it will take a while to know for sure i guess but it looks like human error during the signalling.
There the accident was caused by illogical placement of different train protection areas. The fast section had a modern high-speed train protection system and where there was a curve, and therefore a slower section, the track was protected by the older Spanish train protection system.
The last piece of information from the high-speed system should of course be “curve ahead, slow down”, but because the crew installing it was looking only at the map of the high-speed section, they failed to notice that where the section ends, there is something immediately beyond. For them it was a straight stretch of railway that then continues “wherever” beyond the “relevant section”.
There was a physical trackside sign warning about the curve, but good luck spotting a trackside sign at a speed of 250 km/h, especially when the in-cab device telling you what speed to drive says “250 km/h until further notice by the in-cab device”.
Of course, where the high-speed section ends and the older section begins, there is a train protection transmission saying “in a couple hundred metres the maximum speed is 80 km/h”, but at point there’s nothing left to do except slow the train down to decrease the magnitude of the disaster.