Final report into Wallan train derailment

"In the 12 days prior to the accident, the driver had operated the XPT service through Wallan eight times, and on all occasions the crossing loop was locked out of service," ATSB Chief Commissioner Angus Mitchell said in the final report.

"This has led us to believe they probably expected to remain on the straight track, where the speed limit was 130Km/h through Wallan.

"However, there was no protocol in place to confirm the driver's understanding of the revised instruction, with no requirement for the driver to read back or confirm the instructions to the network control officer."

The train entered the crossing loop at a speed of 114-127km/h when the maximum speed permitted to enter the crossing loop was 15 km/h.

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Grant
Darwin NT

Virtual Railfan has a new camera in Austell Georgia which has only just gone live, and captured this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XhvgRNVPFQ

It seems he wanted to turn left

And couldn't due to the idiots that ignored the markings on the road and stopped there anyway, blocking him from turning.

The street view from May 22 shows those markings in pretty bad shape. No matter, he had plenty of room to get the rear clear of the tracks. If he had to go around the block and come back so what. Safety First!

Virtual Railfan has a new camera in Austell Georgia which has only just gone live, and captured this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XhvgRNVPFQ

It seems he wanted to turn left

And couldn't due to the idiots that ignored the markings on the road and stopped there anyway, blocking him from turning.

The street view from May 22 shows those markings in pretty bad shape.

The video of the accident shows them to be in very good condition.

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Grant
Darwin NT

Electric third rail shocks two Lollapalooza attendees taking selfies on Chicago ("El") train tracks

* The incident happened on August 5 in Chicago's Oak Park, and left both victims, an unnamed man and woman, hospitalized - with the former in critical condition

* Neither have been identified, but first responders who rushed to the scene at Ridgeland Green Line station to rescue the pair said they are both in their 20s

* The duo are seen going limp after sitting on the dangerous, current-providing rail, through which a constant stream of 600 volts (DC) is funneled perpetually

Darwin Award applicants?

More and more people are oblivious to much of the technology around them today. They don't care anymore how things work. There is a platform and railroad tracks. It is a Metro system of a large metropolis. There are no overhead lines. How is this train powered? Obviously with the third (power) rail. It has to have deadly voltages to move a train weighing hundreds of tons. Actually, every 6-year-old child should come to this realization through observation. Chicago built an electric transportation system very early on, before safety was a concern. People back then were not so irresponsible and careless. In the Berlin subway, the oldest routes from the 1900...1920s also have such non-covered power rails (750V DC). The newer mostly above-ground S-Bahn routes (also 750V DC) from the 1930s have covered power rails contacted from below. Should one convert more than 100-year-old metro systems for billions of dollars to today's safety standards because more and more crazy, careless people are walking around in this world?

I totally agree, I also think that this careless attitude is encouraged by the lawyers operating the 'someone else's fault' litigation system that is so popular now. This is encouraging people to the mindset of "if anything happens to me, it's someone else's fault" completely ignoring (or forgetting) that they will very likely be dead!

Darwin Award applicants?

More and more people are oblivious to much of the technology around them today. They don't care anymore how things work. There is a platform and railroad tracks. It is a Metro system of a large metropolis. There are no overhead lines. How is this train powered? Obviously with the third (power) rail. It has to have deadly voltages to move a train weighing hundreds of tons. Actually, every 6-year-old child should come to this realization through observation. Chicago built an electric transportation system very early on, before safety was a concern. People back then were not so irresponsible and careless. In the Berlin subway, the oldest routes from the 1900...1920s also have such non-covered power rails (750V DC). The newer mostly above-ground S-Bahn routes (also 750V DC) from the 1930s have covered power rails contacted from below. Should one convert more than 100-year-old metro systems for billions of dollars to today's safety standards because more and more crazy, careless people are walking around in this world?

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Happy Crunching,

Graham

I agree with you Graham Middleton.

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Savoir-Faire is everywhere!
The T1 Trust, T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, America's First HST

I'm not sure if it's lawyers or the "I have the right to do what I like" brigade, or brats brought up by parents who couldn't give ***t for the life of the one they bred Said brats have now bred more brats that have even less thought for others, only their own "enjoyment".

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

I'm not sure if it's lawyers or the "I have the right to do what I like" brigade, or brats brought up by parents who couldn't give ***t for the life of the one they bred Said brats have now bred more brats that have even less thought for others, only their own "enjoyment".

Exactly. Evolution, The dumb mindless humans breeding with another dumb mindless humans making the offspring even dumber!!!

Exactly. Evolution, The dumb mindless humans breeding with another dumb mindless humans making the offspring even dumber!!!

But that's not what Charles Darwin discovered. Somehow the human race is a strange species.

Exactly. Evolution, The dumb mindless humans breeding with another dumb mindless humans making the offspring even dumber!!!

But that's not what Charles Darwin discovered. Somehow the human race is a strange species.

Humans are hybrids, all are HOMO just like 2500 other mammal species...

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Savoir-Faire is everywhere!
The T1 Trust, T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, America's First HST

Exactly. Evolution, The dumb mindless humans breeding with another dumb mindless humans making the offspring even dumber!!!

But that's not what Charles Darwin discovered. Somehow the human race is a strange species.

Humans are hybrids, all are HOMO just like 2500 other mammal species...

Hmmm, I meant something like: "Survival of the fittest". While human ethics and modern societies also ensure the survival of the weak, the disabled; what sets us apart from animals; it also ensures, maybe as an unintended side effect, the survival of crazy, dumb people who have simply gone dumb or crazy without any compelling reason, simply because it is possible to live (to survive) that way in modern societies.

The report on a near miss last year has just been issued:
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/653775ce26b9b1000faf1dbf/R112023_231023_South_Wingfield.pdf

This has distinct shades of a serious accident a few years back:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clapham_Junction_rail_crash

In both cases a single person was responsible for ensuring doing a repair/new signal control wiring had been done correctly. The crash at Clapham led to rules about how work was to be carried out by one person and checked by another, and what to do if the checker was not able to be there (simply stated as "report and don't do the job").

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

Food and drink deliveries

I love it.
I first saw this place few years ago on one of Michael Portillo's Great Railway Journeys series.

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Grant
Darwin NT

Food and drink deliveries

I love it.
I first saw this place few years ago on one of Michael Portillo's Great Railway Journeys series.

+1 as well as a couple of other train fanatic series, ;-)

Cheers.

Luckily this 1 was empty and not carrying its usual load.

Firefighters control grassfire sparked by coal train derailment in NSW.

New South Wales firefighters have controlled a grass fire that was sparked from a coal train that derailed on Wednesday.

Twenty-six carriages of an empty coal train derailed about 80 kilometres west of Muswellbrook in the Bylong Valley.

The crash sparked a grassfire that was controlled on Sunday after burning nearly 40 hectares.

Nine local brigades and a water-bombing aircraft were deployed to fight the fire.

Under the extreme heat of the past few days, the fire spread into steep terrain around the railway line.....

Which begs two questions:

Did the 'extreme heat event' play any part in causing the derailment? - buckled tracks, etc.?

And was the extreme heat event caused by climate change linked to the burning of fossil fuels - like, er, coal?

Nature fights back!

California's 2 passenger rail projects, 1 public and 1 private were awarded a grant of about $3.1 Billion each, a passenger rail project in the NC-VA received close to $1 Billion, Alaska received $8.2 Million, Amtrak received $14.9 Million, etc, etc, etc... $8.2 Billion total across 10 projects.

Help deliver high-speed rail service in California's Central Valley
Create a brand-new high-speed rail corridor between Las Vegas, Nevada, and southern California, serving an estimated 11 million passengers annually
Make major upgrades to existing conventional rail corridors to better connect Northern Virginia and the Southeast with the Northeast Corridor
Expand and add frequencies to the Pennsylvania Keystone Corridor between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh
Extend the Piedmont Corridor in North Carolina north, as part of a higher-speed connection between Raleigh and Richmond, Virginia
Invest in Chicago Union Station, as an initial step toward future improvements to the critical Midwest corridors hub
Improve service in Maine, Montana, and Alaska

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Savoir-Faire is everywhere!
The T1 Trust, T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, America's First HST

When a water pipe bursts in your house, it's a problem. But when it happens in a tunnel, then it's a big problem.

Flooded UK tunnel causes mass train cancellations

Eurostar — which runs services from London to Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam — said it cancelled all 41 trains scheduled for Saturday because of the flooding near Ebbsfleet International station in Kent.
Engineers working on the tunnel said the water levels were reducing, but warned the volume of water in the tunnel was "unprecedented".
Water company Southern Water said the inundation was thought to have been caused by a burst pipe feeding the tunnel's fire safety system.

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Grant
Darwin NT