— May 22, 1915: Passenger train collides with a troop train in Gretna, Scotland. 227 people killed.
— Dec. 12, 1917: Troop train derails near the entrance of Mt. Cenis tunnel in Modane, France. 543 killed.
— Jul. 9, 1918: An inbound local train collides with an outbound express killing 101 in Nashville, Tenn. 171 injured.
— Jan. 16, 1944: Train wrecks in the Torro Tunnel in Leon Province, Spain. More than 500 killed.
— Mar. 2, 1944: Train stalls in a tunnel in Salerno, Italy, suffocating passengers. 521 killed.
— Oct. 22, 1949: Danzig-Warsaw express derails in Nr. Dwor, Poland. More than 200 killed.
— Apr. 3, 1955: Train plunges into a canyon in Guadalajara, Mexico. 300 killed.
— Sept. 29, 1957: Express train collides with stationary oil train in Montgomery, West Pakistan. 250 killed.
— Feb. 1, 1970: Express train rams stationary commuter train in Buenos Aires, Argentina. 236 killed.
— Oct. 6, 1972: Train carrying religious pilgrims derails and catches fire in Saltillo, Mexico. 208 killed.
— June 6, 1981: Train crashes after bridge collapses in flash floods during monsoon in Bihar, India. More than 400 killed.
— Jan. 4, 1990: Overcrowded 16-car passenger train collides with standing freight train in Sindh Province, Pakistan. More than 210 killed.
— Sept. 22, 1994: Faulty brakes cause a train to plunge into a ravine in Tolunda, Angola. 300 killed.
— Aug. 20, 1995: A speeding passenger train crashes into a train that had stalled after hitting a cow in Firozabad, India. 358 killed.
— Aug. 2, 1999: Two express trains collide head-on in Gauhati, India. More than 285 killed.
— Feb. 20, 2002: An overcrowded train en route from Cairo to the southern Egyptian city of Luxor burst into flames, then travels 2½ miles before the driver stops. More than 360 people die.
— Feb. 18, 2004: Runaway train cars carrying fuel and industrial chemicals derail, setting off explosions destroy five villages in Neyshabur, Iran. At least 200 people killed.
— Apr. 22, 2004: Two trains carrying explosives collide as they are being shifted to different tracks at a single station in Ryongchon, North Korea. 154 killed; 1,300 injured.
Disrupting the Borg is expensive and time consuming!
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All together pretty good compared to the billions of passenger miles covered.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate
Rail’s an excellent way of carrying large passenger numbers between cities.
Fatalities in civilised countries are pretty rare, the Spanish disaster is noteworthy because it is so rare.
If the price is right, I’d use it any and every time I visit London.
Trains don’t kill people; politicians like Harry Reid kill people. (Oh, and train engineers…train engineers kill people. Wait a minute…I didn’t mean the DESIGN engineers, I meant the bad train drivers…but if the design is bad…oh, never mind.) If it’s a nice, techy ride, for all the jaded businessmen and women, and jaunty visitors to the big, crowded city, go for it–but it won’t keep people from wanting space travel.
The design is bad for this speed and curve.
The section immediately behind the locomotive can not handle the g forces. It happens not only in the front part of the convoy but the exact same thing also makes the rear part of the convoy unstable.
This is how it was in the original design .
Now look again
The main reason is of course the excessive speed for this turn.
Harry Reid is an expert on train wrecks, he has made a career of them.