Train cras

Brooklyn train crash

November 1, 1918: More than 100 people die in a Brooklyn train crash as the driver takes a 6 mph curve at 50+ mph. This S curve is the most treacherous in all the NYC subway system.

Riverbank Zoo

Train Wreck at the Riverbank ZooTerrain washed out which caused this accident.

Melbourne

Wreckage of a truck is strewn about the crash scene after a fatal collision with a train, in the distance, on a level crossing at Kerang, June 6, 2007. (Getty Images/Pool: Craig Borrow)

Police and rescue crews work at the wreckage of a Melbourne-bound V-Line train after it collided with a truck near Kerang. Picture: Andrew Tauber.

The trainwreck industry

In 1895, this happened:

A train crashed through the buffers at Montparnasse Station, Paris, then smashed through the wall and fell out onto the street. A woman below was killed. The cause seems to have been an excess of paperwork.I wouldn’t have thought a French train crash such an unusual thing, but in 2004, I saw this:

It’s a real-life replica of the crash! The number (721) and layout of the engine seem more or less accurate. Not only has the train been reproduced, but the building itself seems to be styled on the Montparnasse Station. This was a strip mall somewhere near Goiânia, Brazil. It’s not really such an oddity as far as the talking-points of anonymous strip malls go, so I didn’t think any more of it until I saw this:

Again, it’s train 721, and again it’s fallen out of a building fashioned after Gare Montparnasse.It turns out these things are the frontispieces for a chain of museums known as Mundo a Vapor (”Steam World”). I must’ve seen the one in Caldas Novas.

I wonder if there has arisen an industry based on producing full-size novelty crash scene replicas. If so, I’d like to know who else has bought one, and encourage any prospective purchasers to buy theirs ASAP.

Egyptian train clash kills up to 80

People gather at the site of a train crash in rail station of Qalyoub, north of Cairo, Egypt, Monday, Aug. 21, 2006. Two Egyptian trains collided on Monday, killing up to 80 people and injuring twice that number in a Nile Delta town north of Cairo, a security source said.

Israel Train Crash Kills 8, Wounds 200

Tel Aviv----June 22......As Israel was enjoying the heat of a quiet summer's day, only two things on were on people's minds. The upcoming disengagement from Gaza and air-conditioning. Then the news appeared, first on radio, then the Internet and then on TV as we heard that a train had plowed into a truck loaded with chickens. Israel is a country which has been traumatized by Islamic terror attacks, so another car or train accident would not really stop us in our stride. But as the minutes grew and with everyone carrying mobile phones, Israel quickly realized that it had just been struck by a major train disaster.

Eight people were killed and over 200 injured when a passenger train from Haifa hurtled at full speed into a coal truck in Israel. Dozens of passengers were thrown from somersaulting passenger cars in the accident. Five people were pronounced dead at the scene and two others died later at hospitals. A total of 215 people were injured, several of them critically - including a baby and a 19-year-old female soldier. Officials repeated several times that today's tragedy was an accident, not a terror attack. The massive truck the train hit weighed about 40 tons. Army Radio said the driver had been working for 30 hours straight.Police said that the trucking company, Eliahu Brothers, had been under criminal investigation in the past for having its drivers work 30 to 40 consecutive hours – way over the 12-hour maximum time permitted by law.The Israel passenger train, carrying 300 to 400 people from Tel Aviv to the southern Negev desert city of Beersheba, was traveling as fast as 80 mph when it hit the coal delivery truck at about 6 p.m.

French woman injured in east China train crash may need surgery

ZHOUCUN, Shandong Province, April 29 (Xinhua) -- A French woman who suffered a broken thigh in Monday's train crash in east China could undergo an operation this week, doctors with a local hospital confirmed.The hospital in Zichuan District of Zibo City, Shandong Province, is waiting for a team of specialists from Beijing to hold a joint consultation on Robin Naurence later on Tuesday.The 42-year-old was one of four French nationals injured in the deadliest China train crash in a decade. She suffered a fracture to her right thigh and may need an operation in a few days."We have used traction and other therapy to ease her pain. She's in stable condition," said Sun Lanfang, the hospital vice president. "We're coordinating with the foreign affairs authorities to see whether the operation should be carried out in Zibo or elsewhere."Naurence was traveling with her boyfriend, 54-year-old Pascal Boisson, and his son and daughter to Qingdao.Boisson was hospitalized in Zibo Traditional Chinese Medicine Hospital with his 22-year-old daughter Joanne. His son, Pierre Emmanuel, 14, was at Zibo No. 1 Hospital

Nuclear waste trains were using killer crash railway line

The track where a 100mph express train derailed is also used for transporting radioactive nuclear waste, it was revealed today. The news raises the horrifying scenario of carriages packed with toxic waste plunging down the same embankment as the Virgin Trains Pendolino service from Euston, which crashed off the track on Friday — killing 84-year-old passenger Margaret Masson and injuring several dozen more.

The nuclear waste is carried on a regular basis by freight company Direct Rail Services (DRS).

The company confirmed that nuclear waste is carried along the same line, at Grayrigg in Cumbria, but refused to say how often.







Rail workers at the scene in Grayrigg (above).

84-year-old Margaret Masson (below)

was killed in the crash

58 Orang Tewas Akibat Kecelakaan KA di Pakistan

19/12/2007

Karachi - Sedikitnya 58 orang tewas akibat kecelakaan kereta api di Pakistan. Lebih dari 120 lainnya mengalami luka-luka dalam insiden maut itu. (ita/sss)

Dozens die in train crash outside Cairo

Aziz El-Kaissouni in Qalyoub, EgyptAugust 22, 2006

TWO commuter trains have collided in a Nile Delta town north of Cairo, killing up to 80 people and injuring twice that number.Police said the two trains were heading south towards Cairo yesterday, when one failed to obey a stop signal outside Qalyoub train station, about 20 kilometres north of Cairo, and rammed into the rear of the train in front.

Train crash (on the more serious side, could our level crossings handle massive freight trains?)





FRENCH officials have blamed railway signallers in Luxembourg for causing a train collision that has killed 5 people in northeastern France.

The crash yesterday between a double-decker passenger train travelling from Luxembourg and a French freight train happened near the village of Zoufftgen, in the department of Moselle, just before midday. The head-on collision occurred on a stretch of track undergoing maintenance work. Bertrand Mertz, vice-president of the Lorraine regional council, blamed the collision, which also injured about 20 people, on signal workers from the neighbouring country. He said on France 3 television that it was a "line-control mistake by people in Luxembourg".The cause of the accident is still unclear, but rail officials from the state-owned SNCF rail company said that part of the track was closed because of maintenance work and trains were meant to wait their turn before travelling on the open line. Guillaume Pepy, SNCF executive director, said the freight train was the first onto the section of track, and that its driver had not broken a red light. Both train drivers, one from France and the other from Luxembourg, and ten people on board the passenger train were killed in the collision. More than 100 rescue workers headed to the crash site to free passengers trapped inside the wreckage. Several cars of the freight train lie were crushed and others were bent skyward or tipped over on their sides with the force of the impact.

Two killed in Ararat fast-train crash

The scene at the Trawalla level crossing where two people died when a V/Line train collided with a truck yesterday afternoon.Photo: Courtesy Pyrenees Advocate

Branson praises rescue effort in UK train crash

Sir Richard Branson praised emergency workers who battled difficult conditions to rescue around 100 passengers trapped in a derailed Virgin train in England.The Virgin Pendolino tilting train, heading from London to Glasgow, derailed at 150 kilometres per hour on Friday evening (local time) in a remote area of Cumbria, scattering carriages down the side of a steep embankment.Investigators and the train company boss say an elderly woman was killed, with a total of 22 others hurt.Police have named the dead woman as 84-year-old Margaret Masson from Glasgow.Five people remain in hospital with back, leg and head injuries.Rescuers worked in torrential rain to reach scores of passengers, some of whom were trapped in the overturned carriages.A defective track may have caused the crash, with rail accident investigator Thomas Edwards saying the inquiry will concentrate on a set of points.

Virgin Group chairman, Sir Richard Branson, says he has been told the line was to blame for the crash. "I've been told the line was defective. I've been told that it was the points that failed," he said.Sir Richard, who broke off a family skiing holiday in Switzerland to return to Britain to visit the crash site and the injured, says rail travel remains the safest form of transport."If it turns out to be a Network Rail track issue then they simply have to learn from this and to make sure that it never happens again," he said.Sir Richard says the accident could have been much worse if a different train was involved."The train itself was magnificent," he said."It's built like a tank and I think if it'd been any of the old trains the injuries and the mortalities would have been horrendous.

InterCityExpress crash in Jerman

Kecelakaan kereta api InterCityExpress yang menabrak jembatan di Kota Eschede pada 1988 dan menyebabkan 101 orang meninggal. Awalnya ivestigasi dilakukan pada kereta yang paling parah kerusakannya, bahkan sempat dicurigai adanya kecelakaan kendaraan yang melintasi jembatan diatas jalur rel kereta. Namun penyelidikan selanjutnya menunjukkan bahwa kecelakaan kereta api super cepat ICE di Jerman ini didahului sebelumnya dengan mencuatnya sebuah batangan logam yang menembus lantai dasar gerbong kereta api. Mencuatnya bagian dari roda ini terjadi sembilan kilometer sebelum kejadian keluarnya rentetan gerbong ini dari rel.

Ketika gerbong keluar rel dan masih dengan kecepatan 200 Km/jam menabrak jembatan yang akhirnya runtuh. Dan runtuhnya jembatan ini menimpa gerbong yang lain. Mengapa kejadian beruntun menjadi bertumpuk-tumpuk menjadi sebuah bencana besar menewaskan lebih dari seratus orang ? What went wrong ?

Kecelakaan Concorde di paris tahun 2000 juga hanya disebabkan oleh potongan logam yang jatuh ditinggalkan oleh pesawat lain yang tinggal landas empat menit sebelumnya. (baca uraian Concorde Accident selanjutnya)