Head on, two trains on a single track.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-35530538
9 dead so far - sounds as if it could have been worse.
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Terrible accident in the early morning.What has gone wrong signal failure or what.I'm no train expert.
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More likely a driver failing to register a signal. No system likes to admit anything like that. It's a total disaster for the person responsible (not to mention the dozen or so dead and many injured).
Our own railway system is busier than Germany's: same population more or less, but half the mileage. Amazing it's never happened here (although we have had a couple of booboos, including the one in the Grove just behind our old gaff).
Speed kills, reluctant though I am to admit it. I won't put a smiley, although it's tempting. Multiple deaths and maimings are strangely sobering even to a hooligan like me.
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>> Amazing it's never happened here
We've had head-on crashes on single track too AC
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowden_rail_crash
My Mother remembers one on Scarborough's miniature railway in the thirties.
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Its likely to be driver error or Signal failure. Both trains were at some speed, (line speed there is 110 kph) damage suggest both not at full speed. Rumour mill says both were equipped with the german version of ATP (Automatic Train Protection (auto brakes at red)) and Automatic Warning System (AWS) both have OTMR (on train monitoring & recording - black boxes) so it will soon be known.
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Dreadful, you just don't expect it when getting on a train!
Just hope that they find out what happened and fix it so it doesn't happen again.
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I remember a system where the engine driver had to exchange some kind of token at the other end before the other train could leave. A sort of hooped leather-bound thing if I recall.
Did it have a key attached? I can't think how it worked, but I remember it being passed to someone on the tracks as the train went past.
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That's it, exactly. I never knew anything about the clever electrical stuff behind it, just saw the hoop being handed over.
Thanks.
When did they go out of use? I'm sure I most often saw it on the line from St Albans (Abbey) station in the 1960s.
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>> Did it have a key attached? I can't think how it worked, but I remember
>> it being passed to someone on the tracks as the train went past.
Its called a "single line working token" The hooped leather bound thing is just a bag where the token is placed inside. (because f you lose it the line comes to a halt)
Works like this, there are two machines linked at a signal box* at either end. The signaller sets the points and signals for the line, this unlocks the dispenser to take the token. Signaller takes token, gives it to driver. He now has a token from a dispenser, no dispenser can issue a token until one is put back*
Driver drives to other signal box, hands token to signaller who puts it in his dispensing machine where it wont dispense unless both ends agree the signals and points set right.
Its still in use now, the signal box replaced by a machine at platform end where driver phones central signal control, and they dispense the the token to him remotely.
There are variations on this, where machines can hold multiple tokens, but interlocking ensures there is only one per line.
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I should add, that this apparently fail safe method of working surprisingly didn't prevent head on crashes on single lines, they still occurred albeit not often. Of course we have now moved to computer controlled single line working, with auto train protection where head on crashes are now impossible. DOH!
The only sure thing about railway safety, is anywhere you have people involved, things will go wrong.
Last edited by: Zero on Wed 10 Feb 16 at 09:32
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I never sit in the front or rear carriage of a train. Am I doing the right thing, safety wise? Always seems to me the first and last carriages are most likely to suffer the worst, you don't get many side-on accidents.
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I never sit in a train. Result!
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Do they not have them in your century?
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>> I never sit in a train. Result!
>>
Safer to stand? Really?
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>> I never sit in the front or rear carriage of a train. Am I doing
>> the right thing, safety wise? Always seems to me the first and last carriages are
>> most likely to suffer the worst, you don't get many side-on accidents.
>>
You don't get many accidents.
Have you given any thought to which carriage is least unlikely to have the bomb in it?
Of course the sensible thing to do is to have a bomb with you. I mean, what are the chances of there being two bombs on the same train?
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Yes, all true Manatee. Spirit of posting noted.
I'm just getting my usual twitches before getting on some consarn-ed aeroplane contraptions this weekend, one being a little wobbly heap with nasty propellers flying over remote Balkan mountains.
As for two beumbs on the same train, you have followed the kind of luck I get with automobiles, I presume?
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At least it is propellers plural. Good luck with the Balkan mountains.
I always consoled myself for having to travel cattle class with the thought that the "safer" seats are in the back.
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>> I never sit in the front or rear carriage of a train. Am I doing
>> the right thing, safety wise? Always seems to me the first and last carriages are
>> most likely to suffer the worst, you don't get many side-on accidents.
Southall Train Crash was a side on jobby. At Selby the middle coaches zig zagged onto the other line to be hit by the coal train coming the other way. I often (like three times a week) used to travel on the Basingtoke / Waterloo train that was rammed up the ass at full speed at Clapham Junction. Indeed I had used it the previous week, but was away that week. Some of my colleagues were on that train and in that accident.
There was a rule (now gone) that the first and rear carriage of a high speed train (125mph) could not contain passengers. Statically, more serious injures and deaths occur in the front and back. I still sit there tho, because its more about when your card is marked, and less about being paranoid
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When you travel by car you are in both the front and rear carriage.
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If you exclude the side on ones, there are three possible modes of collision between two trains.
F1-F2
F1-R2
F2-R1
Assuming all three are equally likely then there is a 2/3 chance that if there is a collision, it will be the front of your train that is hit. If we regard the head on crash as less likely as most routes are not single line working, then the chance moves nearer to 1/2 but always remain higher than that as long as the possibility of a head on exists.
Add to that the possibility of a collision with something else on the track, and the chance of a frontal impact increases rather than reduces.
So, if you can't sit in the middle, prefer the back to the front.
(Bound to be something wrong with that reasoning, I always cock up probability questions).
Being on a train may well be safer than staying at home, so it's largely immatteral, as my grandfather used to say.
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Aren't you discounting the fact that the locomotive is at the front of the train and will protect the first carriage. The rear is unprotected
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>>
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>> Aren't you discounting the fact that the locomotive is at the front of the train
>> and will protect the first carriage. The rear is unprotected
Except of course its at both ends
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>>
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>> Aren't you discounting the fact that the locomotive is at the front of the train
>> and will protect the first carriage.
Yes.
How many passenger trains have separate locos? Not many now, is it?
The IC125s had a loco at each end IIRC, and the 225s had a "driving van trailer" at one end with no passenger accommodation (owing to the rules about >100mph trains not having passengers in the leading vehicle, that Zero referred to elsewhere). The Pendolinos don't have locos and go both ways.
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I will avoid sitting in the front or back carriages if given a choice.
Bit paranoid about it really and have successfully passed my paranoia onto my kids
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>> Southall Train Crash was a side on jobby.
Went to that, professionally.
One of the carriages looked worse than a banana... and had the roof level with the top of the seats. How on earth more people didn't die i'll never know.
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>> >> Southall Train Crash was a side on jobby.
>>
>> Went to that, professionally.
>>
>> One of the carriages looked worse than a banana... and had the roof level with
>> the top of the seats. How on earth more people didn't die i'll never know.
There was loads of bad stuff about that driver. Had it happened in todays climate he would have been in jail afterwards.
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My father was a signalman on Southern railway, later Southern Region for many years.
On Christmas Day 1955, my parents, my brother and I sat down to our Christmas dinner. My father had just given up his job after some 40 years working on the railway. There had been a crash at Barnes which was blamed on the signalman. My father said that his leaving the railway had nothing to do with the crash, but we weren't convinced.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnes_rail_crash
My mother had recently decided to give up work. My brother was between jobs.
I was the only person in the family working and earning. The bread winner. I had just started National Service, I was paid 4 shillings a day, £1: 8s : 0d a week.
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>> On Christmas Day 1955, my parents, my brother and I sat down to our Christmas
>> dinner. My father had just given up his job after some 40 years working on
>> the railway. There had been a crash at Barnes which was blamed on the signalman.
>> My father said that his leaving the railway had nothing to do with the crash,
>> but we weren't convinced.
Sometime in the late 50's my old man was driving a Britannia heading The Norfolkman, The Liverpool Street to Norwich express, when he was signalled to an unscheduled stop because at a previous station a young boy about my age had got to close to the platform edge and been smeared down the side of his train. That shook him up a bit apparently. For the rest of his driving career he luckily never had a one under.
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>> I never sit in the front or rear carriage of a train.
Nor me - one end of the IC125 is the quiet carriage, where small noises are more irritating than the constant noise of a noisy carriage, and the other end is first class.
Speaking of the 125s, any sign of the new Hitachis yet Z?
Last edited by: Focusless on Wed 10 Feb 16 at 19:41
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>> I never sit in the front or rear carriage of a train.
Must have travelled tens of thousands on miles with back to leading/trailing driver compartment on Class 321 or 350 EMUs. At the front you can hear the bells and horns for the AWS and driver vigilance devices.
Never gave a second's thought to the miniscule risk of collision, never mind whether I'd be better off in coach B if it happened.
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>> Human error to blame, says prosecutor
As I thought.
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Terribly contradictory and misleading article that. You can't "turn the system off", nor can you set conflicting routes on the system in use there.
The only possible explanation was that one of the drivers was given permission to proceed at red. In the UK a driver has to stop at red, get authority to proceed, and then do so at a speed where the driver can stop at obstructions.
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I'm sure you are right . Other reports state that the driver was "given a special signal that he's should not have been given", presumably the equivalent of proceed at red.
The question of course remains why? What was he thinking?
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>> I'm sure you are right . Other reports state that the driver was "given a
>> special signal that he's should not have been given", presumably the equivalent of proceed at
>> red.
That seems to be the case, its a very poor interpretation by the BBC.
>> The question of course remains why? What was he thinking?
>>
The history of rail accidents throughout the railway age are littered with those very questions. Mostly unanswered.
Last edited by: Zero on Tue 16 Feb 16 at 19:25
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>> The history of rail accidents throughout the railway age are littered with those very questions.
>> Mostly
Yes I live not far from the the site of Norfolk's worst disaster which occurred way back in 1874. The circumstances were not disimilar from the crash in Germany both involving single line working. It seems whatever the technolgy human error can thwart it.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorpe_rail_accident
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Interesting Ted.
I'm not a rail buff but I can remember a looped pouch thing being passed to the driver by the signalman at the old signal box at North Walsham at the beginning of the single line section. This would be in the early eighties
I guess that was such a token
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The loop was to aid pickup by one of the crew. The signalman just looped it over the crewman's arm whilst accepting the token for the previous section at the same time.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZ21NaOXcL0
Had an overnight stop at Abermule last Summer with the caravan on the way to Tenby. Very pleasant place.
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And thanks to the wonder of Google and the internet here's a picture of a tablet being exchanged at North Waltham station.
www.signalbox.org/gallery/e/northwalsham.php
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In the jolly good Horizon film about train crashes that Zero pointed out yonks ago, there was one caused by the tablet system, where someone got confused, and handed back the driver the one he'd just handed over, and they didn't check it was the right tablet.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxpBzGCKA0w
Last edited by: Crankcase on Wed 17 Feb 16 at 08:08
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...picture of a tablet being exchanged...
If you say so, CGN. He could be describing his weekend's fishing for all I can make out.
Last edited by: WillDeBeest on Wed 17 Feb 16 at 09:33
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>> Human error to blame, says prosecutor
>>
>> www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-35585302
Worse than that, the controller (read signaller) was paying games on his mobile phone
www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-36025951
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Serious rail crash in Germany - Dutchie
