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Europe
60 people dead after train derails in Spain
2013-07-25
  • The passenger train derailed outside city of Santiago de Compostela
  • Emergency services working to free injured from the wreckage
  • Eyewitnesses say that the train was on a bend when it derailed
  • One eyewitness said he heard a bang before the train came off tracks
  • The train was carrying 218 passengers when it left the rails
  • Many were travelling to the area on the eve of a Christian festival
  • Grim death toll may continue to rise
    Not WoT unless the bang turns out to be a bomb.
    • Posted by:Steve White

    #10  Background details
    Posted by: phil_b   2013-07-25 17:00  

    #9  Slow-motion video

    Posted by: gorb   2013-07-25 16:00  

    #8  The operator is an idiot. He must have thought he was playing with toy trains when he was doing 190kph in an area marked for 80kph. Then it turned out the speedometer was connected to reality somehow. Perhaps next time he'll go a bit slower. It seems to me that the passengers would have been complaining about the cornering forces before then, no?

    I watched a video of it. It appears to me the cars behind the locomotive hopped off the track first and were bouncing around a bit before all hell broke loose.
    Posted by: gorb   2013-07-25 15:49  

    #7  Could be just coming off the rail, but worth investigating - at that speed and on a turn it wouldn't take much.

    Also interesting to know would be how many other times the operator had run this route at that speed and if with any comperable loads.
    Posted by: swksvolFF   2013-07-25 13:38  

    #6  Yeah, I saw the video at lunch and the bright flash as the pantograph came off the wire probably resulted in a pretty good "bang".

    My associate pointed out the third car back seemed to come up off the tracks (maybe 6"-12") immediately before the crash. I saw it, too, and that makes me think of an explosive device.
    Posted by: Bobby   2013-07-25 13:22  

    #5  The bang - not a boom - could also have been related to the derailment, an effect rather than a cause.

    That would make sense, looks like the second thing to happen was hitting that electrical pylon, and inside a concrete canyon, would all blend together into a boom.
    Posted by: swksvolFF   2013-07-25 12:04  

    #4  Watched a new Top Gear last night and was shocked.
    The guys went to Spain to test out some "budget" super-cars (all under 200,000).

    Why Spain? There were large towns with apartment buildings, hospitals, etc. that were absolutely empty!! They raced on the runways of a new airport that was shut down and totally empty after 5 years. They drove on a freeway for miles that had 0 traffic, why? It went, literally, nowhere it just stopped at a barrier.

    Talk about the failures of Socialism/Fascism and the bubble economy...
    I thought this kind of thing was only endemic to China. This is what the Demonrats and 'bummer want for us.
    Posted by: AlanC   2013-07-25 09:59  

    #3  Latest reports on fox say 78 dead, over 200 injured.
    Posted by: Frozen Al   2013-07-25 09:34  

    #2  The train was traveling at 220 kilometers (140 miles) an hour, while the speed limit was 80 kilometers per hour, it was reported in Spanish newspaper El Mundo.

    That's often enough to cause any train to go off the tracks. Sounds like operator error to me. The bang - not a boom - could also have been related to the derailment, an effect rather than a cause.
    Posted by: Bobby   2013-07-25 06:19  

    #1  ZH says a train to Nowhere. Government spent big on un-needed infrastructure and likely couldn't spend enough on maintenance when austerity rolled around.
    Posted by: phil_b   2013-07-25 00:12  

    00:00