points by gloosx 1 day ago | 0 comments
I always thought there is a system of rail signals which should prevent accidents like this always in place, like dividing railroad into sections, turn on red light if the next section is occupied, yellow before that and so on...
Did it fail somehow which lead to this accident? I think such systems must be redundant enough to survive even without power/computers?
[–] gavinsyancey 1 day ago
[–] thatfrenchguy 1 day ago
> - Since the system was frequently failing and proceeding at slow speeds causes severe operational slowdowns, the control center started allowing them to proceed at linespeed instead, possibly with some ad-hoc checks to make sure the track was clear.
- That got normalized, and whatever ad-hoc checks (if any) they were doing failed in this case.
This is a 200km/h line, which is right at the limit of the speed where you don't need in-cabin signaling (plenty of lines in France run at 200km/h without it), which explains why a careless control center operator could end up in this spot.
[–] gloosx 1 day ago
Damn, I wonder if "control center" is just a bunch of software, not very reliable then!
[–] gavinsyancey 1 day ago
No, that's the operations headquarters, staffed by people.
[–] pvaldes 23 hours ago
Hum, I wonder just right now if allowing the train to go to full speed (and giving priority to the restart over other trains) was related with the pressure of carrying a prominent politician. Have the team of the ex-minister pressed RENFE with the need to arrive urgently so "just ignore the protocol this time"?.
Is speculation of course but at this moment we must evaluate every hypothesis.
Politicians are the kind of people that are caught in the highway driving at 200 Km/h, just to arrive in time to a meeting in a 20 people's village. Could explain the strange control behavior.
https://inews.co.uk/news/39-dead-two-high-speed-trains-colli...
- A fault in the signaling system caused an Iryo and a Renfe train to stop -- the Iryo train was in front.
- For some reason, the control center authorized the Renfe train to proceed at full speed, despite the cab signaling showing it should stop. It then hit the Iryo train that was stopped in front of it.
Reading between the lines, it sounds like the main issues that caused this are likely:
- Poor / improper maintenance causes the primary signaling/communication system to frequently fail. The standard "correct" behavior in this case is to manually authorize stopped trains to proceed slowly (at approx 10 mph so they can stop if they see another train) to the next station and wait for the system to be restored.
- Since the system was frequently failing and proceeding at slow speeds causes severe operational slowdowns, the control center started allowing them to proceed at linespeed instead, possibly with some ad-hoc checks to make sure the track was clear.
- That got normalized, and whatever ad-hoc checks (if any) they were doing failed in this case.