It seems a shame that a few other trains passed beforehand with this anomaly in place and yet it went undetected.
For example, in the U.K.:
Though conceivably the break was very small and a train impacting the slightly lifted rail just caused a good chunk of it to explode.
The crown (top) of the rail seems to be missing after the gap. The crown-less section then continues ~3 meters before it disappears behind the investigator on the left. IDK what that might indicate.
ref pic: https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/1024/cpsprodpb/ecb4/live/53924...
It measures vertical forces in kips - (kilo-pounds-force, 1 KIP = 1,000 lbs)
They have these in the USA.
I think these kinds of accidents are largely mitigated by rail defect monitoring. I know rails in the US are equipped with defect detectors for passing trains; I'm surprised that a similar system doesn't exist for the rails themselves. Or more likely, one does exist and the outcome of this tragedy will be a lesson about operational failures.
What do they do differently?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santiago_de_Compostela_derailm...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Adamuz_train_derailments
https://www.reuters.com/world/spains-deadly-rail-accidents-p...
> [The] stretch of track that was renovated last May and inspected on January 7.
The track had been inspected very recently. Maybe the inspection standards are inadequate?
The linked article also shows figures that are quite meaningless without context.
> [The] vast majority [of Spain's high-speed rail budget] went to new infrastructure with only some 16% earmarked for maintenance, renewal and upgrades. That compares with between 34% to 39% spent by France, Germany and Italy,
They simply can't compare those numbers as-is. Of course Spain will be spending less in maintenance as a percentage of the total budget if it's still mainly building new tracks. It's not a useful figure.
Hey that infrastructure looks perfectly fine and new, ahhh ok... they were going 180kmh where the speed limit was 80kmh..
Reminds me of when Malaysian airlines crashed two planes in a short period of time. It was a good time to get cheap flights from Europe to south east Asia as long as you can withstand relatives thinking you are literally going to die in their third crash.
The first was purely a matter of not upgrading the signaling in a very low speed section: The crash could have happened with regional trains too. Every engineer knew that it was unsafe and one distraction was enough to get someone killed, but Spain is still well in the middle of track expansion, so it's all the horrors of politicking. Unless you have a crash, not upgrading those signals costs nothing, but, say, the very expensive connection to Asturias was worth a lot, so iffy tradeoffs were made.
Hopefully better engineering-driven tradeoffs are made regarding track maintenance, but hey, this is Spain, not a place where we are good at efficient, reliable safety processes: See the failures in Valencia for the DANA, where the chain between the meteorologists seeing a risk that led to recommending evacuation, and the actual order of evacuation was so slow, so we ended up with 229 deaths.
One major difference is infrastructure. Shinkansen lines are completely separate from conventional rail: no level crossings, no shared tracks, no freight, and no interaction with slower services. There are no cars, pedestrians, or animals anywhere near the line. In much of Europe, including Spain, high-speed lines are very good, but they still tend to interact more with legacy rail networks and inherit more constraints.
Another key factor is how strictly operations are controlled. Speed limits are enforced automatically rather than relying on driver compliance alone. If a train exceeds its permitted speed for any reason, the system intervenes immediately. The design assumption is that human error will happen, so the system is built to prevent a mistake from turning into an accident.
Maintenance is also handled with extreme conservatism. Track geometry, overhead lines, and rolling stock are continuously monitored, with very tight tolerances. Components are replaced earlier than strictly necessary because preventing failures is considered far cheaper than dealing with the consequences of one.
Japan has also invested heavily in detecting external hazards. Earthquake early-warning systems automatically cut power and apply brakes before shaking reaches the tracks, and the same mindset applies to weather, landslides, and other environmental risks.
Finally, there’s a strong institutional safety culture behind all of this. Procedures, training, and reporting of near-misses are taken very seriously, and lessons are applied incrementally over decades. The objective isn’t just to meet safety standards but to systematically remove edge cases.
It’s not a single piece of technology that explains the record. It’s the combination of dedicated infrastructure, automation, conservative engineering, obsessive maintenance, and a culture with very little tolerance for shortcuts.
Regarding the second point, 2013 accident was caused by higher than allowed speed and drivers had been complaining about the line not having the security system that automatically enforces speed limits. In this year's accident, the line has a much stricter securty system.
The main issue with spanish rails, high speed and specially traditional rail is the lack of maintenance.
Does the system automatically slow down the train, or does it notify the engineer? I would imagine that there are some scenarios where going over the speed limit is the correct choice.
That might be because Japan did have a huge railway accident in 2005 due to excessive speed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amagasaki_derailment
> Of the roughly 700 passengers, 106 passengers and the driver were killed, and 562 others were injured
The Santiago de Compostela derailment (first link on the parent comment) happened in 2013 for the same reason.
All that said, I would not be surprised if the culprit for this particular case is lack of maintenance. However I would wait until the official investigation is over before drawing conclusions.
Then you mention fsb and get downvoted.
HN is full of russian shills.
0. https://old.reddit.com/r/drehscheibe/comments/1qe9ko2/ich_gl...
That entirely depends on which class of tracks we're talking about. And on top of that, remember that Europe is at war with Russia, railway sabotage has been attributed to Russia already in Poland [1] - and if you ask me, I don't believe for a single goddamn second that "cable thieves" were the cause behind the infamous 2022 attack on Germany's railways either.
> And what systems are in place to actually detect this.
In Germany, dedicated railway cars called "RAILab" [3] that can measure track performance at up to 200 km/h perform the bulk of the work. In addition, each piece of infrastructure has something called an "Anlagenverantwortlicher", a person responsible for it - and that person has to walk each piece of infrastructure every two years at the very least, sections that have shown to be problematic get walked sometimes weekly.
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gknv8nxlzo
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_2022_German_railway_at...
very
> And what systems are in place to actually detect this.
track circuit detection would pick up most cases I would have thought
rokkamokka•1h ago