Railway accident

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Versailles rail accident in 1842, 57 people were killed including the French explorer Jules Dumont d'Urville. A. Provost - Versailles - Railroad Disaster.jpg
Versailles rail accident in 1842, 57 people were killed including the French explorer Jules Dumont d'Urville.
Montparnasse derailment with one fatality at Gare Montparnasse in Paris, 1895 Train wreck at Montparnasse 1895.jpg
Montparnasse derailment with one fatality at Gare Montparnasse in Paris, 1895
Wheels from Engine Tender#013 which was destroyed in a wreck in 1907 on a bridge over Village Creek between Silsbee and Beaumont, Texas. The wheels are on display in the Arizona Railway Museum. Chandler-Arizona Railroad museum-Engine Tender Wheels-1907.JPG
Wheels from Engine Tender#013 which was destroyed in a wreck in 1907 on a bridge over Village Creek between Silsbee and Beaumont, Texas. The wheels are on display in the Arizona Railway Museum.

A railway accident (also known as a train accident,train wreck, and train crash) is a type of disaster involving one or more trains. Train wrecks often occur as a result of miscommunication, for example when a moving train meets another train on the same track, when the wheels of train come off the track, or when a boiler explosion occurs. Train accidents have often been widely covered in popular media and in folklore. A head-on collision between two trains is colloquially called a "cornfield meet" in the United States. [1]

Contents

The classification of railway accidents—both in terms of cause and effect—is a valuable aid in studying railway accidents in order to help to prevent similar ones occurring in the future. Systematic investigation for over 150 years has led to the railways' excellent safety record (compared, for example, with road transport).

Ludwig von Stockert (1913) proposed a classification of accidents by their effects (consequences); e.g. head-on-collisions, rear-end collisions, derailments. Schneider and Mase (1968) proposed an additional classification by causes; e.g. driver's errors, signalmen's errors, mechanical faults. Similar categorisations had been made by implication in previous books e.g. Rolt (1956), but Stockert's and Schneider/Mase's are more systematic and complete. With minor changes, they represent best knowledge.

Types of accidents

Collisions

Railway collisions come in the form of:

Derailments

Derailments, where trains are no longer correctly on the tracks, usually occur at:

Other

Other forms of train accident include:

Causes of accidents

Driver error

Errors caused by the actions of train drivers include:

Signalman error

Errors caused by the actions of signalmen include:

Rolling stock failure

Issues with rolling stock include:

Civil engineering failure

Issues with the civil engineering of the railway include:

Other people

Reasons other people accidentally cause a train accident include: [2]

People can break, place something, intentionally set the switch to a collision course, destroy tracks, and this is called rail sabotage. [3] Reasons other people deliberately cause a train accident include:

Natural causes

Contributory factors

See also

References

  1. "Definition of CORNFIELD MEET". www.merriam-webster.com. Retrieved 2021-07-19.
  2. "Train Wrecks and Track Attacks: An Analysis of Attempts by Terrorists and Other Extremists to Derail Trains or Disrupt Rail Transportation". 20 July 2018.
  3. "Are the railroads being sabotaged causing derailments?". 19 February 2023.

Bibliography

Further reading