What are the odds of a trainwreck occuring?

Question

What are the odds of a trainwreck occuring?

Answer 1

The question isn't whether it'll happen, but the severity if it does.

Are we talking "Evacuate the town"?  "16 people dead"?  Or "Holy smoke, steam engine scrapes side of passenger coach, nobody injured but a lot of people surprised" sort of thing?

1:45 in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEkZPZpea...

Passenger trains tend to be pretty darned safe, because even if they are in a wreck, they're built to ride it out.

The Federal Railroad Administration keeps statistics on railroad accidents.

Answer 2

It depends a lot on the geography.

Grade territory, with sharp and reversing curves, coupled with very heavy trains, is more likely to wind up with cars scattered all over h**l and back.  But, that doesn't stop the UP.

They're running the trains too damned heavy for the stretch of railroad between Dunsmuir, California and the top of the hill at Grass Lake, on the run to Klamath Falls Oregon.  Here, the next derailment in this insanely derailment prone region is imminent.

I hate to sound like a broken record, but there are no fewer than 7 blog posts on my 360 dealing with this very subject, including a five part serial expose on the disaster at Cantara Loop in 1991, that killed the entire upper end of the Sacramento River the length of the canyon, 30 miles, to where it empties into Lake Shasta.  It starts with the first part on the post of February 25, 07.  You may find it informative.

The flip side of this coin is nice, straight and level roadbed.  usually man failure or equipment failure here.  So, since everyone you see on each and every train you see is exhuasted, chances for derailment there is just as likely.

The lightning analogy above is really quite accurate.  So, since you wouldn't stand out in a field with a graphite fishing rod pointed straight up in your hand during a raging thunder storm, stay away from the tracks for the same reason.  The further the better.  

No lightning strike, no car load of lumber in your lap.

Answer 3

i don't know, go out and stand on the tracks and find out. lol, srry had to.

Answer 4

To you: 1 in 3

To me: 1 in 100,000

Answer 5

Well I would have to say HOGHEAD is dead on as I was trained by the BNSF railroad to be a engineer, but the hoghead maybe have not delt with what I have. Kids sticking what ever they can find from coins to rocks, to bricks to wheelbarrows to whole entire automobiles. I have been shot at, broken beer bottles thrown at me, bricks thrown threw my window (shattering it).

But not to get off the subject I had been derailed by a wheelbarrow that some nice kid had stuck on the tracks, I have also been derailed (not bad) after hitting a semi dump truck just outside of Blue Island IL.

I have had many derailments due to broken rail (lack of maintance) and act of kids. Although derailments are a daily thing in railyards and industry tracks were track condition is poor. I have one derailment under my record that was caused by heat (a Sun kink they call it) it was on 8 mph track so I only had a couple locomotive wheels off the track.

Answer 6

No terrorists have bombed amtrak yet since they know people would think the train just went off the tracks by itself again.

Answer 7

As good of a chance as getting struck by lightning...you just cant pinpoint your chances- they're unpredictable. Like a car accident