siderealGot tired of having this conversation over and over again so I just spent way too long making this:
Kevin Boyd (he/him) 🇨🇦
Andrew Feeney
sabik@andrewfeeney @kboyd @sidereal
Eschede train disaster
A mechanical failure on car 1 ended up with a derailed wheel striking a switch, causing car 3 to straddle two tracks, taking out a support column for a road bridge, which then collapsed onto the back part of car 5 and onto car 6, flattening it to 15cm. The remaining six cars and the rear power car then slammed into the obstruction at 200 km/hr.
@sabik @kboyd @sidereal Oh wow, so this actually happened once. I was trying to imagine the geometry in my head and whether or not it could occur. My conclusion was that you could have one wheel on a rail for each side and the rest of the weight of the car would be resting on either a wheel dragging through sleepers or part of the car or bogies resting on the tracks, so it would slow down quickly or start rolling or something, but wouldn't slide along very long.
@andrewfeeney @kboyd @sidereal
Well, the anime panel seems to be showing front bogie on one track and rear bogie on another; that may almost be plausible?
In the disaster, yeah, moving at 200km/hr, things are going to keep moving; the rear end of car 3 was probably more thrown onto the bridge support rather than travelling along the passing loop in any orderly manner