@cstross
Where does 193 tons of locomotive park?

@Steveg58 Wherever it wants to!

(But why are your locomotives so heavy? No overhead electrified traction and no electric multiple units—with a motor on every bogie—so only the loco has drive wheels and it needs mass to hold it in contact with the rails while it's laying down the torque, that's why. Primitive!)

@cstross
Hee hee.
TGV World speed record 574.8 km/h in french

YouTube
@cstross
Nice, but it is such a small light train, of course it gets to go fast.
Here is a report of 40-50 thousand tons doing 144 kph: https://www.atsb.gov.au/publications/investigation_reports/2018/rair/ro-2018-018
@Steveg58 @cstross seems like this attempt was not as well planned as the TGV one.
@tudor @cstross
It does make interesting reading. I was part of the external group maintaining the signalling and track control system so it was our system that threw the switch to cause the derailment. They derailed the train because just down the track a bit was a bridge that they didn't want to risk damaging.
@Steveg58 @tudor I'm not sure there wasn't a comparable amount of kinetic energy in that 300 tonne TGV to the 40,000 tonne ore train, though—the TGV was going more than three times as fast (and KE scales as the *square* of the velocity, not linearly).

@cstross @tudor
The numbers suggest the BHP train had about 50% more KE and it was all gravity powered. Gravity is not your friend (but you knew that already).

Edit: If my mental arithmetic had been operating that late in the evening it would have been clear that 300x3x3 = 2,700 tons equivalent not 27,000 tons equivalent so just a tad under 16 times the KE in the BHP train.

@Steveg58 @cstross @tudor I haven't done the math myself, but I'm told that the rail links between the Pilbara iron ore mines and the coast could largely power the mines if the potential energy of the full downhill runs could be efficiently extracted. Unfortunately the infrastructure cost to do so makes it a non starter, though some mine operators are experimenting with battery electric locomotives which charge going downhill and use the collected energy to return the train up hill to the mine.
@Steveg58 @cstross I also like to read accident reports. I wrote quite a few myself, but only from the usually not that lethal and destructive IT world.
@tudor @cstross
This has always been one of my favourites: https://www.atsb.gov.au/publications/investigation_reports/2000/aair/aair200002836
You could see it happening to a data centre.

@Steveg58 @cstross "The UPS switchboard is physically set up in a manner that when facing the switchboard, the "A" system, is on the left side and the "B" system is on the right side. This is the exact opposite to the schematic diagram for this UPS system, where the "A" system is on the right side of the diagram and the "B" system is on the left side."

So so so so beautiful.

@Steveg58 @cstross back when I was working with several huge datacenters, communication was done with longish e-mail threads (and phone meetings). The subject of these e-mails usually changed accordingly - hey, there is this issue, outage, rca etc.

There was one, with the subject of "Non impacting power work" where everyone kept the subject very carefully. Some computers were not on a redundant power supply, but they should have been. Some important ones. It was a fun two weeks.