Talk:Eschede train disaster

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Contents 1 "rumour" and "investigations" 2 Cooler and the firing squad 3 Refusing to stop the train? 4 Numerical Precision 5 Bridge design?

[edit] "rumour" and "investigations"

Someone needs to check the "rumour" and "investigations" mentioned, also the bit about a wheel leaping thru the carriage floor. Rich Farmbrough 22:35, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Cooler and the firing squad

The article does not address how many officials, engineers and capitalists have been demoted and imprisoned for their criminal role in this railway disaster! In Japan's Shinkansen the entire railway crew would commit seppuku after such an event!

It was not an accident, an accident is an "act of God" which is unpreventable. This tragedy was caused by careless people at all levels and their names should be put to display to publicly humiliate them for killing so many innocent people! In Europe the railway guilty are never punished as seen with this ICE and the austrian ski funicular train inferno! 195.70.32.136 19:13, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Someone who talks about "acts of God" wants to tell other people about how to deal with such a disaster? Good joke! Now calm yourself down and find some other place to express your personal opinion. -- Imladros 23:24, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Refusing to stop the train?

There is a mention in the first of the causative factors that DB policies refused to stop the train. This isn't mentioned before this point: at what point did "DB policies" refuse to stop the train? Willkm 22:05, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

The only paragraph of similar content I found in the German article was this:

Ein Fahrgast aus dem Abteil, in dem der abgesprungene Radreifen durch den Boden geschossen war, meldete den Vorfall zwar einem Zugbegleiter, gab aber nur eine sehr ungenaue Schilderung ab. Dieser Zugbegleiter hätte das Unglück einfach durch Betätigung der Notbremse verhindern können, tat es aber nicht. Aus diesem Grund erstatteten Hinterbliebene gegen ihn Anzeige. Sein Handeln war aber vorschriftsgemäß, da er sich erst selbst vom Schaden überzeugen musste, deswegen liegt an dieser Stelle kein menschliches Versagen vor. Noch bevor beide Wagen 1 erreichten, war der Zug entgleist und die Katastrophe geschehen.

This roughly translates to

The passenger sitting in the compartment where the broken wheel tire had shot through the floor reported this to a conductor, but his report was very vague. The conductor may have prevented the disaster by pulling the emergency brake, but did not. Because of this, relatives of the victims sued him. His actions were according to regulations however, as he had to see the damage himself first. Therefore there is no human error on the conductor's part. The train derailed before both reached car number 1.

One could argue that damage that is reported to a conductor by a passenger is not likely to be severe, as there are emergency brakes within the field of view of every passenger. If someone is really worried, he or she can apply the emergency brake him/herself at any time.

I question this. To my knowledge, the ICE is/was unique in that the emergency brake handles are not accessible to the public. The passenger would have to have relied upon the conductor to stop the train. --Rhombus 18:59, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

And how would the conductor trigger the brake if there were no accessible brake handles? Maybe you want to take a look at the Eisenbahn-Bau- und Betriebsordnung (EBO), the law governing rail traffic in Germany. Paragraph 23, section 3 states

Fahrzeuge, in denen Personen befördert werden, müssen leicht sichtbare und erreichbare Notbremsgriffe haben, durch die eine Notbremsung eingeleitet werden kann. Die Notbremseinrichtung darf so beschaffen sein, daß eine eingeleitete Notbremsung aufgehoben werden kann.

Translation:

Rail vehicles used in passenger traffic must be equipped with emergency brake handles that must be both easily visible and accessible and these handles must initiate an emergency brake. The emergency brake may be designed in a way that allows overriding an initiated emergency brake.

The last sentence mere states what I already described below. In case you still don't believe me, I found a picture of an emergency brake handle inside an ICE train. While this is an ICE3-train (interior pictures are much harder to find on the net), I can assure you that they are present in ICE trains of all generations and have always been. --Qualle (talk) 21:51, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

One other policy regarding the emergency brake (which was not a factor in the Eschede disaster) is the Notbremsüberbrückung (NBÜ): On lines with long tunnels (more than one kilometer) trains are equipped with an override system for the emergency brakes. The engineer has to use this override to prevent the train from stopping inside a tunnel, because of the problems with evacuating a train as well as additional problems in case of a fire. He is however required to stop the train immediately after the tunnel. The terrain north of Hanover is mostly flat, so there are no tunnels where this policy applies. --Qualle (talk) 22:40, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! I'll try to get round to clarifying the article. Willkm 02:23, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Numerical Precision

The coordinates go out to the 100-trillionth (American) of a degree. If my rough calculation is correct, for the latitude calculation (for which a change in latitude is constant for any latitude (which is not the case for longitude)), this last decimal place would correspond to something on the order of a hundredth of an Angstrom. This would be only about 1000 times larger than the size of a proton, or about one-fiftieth the size of the Bohr radius. The area of the accident is obviously much larger than this. So, I'm going to see if I can change this to the ten-thousandth of a degree instead. Ufwuct 03:03, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Since no one had any objection for almost two months, I've deleted 9 out of the 15 significant figures for the location. For the latitude, this corresponds to something on the order of 20 meters, which is a more appropriate scale for such large wreckage site. Ufwuct 21:11, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Bridge design?

I don't know about the bridge design being a factor on the accident. The train was already derailed when it hit the bridge. While the bridge may have been a factor on the inpact of the fifth car (I think), the bridge's design wouldn't have stopped the accident from happening.

The wheel's ring made an inpact with a rail changer section which caused the car to take another set of rails while the first few cars were on the normal track. This caused the derailment of the rest of the cars. --Cirilobeto 21:40, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

The deck of the bridge collapsed upon several carriages, crushing them and their inhabitants and providing a solid block of concrete for the rear carriages to collide into, after the bridge support had been knocked away by the initial derailment. People standing on or under the bridge (DB workers; it's not known exactly where they were) were also killed by the bridge collapse. So yes, the bridge design did contribute to the severity of the accident.  ProhibitOnions  ^(T) 21:55, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

I do agree that it did contribute to the severity of the accident. There is no question about it. But its design was not a factor in the accident itself happening, because the bridge collapsed AFTER the train hit. --Cirilobeto 20:35, 26 October 2006 (UTC)