[HN Gopher] Spanish track was fractured before high-speed train ...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Spanish track was fractured before high-speed train disaster,
       report finds
        
       Author : Rygian
       Score  : 91 points
       Date   : 2026-01-25 19:12 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
        
       | rokkamokka wrote:
       | Wow, that's a really big gap. No wonder it derailed
        
       | montroser wrote:
       | What are the some of the ways that tracks are monitored for
       | fractures like this? It must have been pretty substantial in
       | order to be described as "complete lack of continuity". Makes me
       | think of literally electronic continuity tests -- are those ever
       | used in this context? Or how about cameras mounted on trains
       | using image processing? Or drones?
       | 
       | It seems a shame that a few other trains passed beforehand with
       | this anomaly in place and yet it went undetected.
        
         | sigwinch28 wrote:
         | Measurement trains filled with cameras and LIDAR
         | 
         | For example, in the U.K.:
         | 
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Measurement_Train
        
           | user_7832 wrote:
           | LIDAR is good, but as another commenter pointed out,
           | Ultrasonic Flaw Detection (USFD) is the gold standard for
           | crack/flaw detection.
        
           | jen729w wrote:
           | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_Yellow
        
         | amelius wrote:
         | There are special trains with measurement equipment on board,
         | but yes, it sounds to me like every train should be equipped
         | with some basic sensors for anomaly detection.
        
           | 1718627440 wrote:
           | The measurement trains drive slowly in the night.
        
         | gambutin wrote:
         | AFAIK, one technique for monitoring cracks uses ultrasonic
         | sensors. They send sound waves through the rails and detect
         | cracks by analyzing reflected waves.
        
         | direwolf20 wrote:
         | TFA indicates a 40cm gap -- huge!
        
           | buildbot wrote:
           | I suppose that counts/was caused by a fracture but almost a
           | half meter of gap in the track is nuts. Like describing a
           | limb that's totally removed as a bone fracture.
           | 
           | Though conceivably the break was very small and a train
           | impacting the slightly lifted rail just caused a good chunk
           | of it to explode.
        
             | WarOnPrivacy wrote:
             | > Though conceivably the break was very small and a train
             | impacting the slightly lifted rail just caused a good chunk
             | of it to explode.
             | 
             | The crown (top) of the rail seems to be missing after the
             | gap. The crown-less section then continues ~3 meters before
             | it disappears behind the investigator on the left. IDK what
             | that might indicate.
             | 
             | ref pic: https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/1024/cpsprodpb/ecb4/
             | live/53924...
        
               | zidel wrote:
               | The rail is laying on its side in that picture, so what
               | is visible is the foot not the web.
               | 
               | edit: other angles of the same location here:
               | https://youtu.be/DIQ4SrGSua0?t=1174
        
             | kgwgk wrote:
             | Yes, the "fracture" (the problem was actually at a joint)
             | was there for a while. The missing segment of rail was
             | still there when the train arrived - the derailment
             | affected only the last cars.
        
           | ThePowerOfFuet wrote:
           | No, that gap was created after the rail broke and the train
           | derailed as a result.
           | 
           | The crack was in the weld, causing one side to sink and the
           | wheel to hit the start of the next section of rail which was
           | no longer welded to it, causing stress fractures to form in
           | the rail which later caused that 40cm piece to break off.
        
         | djoldman wrote:
         | Wheel Impact Load Detector.
         | 
         | It measures vertical forces in kips - (kilo-pounds-force, 1 KIP
         | = 1,000 lbs)
         | 
         | They have these in the USA.
        
       | amelius wrote:
       | My gut feeling says a lot of fatalities could have been prevented
       | with a physical barrier between both tracks. Shouldn't this be
       | mandatory with high speed trains?
        
         | woodruffw wrote:
         | I think the physics of the situation don't make a barrier
         | feasible: a derailed train going >100 mph is going to transfer
         | a lot of energy to any kind of barrier it impacts, which in
         | turn might exacerbate the situation (by spreading debris).
         | 
         | I think these kinds of accidents are largely mitigated by rail
         | defect monitoring. I know rails in the US are equipped with
         | defect detectors for passing trains; I'm surprised that a
         | similar system doesn't exist for the rails themselves. Or more
         | likely, one _does_ exist and the outcome of this tragedy will
         | be a lesson about operational failures.
        
           | direwolf20 wrote:
           | In principle only, if a barrier could keep a train on its
           | side of the barrier, scraping along the barrier for a long
           | distance instead of smashing headfirst into it, the energy
           | could be dissipated over a long period of time, preventing
           | fatalities. But what kind of barrier can withstand a train?
        
             | Gare wrote:
             | This collision happened precisely because of unfortunate
             | circumstance that break in the rail and derailment happened
             | just before the switch leading to the opposite track.
             | Without the "help" of the switch, carriages of the first
             | train likely wouldn't have invaded the second track.
        
               | kgwgk wrote:
               | The tracks are less than 3m from each other, a derailed
               | car doesn't need to get very far to be a risk to incoming
               | traffic.
        
         | peddling-brink wrote:
         | I'd rather they spent the money ensuring no trains ever left
         | their tracks rather than halving the destruction if they do.
        
         | wasmitnetzen wrote:
         | There was a switchover which made the derailed cars of the
         | first train move into the track of the second one, you can't
         | have a wall there anyway.
        
         | ThePowerOfFuet wrote:
         | The 20-ton bogie was flung 300m. What do you expect the weight
         | of a whole car to do to such a wall?
        
         | bombcar wrote:
         | More practical but still probably unnecessary is having the
         | planned "passes" be where the tracks are separated by some
         | distance.
         | 
         | But that requires the trains mostly always being on schedule.
        
       | david-gpu wrote:
       | While these events are statistically very rare, it is worth
       | remembering that there have been two separate events in the past
       | twenty years in Spain where high-speed trains have derailed
       | leading to multiple fatalities [1][2]. In contrast, the Japanese
       | Shinkansen has a spotless record since its introduction in the
       | 1960s [3]. Not a single fatality due to a crash or derailment.
       | And that's in a country with a much larger population and much
       | higher passenger count per year.
       | 
       | What do they do differently?
       | 
       | [1]
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santiago_de_Compostela_derailm...
       | 
       | [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Adamuz_train_derailments
       | 
       | [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinkansen#Safety_record
        
         | vlovich123 wrote:
         | Track maintenance?
        
         | amenghra wrote:
         | Higher passenger count could imply ability to pass higher
         | maintenance budgets?
        
         | throwaway743950 wrote:
         | Could weather or some other geographic/similar aspect be a
         | factor?
        
           | bflesch wrote:
           | The geographic aspect of russian agents being in vincinity of
           | the traintracks. Week before supply trains in Germany also
           | derailed, as they do once per month.
        
         | dinkblam wrote:
         | Spain basically does not do the required maintenance:
         | 
         | https://www.reuters.com/world/spains-deadly-rail-accidents-p...
        
           | david-gpu wrote:
           | From the linked article:
           | 
           |  _> [The] stretch of track that was renovated last May and
           | inspected on January 7._
           | 
           | The track had been inspected very recently. Maybe the
           | inspection standards are inadequate?
           | 
           | The linked article also shows figures that are quite
           | meaningless without context.
           | 
           |  _> [The] vast majority [of Spain 's high-speed rail budget]
           | went to new infrastructure with only some 16% earmarked for
           | maintenance, renewal and upgrades. That compares with between
           | 34% to 39% spent by France, Germany and Italy,_
           | 
           | They simply can't compare those numbers as-is. Of course
           | Spain will be spending less in maintenance as a percentage of
           | the total budget if it's still mainly building new tracks.
           | It's not a useful figure.
        
             | anon7000 wrote:
             | Yep, plus their network is pretty new anyways. Which
             | generally needs less maintenance than older infrastructure.
        
         | cromka wrote:
         | I think even more important is the seismic activity in Japan
         | asa risk factor here
        
         | lifestyleguru wrote:
         | > Santiago de Compostela derailment
         | 
         | Hey that infrastructure looks perfectly fine and new, ahhh
         | ok... they were going 180kmh where the speed limit was 80kmh..
        
           | pibaker wrote:
           | Which is also exactly how the most deadly rail incident in
           | the past half century in japan happened.
           | 
           | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amagasaki_derailment
        
             | lifestyleguru wrote:
             | We oftentimes take ridiculous risks to save only 1-5
             | minutes of our time. Although reading about the Spanish
             | disaster, the driver was rather reckless.
        
         | pibaker wrote:
         | I am not sure what conclusion can we draw from, as you said,
         | two very rare incidents over a long period of time.
         | 
         | Reminds me of when Malaysian airlines crashed two planes in a
         | short period of time. It was a good time to get cheap flights
         | from Europe to south east Asia as long as you can withstand
         | relatives thinking you are literally going to die in their
         | third crash.
        
           | Freak_NL wrote:
           | Bit of an odd comparison, given that one of those flights
           | (MH17) was shot down by a Russian Buk squad. That was not an
           | issue attributable to the carrier in any way, and after the
           | incident the likelihood of it happening again to Malaysia
           | Airlines specifically was negligible.
        
             | pibaker wrote:
             | It could be prevented by simply not flying over an active
             | war zone, something airlines do all the times to prevent
             | the exact same thing from happening.
        
               | jojomodding wrote:
               | Airlines started being more sensitive to this after the
               | 2014 crash
        
               | wafflemaker wrote:
               | Or Girkin not ordering the civilian plane full of people
               | to be shot down. It was a civilian plane at 10km altitude
               | with a transponder on. Really doesn't look like a jet on
               | a radar.
               | 
               | And up to that point Russia wasn't known to supply the
               | separatists with an anti air system and the crew to run
               | it.
        
         | hibikir wrote:
         | They are two very different accidents: The second was
         | insufficient/poor maintenance: Supposedly the train that checks
         | for this had passed 2 months before, and someone will have to
         | wonder whether it's just not passing often enough, or if the
         | inspections are just poor in general.
         | 
         | The first was purely a matter of not upgrading the signaling in
         | a very low speed section: The crash could have happened with
         | regional trains too. Every engineer knew that it was unsafe and
         | one distraction was enough to get someone killed, but Spain is
         | still well in the middle of track expansion, so it's all the
         | horrors of politicking. Unless you have a crash, not upgrading
         | those signals costs nothing, but, say, the very expensive
         | connection to Asturias was worth a lot, so iffy tradeoffs were
         | made.
         | 
         | Hopefully better engineering-driven tradeoffs are made
         | regarding track maintenance, but hey, this is Spain, not a
         | place where we are good at efficient, reliable safety
         | processes: See the failures in Valencia for the DANA, where the
         | chain between the meteorologists seeing a risk that led to
         | recommending evacuation, and the actual order of evacuation was
         | so slow, so we ended up with 229 deaths.
        
         | nelox wrote:
         | Short answer: Japan treats high-speed rail as a tightly
         | controlled system, not just fast trains on tracks.
         | 
         | One major difference is infrastructure. Shinkansen lines are
         | completely separate from conventional rail: no level crossings,
         | no shared tracks, no freight, and no interaction with slower
         | services. There are no cars, pedestrians, or animals anywhere
         | near the line. In much of Europe, including Spain, high-speed
         | lines are very good, but they still tend to interact more with
         | legacy rail networks and inherit more constraints.
         | 
         | Another key factor is how strictly operations are controlled.
         | Speed limits are enforced automatically rather than relying on
         | driver compliance alone. If a train exceeds its permitted speed
         | for any reason, the system intervenes immediately. The design
         | assumption is that human error will happen, so the system is
         | built to prevent a mistake from turning into an accident.
         | 
         | Maintenance is also handled with extreme conservatism. Track
         | geometry, overhead lines, and rolling stock are continuously
         | monitored, with very tight tolerances. Components are replaced
         | earlier than strictly necessary because preventing failures is
         | considered far cheaper than dealing with the consequences of
         | one.
         | 
         | Japan has also invested heavily in detecting external hazards.
         | Earthquake early-warning systems automatically cut power and
         | apply brakes before shaking reaches the tracks, and the same
         | mindset applies to weather, landslides, and other environmental
         | risks.
         | 
         | Finally, there's a strong institutional safety culture behind
         | all of this. Procedures, training, and reporting of near-misses
         | are taken very seriously, and lessons are applied incrementally
         | over decades. The objective isn't just to meet safety standards
         | but to systematically remove edge cases.
         | 
         | It's not a single piece of technology that explains the record.
         | It's the combination of dedicated infrastructure, automation,
         | conservative engineering, obsessive maintenance, and a culture
         | with very little tolerance for shortcuts.
        
           | pmarg wrote:
           | Just a small clarification, Spain has two distinct track
           | stems for normal trains (Iberian gauge) and high speed rail
           | (international gauge). High speed rail is completely separate
           | from the iberian gauge network which is primarly used for
           | city and regional trains. Only a few cargo trains use the
           | high speed network.
           | 
           | Regarding the second point, 2013 accident was caused by
           | higher than allowed speed and drivers had been complaining
           | about the line not having the security system that
           | automatically enforces speed limits. In this year's accident,
           | the line has a much stricter securty system.
           | 
           | The main issue with spanish rails, high speed and specially
           | traditional rail is the lack of maintenance.
        
             | fpoling wrote:
             | I have lived in Spain for the last two years and observed
             | the luck of maintenance in a lot of things.
             | 
             | For example, people typically pay for house/apartment
             | insurance. But insurance companies never send a person to
             | check for things like leaking pipes or whatever. Rather
             | they simply wait until an accident happens and dispatch an
             | emergency crew and cover a lot of damage that could be
             | easily prevented. Then people tolerate non-trivial damage
             | to homes/apartments like leaky roof not reporting it to
             | insurance companies for weeks.
             | 
             | Then with cars people often do not follow the maintenance
             | schedule and insurance companies do not ask for that.
             | Typically people drive until damage happens due to a minor
             | accident or maintenance are forced by state required
             | technical inspection once in few years. The car companies
             | even offer free maintenance checks as a part of guarantee
             | but people skip even that.
             | 
             | Yet when someone spends efforts to complain, thinks do gets
             | done. For example there a city service to remove graffiti
             | on public areas. If one files a complain, they react and
             | remove the graffiti. However sometimes one needs to send a
             | complain twice.
        
           | something765478 wrote:
           | > If a train exceeds its permitted speed for any reason, the
           | system intervenes immediately.
           | 
           | Does the system automatically slow down the train, or does it
           | notify the engineer? I would imagine that there are some
           | scenarios where going over the speed limit is the correct
           | choice.
        
             | lolc wrote:
             | I'm curious what scenarios your imagining. Because I can't
             | think of a single situation where a track limit should not
             | be applied automatically, at least to trains with
             | passengers on them.
        
           | vshade wrote:
           | Spanish high speed lines are mostly separate from the legacy
           | network as they have different gauges, there are a few parts
           | of the railway with dual gauge tracks but it is that. The
           | Santiago accident was on the conventional rail.
        
           | decimalenough wrote:
           | Minor correction: there are two Shinkansen lines in Japan
           | that run trains partly on shared legacy track, namely the
           | Akita and Yamagata "mini-Shinkansens". However, these
           | sections operate at normal speed, not high speed.
        
           | otikik wrote:
           | >If a train exceeds its permitted speed for any reason, the
           | system intervenes immediately
           | 
           | That might be because Japan did have a huge railway accident
           | in 2005 due to excessive speed.
           | 
           | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amagasaki_derailment
           | 
           | > Of the roughly 700 passengers, 106 passengers and the
           | driver were killed, and 562 others were injured
           | 
           | The Santiago de Compostela derailment (first link on the
           | parent comment) happened in 2013 for the same reason.
           | 
           | All that said, I would not be surprised if the culprit for
           | this particular case is lack of maintenance. However I would
           | wait until the official investigation is over before drawing
           | conclusions.
        
             | ricardobeat wrote:
             | For context: the aforementioned crash in Japan was _not_ on
             | a high-speed  / Shinkansen line but a normal commuter
             | train. Both the 2013 accident in Spain and the recent one
             | were high speed trains.
             | 
             | I'm not sure these are comparable, high-speed rail needs
             | much tighter tolerances as the risk is orders of magnitude
             | higher. As the parent comment stated there have been zero
             | major crashes on the japanese shinkansen lines.
        
               | pibaker wrote:
               | The second train crashed on a non-high speed part of the
               | network.
               | 
               | There is also no reason to treat speed limits on high
               | speed and normal trains differently. There are plenty of
               | speed related crashes on low speed lines. If anything the
               | stakes are even higher on commuter trains because they
               | tend to carry more people, many of which will be
               | standing, and are more likely to crash into another
               | structure as was the case in the Japanese incident
               | mentioned.
        
               | shevy-java wrote:
               | That's still an issue of design though. I am pretty
               | certain that this would not have been possible in quite
               | that way in Japan.
        
               | pibaker wrote:
               | Your comment is down thread of a comment containing a
               | link to a Wikipedia page of a Japanese train crashed
               | caused by speeding. I do not understand how can you think
               | this is impossible in Japan.
        
             | ak217 wrote:
             | > That might be because Japan did have a huge railway
             | accident in 2005 due to excessive speed.
             | 
             | No, Japan more or less invented ATC in the 1960s for the
             | purpose of running the Shinkansen safely.
        
           | pibaker wrote:
           | Edit: someone down this thread pointed out the answer is
           | likely written by AI. If you copy the whole post from GP into
           | ChatGPT it will give you an answer very similar to the post I
           | am replying to.
           | 
           | > Shinkansen lines are completely separate from conventional
           | rail: no level crossings, no shared tracks, no freight, and
           | no interaction with slower services.
           | 
           | Not true.
           | 
           | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYol11bVoNw
           | 
           | https://ameblo.jp/nakamurapon943056/entry-12488005292.html
           | 
           | > but they still tend to interact more with legacy rail
           | networks and inherit more constraints.
           | 
           | Spanish high speed trains mostly run on their own tracks
           | because of gauge differences. France and Germany are the ones
           | who actually runs high speed trains on old tracks, a lot.
           | 
           | It is surprising how many upvotes you can get on the internet
           | just by glazing the Japanese.
        
             | ronsor wrote:
             | "thing; thing, Japan" is a meme for a reason. I was
             | wondering how long it would take to appear in this thread.
        
             | frutiger wrote:
             | The answer was almost certainly generated by an LLM.
        
               | pibaker wrote:
               | I tried asking ChatGPT if Japanese high speed rail has
               | level crossings and it correctly identified the line I
               | used as my counterexample (Yamagata Shinkansen). I think
               | GP is just plainly misinformed in a more boring way.
        
               | dchest wrote:
               | If you paste the comment it replies to into ChatGPT, it
               | generates almost exact same answer as that comment. Also,
               | "Finally, ..." and "it's not A, it's B" is a good tell.
        
               | pibaker wrote:
               | Damn, I tried doing what you did and got a similar
               | response too, down to exact wordings like "short answer,
               | long answer" and "conservative maintenance". I will admit
               | i was too quick to dismiss the accusation in my previous
               | reply.
        
             | qiqitori wrote:
             | That's nitpicking, IMO. It's still 99% true. There are just
             | two "Mini-Shinkansen" lines, they only run once or twice
             | per hour, are shorter than non-Mini-Shinkansen, and only a
             | relatively short part (distance-wise) of their journey is
             | spent on the slow tracks. There are non-Shinkansen trains
             | on the Mini-Shinkansen portion of their journey, but not
             | very many. (Also the word "shinkansen" implies new tracks.)
        
             | m4rtink wrote:
             | There are some lines that were originally built as regular
             | narrow gauge railways and later converted to standard gauge
             | supporting Shinkansen trainsets.
             | 
             | This is called Mini-Shinkansen:
             | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mini-Shinkansen
             | 
             | This comes with limitations, as the maximum track speed on
             | these converted lines is apparently around 130 km/h.
             | 
             | None of the actual Shinkansen stadard lines have level
             | crossings.
        
           | virtualritz wrote:
           | Japanese high speed tracks get checked (and
           | repaired/replaced, if required) every night. During the
           | midnight-to-6am window.
           | 
           | That's why something like a fractured high speed rail track
           | would never go undetected in Japan.
           | 
           | https://www.plassertheurer.com/en/today/stories/japanese-
           | pre...
           | 
           | https://global.jr-central.co.jp/en/company/data-
           | book/_pdf/20...
           | 
           | https://www.ejrcf.or.jp/jrtr/jrtr61/16_21.html
           | 
           | https://international-railway-safety-council.com/wp-
           | content/...
        
           | JumpCrisscross wrote:
           | Please don't post slop when people ask thoughtful questions.
        
         | baq wrote:
         | Perhaps there are less FSB agents blowing up sections of track
         | with shaped charges in Japan.
        
           | bflesch wrote:
           | Yeah funny how instantly top comments are about moving the
           | discussion away from the elephant in the room: russian
           | sabotage against a European nation.
           | 
           | Then you mention fsb and get downvoted.
           | 
           | HN is full of russian shills.
        
         | masklinn wrote:
         | A component here is the highly unfortunate timing of two trains
         | crossing one another as one of the trains derailed. Both trains
         | look like rigid HSRs, and usually when these derails they stay
         | very stable and rarely have fatalities.
        
         | shevy-java wrote:
         | Yeah. Japan really has better quality standards here overall.
         | 
         | Now - Japanese mentality is strange to me, but the quality
         | standards and thought process, are convincing.
        
         | wafflemaker wrote:
         | After reading Shogun, Cryptonomicon and watching plenty anime
         | and documents about Japan (including Japanese rail system -
         | still using the "pointing and naming" method I've learned from
         | them) I would risk saying that Japanese do literally everything
         | differently.
        
         | userbinator wrote:
         | Japan has a culture of perfection.
        
       | sva_ wrote:
       | I wonder how common it is for train tracks to fracture? And what
       | systems are in place to actually detect this. There was recently
       | a post on a German subreddit where the OP found a fracture in the
       | German rail[0], albeit much smaller.
       | 
       | 0.
       | https://old.reddit.com/r/drehscheibe/comments/1qe9ko2/ich_gl...
        
         | iSnow wrote:
         | In November, a bigger missing part of a train track was due to
         | sabotage: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp85g86x0zgo
        
         | mschuster91 wrote:
         | > I wonder how common it is for train tracks to fracture?
         | 
         | That entirely depends on which class of tracks we're talking
         | about. And on top of that, remember that Europe is at war with
         | Russia, railway sabotage has been attributed to Russia already
         | in Poland [1] - and if you ask me, I don't believe for a single
         | goddamn second that "cable thieves" were the cause behind the
         | infamous 2022 attack on Germany's railways [2] either.
         | 
         | > And what systems are in place to actually detect this.
         | 
         | In Germany, dedicated railway cars called "RAILab" [3] that can
         | measure track performance at up to 200 km/h perform the bulk of
         | the work. In addition, each piece of infrastructure has
         | something called an "Anlagenverantwortlicher", a person
         | responsible for it - and that person has to walk each piece of
         | infrastructure every two years at the very least, sections that
         | have shown to be problematic get walked sometimes weekly.
         | 
         | [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gknv8nxlzo
         | 
         | [2]
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_2022_German_railway_at...
         | 
         | [3] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAILab
        
         | blibble wrote:
         | > I wonder how common it is for train tracks to fracture?
         | 
         | very
         | 
         | > And what systems are in place to actually detect this.
         | 
         | track circuit detection would pick up most cases I would have
         | thought
        
         | bahmboo wrote:
         | Nice find. The gap in the Spanish track is massive. I don't
         | know enough to speculate on technical reasons but it seems
         | quite odd.
        
         | dv_dt wrote:
         | Fractures could happen with ground shifting - perhaps recent
         | flooding could have contributed
        
       | iwwr wrote:
       | AFAIK continuously welded tracks (like those used in high speed
       | rail) are also slightly tensioned, so a break in a single point
       | could make it look like a whole section of track is missing, as
       | tension is released.
        
       | christkv wrote:
       | Some more info from Spanish media. The track that broke was from
       | 1989 and had not been maintained properly.
        
         | hexbin010 wrote:
         | Got a link?
         | 
         | And how does it accord with the many statements made early on
         | about the track being renewed recently?
        
           | christkv wrote:
           | I have one in Spanish. Seems the latest info is that it broke
           | where the new rails meet the old rail.
           | 
           | https://www.elmundo.es/economia/2026/01/25/697635e8fc6c83c42.
           | ..
        
           | fcatalan wrote:
           | Apparently the weld that broke joined an old segment with a
           | new one installed last year as the tracks are renovated
           | piecemeal.
           | 
           | Still the media in question, "El Mundo", is a mouthpiece for
           | the opposition parties, seeking to create indignation against
           | the government and scoring the head of the Transport Minister
           | in particular.
           | 
           | They also want to make a parallel with the situation of the
           | former President of the Valencian Community, from their
           | party, who had to finally resign one year after being
           | unreachable for hours on a date while hundreds of valencians
           | drowned as his administration waffled aimlessly.
           | 
           | Of course the government is ultimately responsible for the
           | state of the infrastructure, so the Minister well might have
           | to resign after all is said and done, but the innuendo in
           | that piece is pure politicking, not serious journalism.
        
         | kgwgk wrote:
         | No, the claim is that the broken rail was the new one but it
         | happened at the transition from old to new.
        
           | christkv wrote:
           | Jupp you are right I had not read up on the news today.
        
       | shevy-java wrote:
       | Quite a tragedy.
       | 
       | Spain needs to rethink the way it operates trains. I think
       | Switzerland handles this better, overall, though they probably
       | also don't have as many fast trains because there are so many
       | mountains. But I refer more to the intrinsic quality control and
       | assumption made. If I recall correctly in Spain, there was the
       | other train also coming in. I am sure they could have built the
       | tracks differently. Granted, the issue here is cost, and an
       | attempt to keep the cost down, but if you then accept disasters
       | like that, it seems really awkward to me to want to save money
       | here. And now that we know the track was already damaged, that
       | just adds more validity to questioning whether the quality
       | control systems were overall proper.
        
       | christkv wrote:
       | We actually have had 4 train accidents and incidents in a week.
       | 
       | https://people.com/train-collides-with-crane-arm-in-4th-rail...
       | 
       | It's clear some of them are probably caused by neglect in
       | maintenance, others are freak accidents.
       | 
       | It's pretty crazy the statistical probabilities involved for
       | something like this.
        
         | hexbin010 wrote:
         | [delayed]
        
       | JumpCrisscross wrote:
       | "...not only did Iryo train's front carriages which stayed on the
       | track have "notches" in their wheels, but three earlier trains
       | that went over the track earlier did too."
       | 
       | This sounds like something a camera mounted on a sample of trains
       | watching a wheel could catch.
        
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