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In Philadelphia I used to take walks down by some train tracks and I'd often be only a few feet away from stopped or slow moving trains. I always wondered what
by habosa 7y ago
In Philadelphia I used to take walks down by some train tracks and I'd often be only a few feet away from stopped or slow moving trains. I always wondered what sort of security is there on trains? What would stop someone from attaching some sort of dangerous cargo to the train and just letting it roll into the next big city?
Based on the amount of graffiti I see on trains ... I'd guess nothing.
- loopdoend 7y agoNothing other than the agents at your door, I guess.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- tallanvor 7y agoAttaching cargo as in adding another car or tanker? That would be pretty difficult - those movements are planned. Sticking a bomb on a tanker, on the other hand, would probably be much easier, although you'd have to know beforehand what tankers are full, and I suspect that's more difficult. But there's always going to be a level of insecurity around trains. A train yard can't be fully fenced off for obvious reasons. I know here in Oslo there was a teenager killed last year after he and a couple of others snuck into a yard one night and went into a maintenance tunnel and touched a high voltage line. They've rebuilt the fence they got in through, and made it higher, but someone determined to get in there will just go further to where the tracks cross a road.
- betterunix2 7y agoIt is not so simple to "attach" cargo to a train. The train crew knows how many cars the train consists of and there are periodic "defect detectors" that among other things report the number of axles to the crew. The crew also has a manifest, and eventually they would notice if something was out of place. Individual train cars also have radio tags that are used to monitor their status as they move: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_equipment_identification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_equipment_identifica...