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Riding high, high up in ze sky. Ja, ja, all fun and games... until your danglies drop. :( [1] 1. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_Wuppertal_Schwebebahn_acc

Riding high, high up in ze sky. Ja, ja, all fun and games... until your danglies drop. :( [1] 1. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_Wuppertal_Schwebebahn_accident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_Wuppertal_Schwebebahn_acc...]

8bitsrule 1y ago
Five human dead in 125 years is a record to envy for most transit systems. (Light rail likes to run into pedestrians, almost as much as buses.) And it was a maintenance failure, not an operator or structural one. Not to count the baby elephant that fell out of one car back in 1950. Wuppertal is a wonderful ride for many thousands daily, millions for decades, and is a wonderful model of visual, sane, safe engineered public transport.
- spankibalt 1y ago
  > Not to count the baby elephant that fell out of one car back in 1950. Heavens to Betsy! And the elephant lived... till 1989! :) > Wuppertal is a wonderful ride for many thousands daily, millions for decades, and is a wonderful model of visual, sane, safe engineered public transport. Is ja jut, ich kauf' den Tagespass.
  - LargoLasskhyfv 1y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuffi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuffi ! Furthermore: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milchversorgung_Rheinland https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milchversorgung_Rheinland cf.: https://duckduckgo.com/q=tuffi+milch&ia=images&iax=images https://duckduckgo.com/q=tuffi+milch&ia=images&iax=images Muuuh...äh...Tröööt!
  - pimlottc 1y ago
    More like “heavens to Wupper”
Aeolun 1y ago
It was not the railway’s fault. As always in these cases, it was the squishy humans making the mistakes. Seriously, who works on a railway until 6 in the morning? That’s like deploying on a Friday afternoon at 16:50…
- defrost 1y ago
  > Seriously, who works on a railway until 6 in the morning? A great many rail crews the world over .. night time being the best time for rolling maintainance and bed upgrades on largely daytime passenger lines. The question that was asked during the investigation was more along the lines of "who does major work every night on rail lines and doesn't integrate end of shift safety checks (looking for still in place gear, unfinished work, etc)" ?
  - Aeolun 1y ago
    From what I saw they had those, but were in too much of a hurry to do it properly because they waited until 10m before line start to do them?
    - defrost 1y ago
      I read it that way also, a failure to proritise what should be mandated safety checks prior to delaring the line open for use, caused by a cascading chain of jamming too much work into too short a shift. My father had many stints on many mine sites as a leading foreman in charge of shift workers and yard crews .. it's been Occ Health and Safety protocol since the 1970s (in Australia at least) to post game events that result in death, injury, or even a near miss in order to adapt procedures to minimise similar things happening again. As I read it, at the time of this accident they hadn't gotten to the stage of mandated safety checks and trial runs prior to live runs. Incidents like these are why many workplaces have check lists and strict protocols. The working at night part is largely irrelevant to the actual accident, in this part of the world we run the longest heaviest trains in the world 24/7/365 largely fatal accident free and have dedicated safety officers looking out around the clock.

8bitsrule 1y ago

Five human dead in 125 years is a record to envy for most transit systems. (Light rail likes to run into pedestrians, almost as much as buses.) And it was a maintenance failure, not an operator or structural one. Not to count the baby elephant that fell out of one car back in 1950. Wuppertal is a wonderful ride for many thousands daily, millions for decades, and is a wonderful model of visual, sane, safe engineered public transport.

spankibalt 1y ago
> Not to count the baby elephant that fell out of one car back in 1950. Heavens to Betsy! And the elephant lived... till 1989! :) > Wuppertal is a wonderful ride for many thousands daily, millions for decades, and is a wonderful model of visual, sane, safe engineered public transport. Is ja jut, ich kauf' den Tagespass.
- LargoLasskhyfv 1y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuffi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuffi ! Furthermore: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milchversorgung_Rheinland https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milchversorgung_Rheinland cf.: https://duckduckgo.com/q=tuffi+milch&ia=images&iax=images https://duckduckgo.com/q=tuffi+milch&ia=images&iax=images Muuuh...äh...Tröööt!
- pimlottc 1y ago
  More like “heavens to Wupper”

Aeolun 1y ago

It was not the railway’s fault. As always in these cases, it was the squishy humans making the mistakes. Seriously, who works on a railway until 6 in the morning? That’s like deploying on a Friday afternoon at 16:50…

defrost 1y ago
> Seriously, who works on a railway until 6 in the morning? A great many rail crews the world over .. night time being the best time for rolling maintainance and bed upgrades on largely daytime passenger lines. The question that was asked during the investigation was more along the lines of "who does major work every night on rail lines and doesn't integrate end of shift safety checks (looking for still in place gear, unfinished work, etc)" ?
- Aeolun 1y ago
  From what I saw they had those, but were in too much of a hurry to do it properly because they waited until 10m before line start to do them?
  - defrost 1y ago
    I read it that way also, a failure to proritise what should be mandated safety checks prior to delaring the line open for use, caused by a cascading chain of jamming too much work into too short a shift. My father had many stints on many mine sites as a leading foreman in charge of shift workers and yard crews .. it's been Occ Health and Safety protocol since the 1970s (in Australia at least) to post game events that result in death, injury, or even a near miss in order to adapt procedures to minimise similar things happening again. As I read it, at the time of this accident they hadn't gotten to the stage of mandated safety checks and trial runs prior to live runs. Incidents like these are why many workplaces have check lists and strict protocols. The working at night part is largely irrelevant to the actual accident, in this part of the world we run the longest heaviest trains in the world 24/7/365 largely fatal accident free and have dedicated safety officers looking out around the clock.