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Spanish track was fractured before high-speed train disaster, report finds
- rokkamokka 8mo agoWow, that's a really big gap. No wonder it derailed
- montroser 8mo agoWhat 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 8mo agoMeasurement trains filled with cameras and LIDAR For example, in the U.K.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Measurement_Train https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Measurement_Train
- amelius 8mo agoThere 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 8mo agoThe measurement trains drive slowly in the night.
- Azrael3000 8mo agoNot necessarily, the measurement train my company develops can go up to 100 km/h and measure certain rail features every 5mm at that speed.
- lefra 8mo ago100 km/h is slow compared to passenger train (even non-high-speed ones). Depending on how packed the schedule is, it might not be possible to analyse track during the day without causing backups.
- mkl 8mo agoThey can go at high speed: Germany: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAILab https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAILab Japan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_Yellow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_Yellow France: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNCF_TGV_Iris_320 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNCF_TGV_Iris_320 China: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_railways_CIT_trains https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_railways_CIT_trains UK: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Measurement_Train https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Measurement_Train
- mitthrowaway2 8mo agoIndeed! > Line inspection is carried out at full speed, up to 270 km/h or 168 mph on the Tōkaidō Shinkansen and 285 km/h or 177 mph on the Sanyō Shinkansen
- N19PEDL2 8mo agoItaly: https://decode39.com/3045/diamond-fs-diagnostics-train-luigi-ferraris/ https://decode39.com/3045/diamond-fs-diagnostics-train-luigi...
- gambutin 8mo agoAFAIK, one technique for monitoring cracks uses ultrasonic sensors. They send sound waves through the rails and detect cracks by analyzing reflected waves.
- direwolf20 8mo agoTFA indicates a 40cm gap — huge!
- buildbot 8mo agoI 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 8mo ago> 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/53924030-f86e-11f0-9796-05e6aeca39b2.jpg https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/1024/cpsprodpb/ecb4/live/53924...
- zidel 8mo agoThe 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 https://youtu.be/DIQ4SrGSua0?t=1174
- WarOnPrivacy 8mo ago> The rail is laying on its side in that picture Ah, I see it now. The marks from contact with the ties should have clued me in earlier.
- kgwgk 8mo agoYes, 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.
- djoldman 8mo agoWheel Impact Load Detector. It measures vertical forces in kips - (kilo-pounds-force, 1 KIP = 1,000 lbs) They have these in the USA.
- iggldiggl 8mo agoThose are for the opposite problem – detecting defective trains (overweight respectively otherwise faulty weight distribution as well as wheel flats).
- dkbrk 8mo agoYou can look at the Wikipedia page on railway defect dectectors [0]. Under "rail break monitors" it mentions both electrical continuity and time-domain reflectometry can be used, and are most frequently used on high-speed tracks. In addition, there are vast array of other detectors using acoustic sensors, strain gauges, accelerometers, cameras in the visible and infrared spectrum or laser measurement, that potentially could have detected an anomaly (i.e. damage to the wheels of other trains before the incident). [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Defect_detector https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Defect_detector
- NamTaf 8mo agoWheel impacts are the main way. But hardware can be bulky and trains can be surprisingly cramped. We squeezed some track condition monitoring hardware into some locos but it was single-driver operations locations and we cannibalised some of the room that would have otherwise been occupied by the second driver.
- amelius 8mo agoMy 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 8mo agoI 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 8mo agoIn 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 8mo agoThis 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 8mo agoThe 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.
- lurking_swe 8mo ago
- david-gpu 8mo agoWhile 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_derailment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santiago_de_Compostela_derailm... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Adamuz_train_derailments https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Adamuz_train_derailments [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinkansen#Safety_record https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinkansen#Safety_record
- vlovich123 8mo agoTrack maintenance?
- bell-cot 8mo agoYep. Which is the secret of preventing 99%+ of sudden mechanical failures of pretty much any type of infrastructure.
- dinkblam 8mo agoSpain basically does not do the required maintenance: https://www.reuters.com/world/spains-deadly-rail-accidents-prompt-maintenance-investment-debate-2026-01-23/ https://www.reuters.com/world/spains-deadly-rail-accidents-p...
- david-gpu 8mo agoFrom 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.
- sva_ 8mo agoI 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_glaube_das_soll_nicht_so/ https://old.reddit.com/r/drehscheibe/comments/1qe9ko2/ich_gl...
- iSnow 8mo agoIn November, a bigger missing part of a train track was due to sabotage: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp85g86x0zgo https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp85g86x0zgo
- red75prime 8mo agoIt happened near Polish-Ukrainian border and officials were vocal about sabotage.
- dmix 8mo agoThat’s pretty far from Spain
- mschuster91 8mo ago> 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 https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gknv8nxlzo [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_2022_German_railway_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_2022_German_railway_at... [3] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAILab https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAILab
- iwwr 8mo agoAFAIK 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.
- Sharlin 8mo agoCWT is laid in such a way that it has net zero stress in a "neutral" temperature, which naturally depends on the climate. Both extreme heat and extreme cold can cause damage, buckling and fracturing/embrittlement respectively, and choosing the neutral temperature is balancing act. But even if completely cut, track cannot shrink longitudinally much at all, it's the job of the sleepers and the ballast to keep it anchored in place. And if the track is laid on a concrete slab rather than ballast, it isn't moving anywhere. Fun fact: the reason modern concrete or composite sleepers (e.g. [1]) have a slightly concave profile is to better resist lateral forces (i.e. buckling) than traditional straight-profile wooden sleepers. [1] https://www.romicgroup.com/permanent-way/concrete-railway-sleepers/ https://www.romicgroup.com/permanent-way/concrete-railway-sl...
- iwwr 8mo agoThanks for the clarification!
- christkv 8mo agoSome more info from Spanish media. The track that broke was from 1989 and had not been maintained properly.
- hexbin010 8mo agoGot a link? And how does it accord with the many statements made early on about the track being renewed recently?
- christkv 8mo agoI 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/2026/01/25/697635e8fc6c83c42f8b4588.html https://www.elmundo.es/economia/2026/01/25/697635e8fc6c83c42...
- fcatalan 8mo agoApparently 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 8mo agoNo, the claim is that the broken rail was the new one but it happened at the transition from old to new.
- christkv 8mo agoJupp you are right I had not read up on the news today.
- shevy-java 8mo agoQuite 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.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- hexbin010 8mo agoI mean maybe something of merit in that, but Spain has nearly 4000km of hitherto excellent and safe high speed rail and Switzerland around 200 km. Who should be giving lessons to whom? ;) Totally different scale of operations
- izacus 8mo agoYour comparison is nonsense and using nonsense metric.
- hexbin010 8mo agoSpain having built 20x more HSR than Switzerland in absolute terms, and much more HSR in terms proportional to country size, does actually does give them the right not to be lectured on HSR by a tiny country with a well-known superiority complex - especially when it's a cheap, incoherent shot soon after a tragedy. I could make a cheap shot about fires in bars...but I won't.
- izacus 8mo agoYou seem to have some serious anger issue unrelated to the fact that you tried to use distance as the only proxy metric for relevance of experience of rail operators. Distance isn't even remotely relevant to complexity of running safe operations. Data like fatalities per 1 million kilometers driven is significantly more relelvant - all metrics at which Swiss railways significantly exceed any European rail despite operating at significantly larger density of traffic. Spanish railways have lately killed a horrifying amount of passengers - perhaps instead of insulting more competent operators, it's time to look at what keep going wrong there? Any responsible person would call for experts and advice here - e.g. we commonly see thet in air safety where foreign safety experts are invited to investigate and provide their own reports and recommendations. What you seem to be doing here is something directly opposed to it and very very toxic - nationallistically trying to insults others and save face, which is very contraproductive for future safety.
- christkv 8mo agoWe actually have had 4 train accidents and incidents in a week. https://people.com/train-collides-with-crane-arm-in-4th-rail-accident-in-spain-in-a-week-11891550 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 8mo ago5! An Asturias Circanías train collided with debris from a collapsed tunnel wall on Thursday afternoon in Olloniego. No injured though
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- JumpCrisscross 8mo ago“…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.
- kumarvvr 8mo agoIt would require a very high speed camera, and a floodlight, which may be impractical.
- jdkrkekebeb 8mo agoAs a train wouldn't have the space??
- NamTaf 8mo agoNot necessarily, no. Train underframes can be quite crowded and this equipment is very industrial.
- mkl 8mo agoJapan, Germany, France, China, and the UK check their tracks at high speed. I don't know if Spain does, but there are news articles about them ordering such an inspection train in 2019: https://www.railjournal.com/infrastructure/adif-orders-high-speed-inspection-train-from-talgo/ https://www.railjournal.com/infrastructure/adif-orders-high-... https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAILab https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAILab https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_Yellow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_Yellow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNCF_TGV_Iris_320 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNCF_TGV_Iris_320 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_railways_CIT_trains https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_railways_CIT_trains https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Measurement_Train https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Measurement_Train
- zelphirkalt 8mo agoThe camera would probably only need to look at a very small section at high speed. They could be specifically made to film the tracks or the wheels of the train. Such cameras exist. Not cheap, but even some YouTubers have similar ones, to film high speed impact videos of things going much faster than trains. Might be worth it for trains.
- diogenes_atx 8mo agoAn article published in Saturday's edition of the Mexican newspaper La Jornada provides more details about the cause of the crash. The article is in Spanish; here are some of the main points, translated into English: 1. According to the CIAF, the break in the track was "practically undetectable." The fracture on the track was not noticed by the trains that passed over it, or by the technicians responsible for the maintenance of the infrastructure. 2. The damaged train, which belongs to the Italian company Iryo, is heavier than other trains running on the track; the additional weight of the Iryo train may have been a factor, or possibly even one of the causes, of the derailment. 3. The CIAF said that the notches registered in the wheels and the deformation in the rail are "compatible" with the fact that the track was broken before the Iryo train passed over it. 4. Spanish Transportation Minister Óscar Puente rejected criticism of the delay of the rescuers; according to the Minister, rescuers arrived within "18 minutes." The full article is available here: https://www.jornada.com.mx/2026/01/24/mundo/020n3mun https://www.jornada.com.mx/2026/01/24/mundo/020n3mun
- tedggh 8mo agoOn Spain’s conventional and high-speed rail network, inspection frequency is defined by ADIF rules and EU railway safety standards. High-speed lines (AVE): Visual and geometry inspections are performed daily to weekly using inspection trains and onboard measurement systems. Ultrasonic rail flaw detection is typically done every 1 to 3 months, depending on traffic and tonnage. Source: ADIF high-speed maintenance programs and EU interoperability maintenance requirements.
- webburgos 8mo agoA stupid journalist, opposed to the current government, read a date in YY-MM-DD format as DD-MM-YY
- Helmut10001 8mo agoCould electrical resistance be measured in train tracks to monitor sudden drops, such as fractures, before they cause loss of life?
- zrn900 8mo ago~4 'derailing' accidents within 3 days, starting right before the president of the province of Madrid visits Israel to talk about buying Israeli security monitoring systems. Coincidence indeed.