European Railroad Discussion > French high-speed train crashes

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-28358137

From the story:

Dozens of people have been injured in a train collision in southern France, according to media reports.
A high-speed TGV train on the Pau-Bayonne line was transporting 178 people when it crashed
into a regional TER train carrying 70 passengers.
Initial reports indicate the TGV train was stopped on the tracks and restarting when the crash occurred near the town of Denguin.
At least 25 people were reported injured, nine of them seriously.
The BBC's Christian Fraser reports the TGV train had stopped briefly on its route and was moving again,
though seemingly not at full speed, which may have prevented a much more serious accident.
Police and firefighters arrived at the scene quickly to help the injured passengers from the train.
The collision follows a recent damning report into the rail crash south of Paris last year, in which seven people died.
That report highlighted the poor state of France's rail network, with the blame placed on poor maintenance checks.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/17/14 11:44 by tmurray.

I thought the TGV had it's own private tracks.

There are many places where TGVs operate on non-dedicated conventional lines.

At this point, it was on a "ligne classique", which are ordinary rail lines. On many high-speed rail systems, the high-speed trains often diverge off the dedicated high-speed lines, and usually go no faster than the regular trains on that line. So the title is a bit misleading: the fact that it's a high-speed train had nothing to do with the crash, and the train did not crash at high speed.

Tor in Eugene

Torisgod Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>the fact that it's a high-speed train had nothing to do with the
> crash, and the train did not crash at high speed.
>


Well said Mr Tor.

Clarification and update:

The TGV had just started accelerating from a stop for signals when the following TER, traveling more or less at line speed, struck it from behind. The initial thinking was that the engineer of the TER had taken too liberal a view of the SNCF equivalent of "Restricted Speed" after passing a red signal, but subsequent investigation showed he had a green signal -- apparently rodents in a wayside signal bungalow had chewed on some wiring, resulting in the false clear. [ I believe this section of line uses axle counters, not track circuits, for detection.] The French are now busily checking all 10,000 signal cabinets throughout their system.....

SZ