At least 78 killed, 131 injured, in Spain train disaster

Video of train derailing.

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1986 300SDL, 362K
1984 300D, 138K

Heard the same guy went thru there last year at 125 and posted the speedometer on his facebook page.

Amazing. It looked like cars about a third of the way back started to flip and it took everything else with it.

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-Evan


Benz Fleet:
1968 UNIMOG 404.114
1998 E300
2008 E63


Non-Benz Fleet:
1992 Aerostar
1993 MR2
2000 F250

Wow, how tragic. If the comments above are true, chalk up another massive loss to the stupidity of a train employee, his supervisors, and so on.

Didn't they cheap out on the tracks in that section? (Didn't upgrade standard rail to high speed rail.)

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1980 300TD-China Blue/Blue MBTex-2nd Owner, 107K (Alt Blau) OBK #15
'06 Chevy Tahoe Z71 (for the wife & 4 kids, current mule) '03 Honda Odyssey (son #1's ride, reluctantly) '99 GMC Suburban (255K+ miles, semi-retired mule) 21' SeaRay Seville (summer escape pod)

I hear that train a'comin, it's a rollin around the bend......

Shocking stuff. Hard to imagine that the same network of scientists and engineers that can create such a device can also let a hot dog like this slip through the cracks, especially with him boasting about it in public. They said he was saying something like 'we're only human' after the accident. Oh yeah, we all make mistakes, how about a little love for the driver, huh?

I somehow suspect the guy's future days aren't going to be quite as exciting.

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1986 300SDL, 362K
1984 300D, 138K

No matter how much you idiot-proof a system, humanity will always make a better idiot. I wonder if they had automatic train speed control on that line, and how easy it was to override if they did. Shades of Casey Jones, who, despite the legend, was kind of a hot-dogging clown as well...

But hey, at least Spain has a working system of public transport, and it's still probably 10x safer than driving!

In my opinion, Spain has one of the better mass transit systems in Europe.

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Mike Murrell
1991 300-SEL - Model 126
M103 - SOHC
"Fräulein"

The quote about the 'better idiots' was posted in our engineering section. There is a great deal of truth to that statement.

We were sometimes told by new managers to 'take risks' which was shorthand for 'make more money so I can get a bigger bonus'.

We had to inform them we were in the business of safely producing products from hydrocarbons, and that if they were looking for someone to take a risk they were willing to try their hand at it anytime they wished.

Over a 40 year time span not one took us up on the offer.

The train in Spain, crashes mainly on the . . . what, too soon?

Hardly. It was on Fark days ago.

A train in Spain now lies mainly all over the place near the city of Santiago de Compostela, many dead and wounded.

MV