[ragingrobot]

Unfortunately this fact is buried half way into the article.

From personal experience in commuter rail, derailments happen more often than one would like, but most are not severe enough to attract attention.

A single axle off the rail counts as derailment, and may get reported as such for statistical purposes. This can happen frequently on a siding or in a storage yard. Where there's no significant damage, the car body is lifted, the trucks replaced on the track, and once it is all back together, inspected.

The FRA stats linked don't seem to break down derailment causes from what I can see. To be frank, while that number looks significant, when one considers how many miles of track there is in this country and how many miles the rolling stock travels (bad track is just as guilty as bad rolling stock), it could be far worse.

[fransje26]

> To be frank, while that number looks significant, when one considers how many miles of track there is in this country and how many miles the rolling stock travels (bad track is just as guilty as bad rolling stock), it could be far worse.

No, that's putting your head in the sand. Per ton-mile it's already far, far worse than in Europe & Russia.

https://i.imgur.com/CrzErQx.png

Taken from: https://d-rail-project.eu/IMG/pdf/DR-D1-1-F1-Summary_Report_...

[ragingrobot]

We lag behind Europe and Russia on other things as well.

I wasn't trying in any way to bury my head in the sand, I know for sure things can be better.

I opined looking from inside and knowing maintenance. I have seen bent track spikes and bolts reused (on mainline track!), rotten ties ignored, tracks sitting on ballast with nothing securing them. I have witnessed for years at a facility where the tracks had spread wider than gauge due to rotted wooden ties, and the solution was "just go real slow," in order to avoid shutting down the track and doing proper repairs.

[fatnoah]

That was a fascinating read. For the period reported, US derailments, while still way higher than in other places, have declined 60%, whereas they've been pretty constant elsewhere. A huge factor seems to be the weight of US rail car loads and train sizes, which are substantially heavier and longer than those elsewhere in the world.

[Ballu]

Thanks.. fascinating read. We have all the data and we know the issues, any reason these things are not tackled?

[Natsu]

Yeah, usually when we think of "derailment" we think of a big accident that makes the news, not the technically accurate "one axle came off the track" definition, even if the latter may be something more important to look at in terms of preventing the big accidents that people are concerned about.

[Kon-Peki]

The table below the stats in the link you mention also seem to indicate that most incidents are in rail yards, though I am really not sure how to interpret that table.

Are there comparable stats for elsewhere in the world? Is 1000 derailments per year a lot?

[ragingrobot]

I had been thinking along those lines originally, but it just states "yard accidents" That number was near the derailment stat, but there can be other types of incidents in yards, such as collisions. So, they are as far as I can tell, "mutually inclusive".