Anne’s Reviews > Train Wreck: The Forensics of Rail Disasters > Status Update

All notes, references, and indexes from here so I'm out!

"Today rail typically makes up 60% of a railroad's assets..." p. 261 Wow! Really? I wish he had cited his sources for that little nugget because that doesn't seem like common knowledge to me!

I'm at that stage of the book where I can no longer comprehend how a train ever manages to not get derailed!

"Once the travel time between two destinations comes down to three hours or so, all over the world trains compete successfully with planes and dominate the market." p. 89-90 Now the California High-Speed Rail's goal of three-hour travel time from SF to LA makes sense!

This isn't exactly full of delightful tidbits, but I'll try to make this snappy. US standards for crash energy management (which shoots for 0 serious injuries) cover speeds up to 30 MPH. In Europe, standards top out at 22.5 MPH. Because "It is impossible to safely dissipate the kinetic energy of a high-speed train." (p. 43) so why even try?

"This is a train wreck book that teaches science (or a science book that tells train wreck stories)." p. 1 Need I say anything else as to why I'm reading this? :)