As of October, the FRA has recorded 742 incident reports for train derailments in 2023. Additionally, railroads reported 59 collisions, 12 fires, and 138 highway-rail-crossing incidents, which could include cars or any other vehicles or people at the crossing site.
Since 1975, an average of 2,808 trains have derailed each year, with a peak of 9,400 derailments in 1978.
I’ve got to assume most of those are things like single cars falling off the track in the switching yard or something, not major service-interrupting, cargo-damaging, or injury-causing incidents.
Hello I work for the railroad and can shed some light. Minor derails happen all the time in yards and Industry tracks. These are low speed derailments where you are lucky to see more than a truck on the ground and very little damage actually occurs. Almost all of them are caused by derails that were forgotten to be removed or crews going part way through an improperly lined switch and reversing. The bar for it counting is if someone is injured or if the total damages exceeds 35k which isn’t hard as they factor everything in including the cost of wages of anyone involved in rerailing it. The metric that’s actually scary is over 500 trespassers are killed by train strike each year in the US.
This one caught me off guard:
I’ve got to assume most of those are things like single cars falling off the track in the switching yard or something, not major service-interrupting, cargo-damaging, or injury-causing incidents.
That’s a fair assumption as a non industry expert. Nevertheless OOP was technically correct there. 😅
That’s wild, I really never would have thought it was that common; thank you.
What the frickity fuck?
Hello I work for the railroad and can shed some light. Minor derails happen all the time in yards and Industry tracks. These are low speed derailments where you are lucky to see more than a truck on the ground and very little damage actually occurs. Almost all of them are caused by derails that were forgotten to be removed or crews going part way through an improperly lined switch and reversing. The bar for it counting is if someone is injured or if the total damages exceeds 35k which isn’t hard as they factor everything in including the cost of wages of anyone involved in rerailing it. The metric that’s actually scary is over 500 trespassers are killed by train strike each year in the US.