Still more fail-proof trains

The past several posts have been our effort to satirically show how ridiculous it might be to actually produce fail-proof trains, shedding light on the political grandstanding of those politicians who call for them in response to every railroad accident that appears in the drive-by media. (Yes, Virginia, I did use the term drive-by to describe the mainstream media's habit of lobbing stories at us and then quickly moving on to whatever other shiny thing catches the eye of the copy editors.)

5. We last mentioned wheels and the suspension systems that must hold them in place on the cars that carry our people and goods. Those cars, themselves, in particular for passenger cars and tanks carrying hazardous materials, already must meet standards making them unlikely to crush or crumple (or spill haz mats) in a crash. So, to make them totally fail proof, we must either find some new miracle material that will never crush or crumple under any conditions, including the enormous forces generated when a railroad vehicle goes from any speed over 30 miles an hour to dead stop in something like a fraction of a second; or we must reduce the speed of all rail vehicles to a crawl; or we must reduce the weight of all rail vehicles to almost nothing. This is a major engineering task, but I'm sure Congressman (person) X knows it can be done!

6. Perhaps the secret is seat belts. That's where highway passenger safety has gone or is going. You'll no longer be able to move about the train when it's moving. Then you won't fall against anything if it suddenly hits something else. Can we imagine putting all hazardous materials in the equivalent of seatbelts. If the tank ruptures in a collision, the crude oil won't be thrown from the train, it will just hang there in a wide strip of nylon until the pumper gets to the scene. Come on people!

Stations? My word count for this week has almost been reached, so I'll cover this next time.

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