Talk:List of rail accidents

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[edit] London bombings

Do they qualify as accidents, when there was clearly a terrorist motive? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 128.54.204.87 (talk • contribs).

You know, you're right, they weren't accidents. However, they were significant events that affected rail transport in the area, just as the Spanish (2004) and Russian (2005) events, which are also listed here. I guess I'm undecided on whether they should stay here or not. Slambo (Speak) 11:57, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

I've been debating this with myself for a while as well. Perhaps we should have (a better worded) List of terrorist incidents on the railway section? Off the top of my head, I'm not certain there are enough significant incidents (the countless IRA bomb warnings are not significant imho) for a stand-alone list. Unless there was a combined public transport list - there have been a number of bus bombings in Israel/Palestine (and I think Sri Lanka as well) for example. Thryduulf 13:13, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

And there are many more that are attributed to Maoist or Naxalist sympathizers in mainland India (Google News lists many each day, and I see there are two more listed today). The three that are in the list now are those that received the most widespread media attention as far as I can tell. I wouldn't mind so much if they were split out to a separate list, but I'm not sure that would be better. As to the proposed list name, I dislike the word "terrorist" as it's been associated with far more now by our lovely King George II that would not have earned that monicker in the 1990s (such as a sit-in to prevent trucks carrying hazardous materials from entering certain wildlife areas; environmental issue protesters have been labeled "domestic terrorists" by the current regime). But back to the issue at hand, strictly speaking, these incidents aren't accidents. This brings up another question about inclusion; should we include events in this list that were caused by deliberate sabotage? Slambo (Speak) 14:51, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Ignoring the "terrorist card" comments (I could say whole lot, but that is a discussion for another place. At least President Tony isn't quite that bad. Yet.), the sabotage question is a good one. They deserve to be listed somewhere, so perhaps renaming the list to "List of rail accidents and incidents" would be good. It would also neatly solve the problem of the London bombings et al, but we would have to agree criteria for inclusion. Imho the bar should be set higher than just a SPAD that leads to no accident (according to the Rail Safety and Standards Board there were 21 'Category A' in January 2006]]), but we have to be able to include significantly notable events that led to no fatalities. Thryduulf 21:34, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Should be in a separate section. If we include terrorist incidents shouldn't we also include all the incidents due to acts of war - there must have been hundreds in World War II alone

Exile 20:27, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] San Benedetto tunnel accident

Has anyone heard of this accident? http://home.no.net/lotsberg/artiklar/andersen/en_table_1.html => 1984

Looks like one that ought to be listed...

I agree. This is a wiki, be bold and add it yourself. Thryduulf 13:09, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Shorten, prioritize

It seems to me that this page is getting excessively long and nit-picky. I specifically reference the "March 15, 2006 – Manassas, Virginia" incident, though there seem to be dozens of others along the way. To include such minor incidents at all seems unnotable, and to compare it with larger train disasters like the Glendale accident makes it all the worse. What if there were a List of automobile accidents, on which everyone would add the minor fender-benders he saw on his way to work that morning? Worst of all, the large number of accidents in 2004 - 2006, at least in comparison to the early years, makes present-day rail travel seem unsafe. I think that the page needs cleanup. -- Runnerupnj 14:41, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

I agree. Perhaps we should set a threshold of 1 fatality to a rail passenger/driver, signifcant national media coverage and/or a significant long term impact on policy/operations (I'm thinking along the lines of the national chaos caused by Hatfield in the UK or an accident that results in the withdrawal of all of a certain class of loco/unit. Not a month of disruption to the services on one line). Obivously accidents that don't meet these criteria but are otherwise particularly noteworthy (e.g. the first) can go in. Thryduulf 16:07, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes, it is a bit long; perhaps an initial split by century would be helpful? I've been using the amount of media attention as a rough gauge on whether or not to include items into the list. The great overwhelming majority of incidents that I read about are only reported on one or two rail-related websites; incidents that I see reported in multiple media sources are more likely to be significant to the average reader. One tool I use for prominence is a Google News search for +railway | +railroad -"underground railroad" -"Railroad Earth". However, I also usually tend to skip over incidents where it's one person driving around the gates at a level crossing, walking along the right of way or otherwise acting stupidly around the trains unless there's a significant impact to rail traffic or unless it involves significant personalities (I almost added the incident earlier this week where "Miss Deaf Texas" Tara McAvoy died after being struck by a UP train; see: Trains NewsWire, Texas School for the Deaf and several others). Slambo (Speak) 16:59, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Why don't we remove everything where no passengers and less than 6 people outside the train were killed. We should not have freight train derailments or level-crossing accidents with a car. If several passengers were injured or other major reasons we could keep them. I aggre that it is strange that there are so many from the 21st century. It seems that every time a rail accident is reported in media it appears here. /BIL 12:42, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm doing a long distance train journey tomorrow. Do I dare to do that? The number of accidents per year increases heavily. 217.208.214.180 01:28, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Suggestion for split

As this file is growing rather large, what about a split 2000 and before, and 2005 after?

The split files should have tidy names:

List of rail accidents 1801-1950
List of rail accidents 1951-2000
List of rail accidents

Tabletop 03:17, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Sounds good to me, since we're going onto three pages now, it seems prudent to make a navbox something like (using the proposed names):

List of rail accidents (by years)
1801-1950 · 1951-2000 · 2001-present

Slambo (Speak) 10:48, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

I split it. I couldn't take it any more! :) Navbox away, I did the hard part. (Though I kept the decades together - that makes more sense with the way everything is set up.) :) Rmarquet 02:08, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Map of accidents by country

I don't believe that the recently-added map of accidents by country is a good idea. It is based solely on the accidents listed on the page at a particular (unspecified) point in time (a further accident was added since the map was created), and has little relevance given that the list itself is not in any sense representative of the number of accidents in each country; rather it is almost certainly skewed according to the countries of contributors to this English wiki. Philip J. Rayment 09:03, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

I completely agree. There is also no agreed criteria for inclusion - many of the accidents in the USA are minor whereas only major accidents from other countries are included, with the UK somerewhere between the two. It is also not a fair comparison as the USA has a much larger rail network with a very significalty higher number of train movements than (almost?) every other country. An adjusted measure, taking into account the number of accidents per train kilometer would be better but almost impossible to source, it would also not take into account the difference between the traffic - I beleive the primary traffic on USA railways is freight whereas I think the Dutch network is almost entirely passenger. The culture following an accident is also very different between countries and even over time in the same country - in the UK a minor mishap that resulted in no significant damage would have gone unreported beyond the depot years ago now needs to be formally reported to various authorities who may chose to investigate.

In short there are far too many variables to make it useful (its also got a glaring spelling error "axidents"), so I'll remove it. Thryduulf 09:55, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cleanup tag

I've added a {{cleanup}} tag for two reasons. First, there is quite a bit of bad spelling on the page which needs to be fixed (including one example on the map (Axidents)!). Second, I believe that there are "accidents" in the list that should not be there. See the next section (Criteria for inclusion). Philip J. Rayment 09:11, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Criteria for inclusion

For ease of discussion, this section has been moved to /Criteria for inclusion. Thryduulf 00:25, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Reference method

Could we agree on a method of citing references? The primary methods are either a footnote, or just a link within the line. I'm guilty of using both, but we should be consistent. (Personally, I prefer the second method - the first method requires two clicks and the footnotes are often just a link to the article anyway with no extra information.) Rmarquet 14:30, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree we should standardise, and I've got no preference for which so I'm happy to go with the inline link. ~~82.2.173.196 21:50, 10 December 2006 (UTC)~~ Thryduulf 21:51, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Edits by 84.0.219.238

84.0.219.238 seems to be making an excessive number of edits to little effect. Any idea what the edits are meant to achieve, apart from cluttering up the history list? WLD^talk|edits 13:55, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Recent combine of the pages?

Why did someone combine the pages? I can't find any discussion about it, but there's plenty on this page about splitting them, and no reason given for the combine. Here is the last non-split version of this page - can we revert and fix the garbage that's there now? (Yeah, I'm frustrated - I put in a decent amount of time getting that split page to look right and all, and now it's been undone, and badly, for no obvious reason.) Rmarquet 20:24, 2 January 2007 (UTC) (Correction - that link is the first time the pages were combined. The last "good" page would be right before that one.) Rmarquet 20:25, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

I didn't even notice when I made the small formatting change to get the whitespace displaying properly again. It seems that someone was a little too bold considering the consensus that we've developed on this talk page for the split in the first place. Slambo (Speak) 20:49, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Rollback reason

The latest addition appears to be a direct copyvio from the Boston Herald, so I've reverted its addition. Slambo (Speak) 14:18, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Use of the word "disaster"

Perhaps this has already been discussed elsewhere, but it seems to me that there is no distinction between the words "disaster" and "crash." For example, Waterfall train disaster had seven dead from a derailment, while Dete train crash had over forty dead from a head-on collision. I'm sure to the families involved, all crashes are "disasters." Perhaps it would be better to uniformly use the word "crash" or "accident" when an incident involves a failure of the rail system, and reserve "disaster" for incidents involving natural disasters or terrorism. Cmprince 23:03, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

If I understand you correctly, you're talking about names that some accidents get. Those aren't assigned by us, they're generally assigned by the reporters or the locals that live near the accident, and we shouldn't attempt to rename them to use uncommon names. For example, the article on a certain famous entertainer is entitled Johnny Carson, not his real name John William Carson, because "Johnny Carson" is what he's most famous as, and it's what someone who is looking for that article would be most likely to search for. Rmarquet 12:59, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

"Crash" is factual. "Disaster" is a colloquialism and is arguably a "point of view" as it conveys emotion and superstition. It literally means "bad star" and stands for a "bad event". Wahkeenah 13:19, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

If Cmprince was arguing about using the words "crash" or "disaster" to describe an event in general, I'd agree that we shouldn't call them "disasters" (or even "crashes", in favor of more specific language). But these are specific named events he's talking about, it seems: The Dete train crash versus "a train crashed last week". Rmarquet 17:00, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, it seems fair to use the commonly-used name, even if it sounds like a headline. Wahkeenah 01:10, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

How common are these names, though? And who are journalists to decide what an event should be called? If The New York Times calls a crash in South America a "crash" and The Guardian calls it a "disaster," what name do you choose?

"Disaster" is POV, and arbitrarily applying the word doesn't help. My 2 cents. Cmprince 01:33, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

The names are common enough that someone was able to write Wikipedia articles about the events, and then others were able to find those and make edits, and then yet others were able to add them to this list. To me, your request is akin to renaming the Chernobyl disaster to "Chernobyl Exceptional Nuclear Event" - sure, the new name is accurate, but not what it's usually called. Rmarquet 21:42, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't think that many train crashes actually have commonly decided adjectives. I first wrote the Dete article, and I somewhat arbitarily chose the word crash as I felt it was more descriptive than disaster. I think that crash is probably a better word, although as long as the title retains the word train everyone will understand what is being discussed.--Jackyd101 21:31, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Citation Need For Toronto Derailment February 2001

I just added a derailment from a CBC article about the February 7, 2001 Don Valley Derailment. It needs a citation. The article is here http://www.cbc.ca/news/story/2001/02/07/010207train.html Thank you Kenny Sullivan 03:43, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

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