In canton mass last year a runaway freight car cut threw a "derail" and smashed into a commmuter train. Over the years i've heard of other runaway trains/cars cutting thu derails. I guess you never here about when a derail works because it does its job and sends the car off the track. My question is what percentage of derails fail? If there not working with loaded freight cars whats the point of having it? Should they throw these derails away for a split switch or some other better design?
I can only speak of the derails at our shop... if you try to run into the shop, you'll go off the tracks... but if a unit were to roll OUT of the shop toward the inbound tracks, it would roll over the derail. Somewhat noisily... but it doesn't derail if it's in that direction.
The derail is to protect us working in the shops... the other way, I can only assume, is if the guy moving the unit out forgot somehow to put the derail down...
Perhaps the derails you're hearing about are like ours?