goodnightjohnwayne wrote:
Again, weight is a far more important issue in aerospace than in passenger railroads.
You do not understand the forces and energy involved at high speeds. The current generation of HSTs are too heavy for practical 200+mph running, which is why it's so rare. The french have looked into aluminum trucks, there's serious talk of the use of composites, and even the current bilevel TGVs use some interesting alloys in their bodies.
Every single operator, excep for the US DOT, of HSTs, has determined their current ones are too heavy. How on earth can you say weight isn't important, when it's universally listed as the number one thing to engineer out of new HSTs?
It's worth noting that Europe also lacks American safety standards.
Yet they run a safer, per passenger km traveled system, than the US. It's also notable that the Japanese have effectively NO crash standards, yet the Shinkansen is by far the safest rail system in the world, period.
FRA standards exist for a reason and have saved many lives of the decades.
No, they've shifted the deaths to other modes, notably automotive traffic. That's not saving lives, it's moving them around. The FRA's regulations make rail too slow and expensive to compete with driving, thus folks drive instead, out of choice or need (i.e., the system doesn't exist).
I can assure you that a North American passenger train can be derailed by a sheep, although that's precisely what happened to an ICE train in Germany.
A train in California hit a pickup at a grade crossing at low speed and killed 10 passengers in the process. I can't think of any accident overseas where such deplorable crash performance existed. Even GTW 2/6s have hit pretty substantial trucks without major injury to anyone on board.