TGV derailed with fatalities
 

Poor France...now a TGV has derailed with 5 fatalities. R.I.P. :(

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34822666

Sad news. Thoughts with the families and friends of the bereaved of this and the terrorist attacks.
Richard

How sad. My heart goes out to all those involved.

Several children were on board when a high-speed train derailed during a test run in France, killing 11 people, the rail company SNCF has said.
Five people are still missing and more than 30 were injured in the TGV crash near the eastern city of Strasbourg.
Investigators are trying to determine who the children are and why they were on board when access was meant to be restricted to technicians.
It is not clear whether children were among the dead.
"That's not a practice that the SNCF recognises," said company chief Guillaume Pepy. "A test train is a test train".


SNCF said it was possible that railway workers' children were on board when the train crashed, reportedly at around 350km/h (217mph).

Yesterday I read on a French website (sorry, cannot retrieve it) that an SNCF employee said it was common practice to allow family members on a ride like this, unlike the official policy quoted today.
The big question is ofcourse why the train's speed was 'excessively high'. Two kilometres farther the LGV joins the ordinary line where the speed limit is 160 km/h.

Another question is: when did the train switch to the right hand track? TGV trains run on the left hand track, but the derailment obviously took place on the southern most bridge across the canal (see picture in Le Figaro), whose curve is even narrower than the northern one. I cannot believe it has been designed for a very high speed.
http://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-fra...strasbourg.php

Thanks for that Kees, and welcome to the forum. :)

The French really have had an awful weekend. My sympathies to all concerned.

This looks like yet another excessive speed event. It seems that the designers of these super safe railways don't have a failsafe limiter for when trains reach the end of the high speed system.

As we say on the railway, "if something can go wrong, it will eventually".