No injuries were reported from a train derailment Friday night near Mineola according to Amtrak spokeswoman Tracy Connell.
Connell confirmed Friday that a train had derailed in Wood County.
The last car of the 22 Texas Eagle left the tracks at about 8:30 p.m., she said. The car remained upright.
It's good to know there were no injuries reported. I have to say that I have been alarmed by some of the bangs and jerks from the track while aboard certain Amtrak trains. I understand that track maintenance will be the railroads owners responsibility, but just how does the maintenance need get reported?
Will the engineer experience the same jolts, or are they sometimes worse on the coaches, being lighter in weight?
There is a set of Federal track standards giving safe limits of deficiencies for varying speeds all the way from 10 mph ot 200 mph. the key word here is "safe" Safe will still give you a fairly rough ride. Generally US track, particularly on the companies that are somewhat on the wrong side of keeping things in good condition tend to have a lot of track that is maintained well enough to keep the FRA track inspectors from being too unhappy, but by not a lot of margin.
Not sure about the passenger engiens versus coach ride quality.
The train that derailed was the one that left San Antonio on 7/28. It arrived in Chicago on 7/29, about 9 hours late. We were on the TxEg the very next day -- left Dallas on 7/29 and and arrived Chicago today (7/30), 45 min late (amazing!).
I spoke to a crew member yesterday who was on the derailed train. He said that apparent reason is that someone vandalized a switch near Mineola.
Hope they find this someone and he gets to spend a long time as a guest of the state. This sort of thing should have the FBI out. When someone does this sort of stuff, they are trying to kill people.
I seem to remember that after a severe derailment here in Britain a few years ago, all the initial reports were about "sabotage", but it transpired it was just sheer lack of care by the rail maintainance (private) company.
Amtrak or Transit related YouTube channels and videos
