• stevedidwhat_infosec@infosec.pub
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    10 months ago

    The railroad system is so safe y’all. Trust us. It’s the workers fault and the consumers fault if anything is broken or neglected. We’re entirely without fault!!

    • conditional_soup@lemm.ee
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      10 months ago

      Big problem here is that the freight railroads are all being run like vulture capital operations. They own the trackage, so it’s their responsibility to maintain it, and it’s not like they don’t have the money. Norfolk Southern’s profits (not revenue, this is after costs) Sept 30 2022- Sept 30 2023 were over 8 billion dollars. Union Pacific did $14 billion in 2022. They can afford to maintain their shit, but they’re not; they’re just letting their tracks and rolling stock go to hell and shrugging when it blows up. Just flat out not paying your cost centers is not a thing a sane business does if it wants to keep doing business for long. I’m convinced that the major rail carriers long-term plan is to just not pay to repair a goddamn thing until the rail infra is completely broken, declare bankruptcy, and then sell it to the government. The government will make CONRAIL 2 (see: CONRAIL, which is what happened the last time they pulled this shit), spend an ass-ton of taxpayer dollars fixing this bullshit, and then sell it back to the privates for pennies on the dollar because of FrEe MaRkEt EfFiCiEnCy.

      • rwhitisissle@lemmy.ml
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        10 months ago

        In America, socialism is something you only get once you become a powerful enough capitalist enterprise. The state produces the means of production and then just hands it over to you while you collect profits. Another great example of this is the thousands of miles of dark fiber optic cable buried in the US that ISPs refuse to connect at the “last mile.” Why spend a bunch of money giving everybody fiber when they’re already paying you a kidney every month for shitty rural DSL?

      • UltraMagnus0001@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        Someone deregulated certain safety aspects of the railroad system for cooperate profits recently and since then there has been more accidents

  • Papamousse@beehaw.org
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    10 months ago

    In Québec in 1998 during the ice storm, we missed power for 5 weeks. They derailled train to bring them at some place to plug their big diesel generators on the city power system.

    Yes they were driving train on the asphalt road, I’m sure you can find pic and videos or it.

  • Rhaedas@kbin.social
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    10 months ago

    That’s some serious ice layers if it not only derails a train but supports its weight over to the road.

      • InputZero@lemmy.ml
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        10 months ago

        It’s difficult to see because of the compression noise but it looks like the train is on the tracks. The tracks are just so covered with ice it looks like there are no tracks. Snow and ice are nothing to a train, leaves on the other hand can make tracks dangerous.

    • You999@sh.itjust.works
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      10 months ago

      The contact patch of the wheels on a train is roughly 90,000 PSI of vertical pressure. You need a lot of ice to derail a train.