> By the way - a TGV locomotive derailed recently, somewhere in
> Belgium or Northern France. The train was traveling at over 250 km/h (!)
> and presumably took a good few km to skid to a stop, but it remained
> upright and nobody was seriously injured.
Definitely off topic, but...
Actually, it happened three times
1) when the track collapsed in a hidden WWI trench
2) due to a bombing
3) (the one you referred to) exact cause not divulgated, presumabely something that broke in a truck
The trains were running up to 300 KM/H. Some people were lightly injured, mainly by luggages falling off the shelves.

> The French credit this to the fact that the whole set of coaches is
> "articulated", that is, two adjacent cars share a truck (set of wheels)
> between them. In other train designs, a single car derailing can swerve
> and pull the others over, but the articulated set has remarkable
> stability.
That's true, plus the general suspension mechanism. In all cases, the train stayed in line.
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