The picture is a screenshot froma video: https://x.com/libertaddigital/status/2115369280745488689?a=dVj2Qr6To65jFf5FIKk&s=19

Today, tragic news emerged from Spain, raising significant technical questions about railway safety. Near Toledo, an AVE high speed train operated by Spain’s national railway operator, Renfe, collided with a high speed train operated by the private railway company iryo. According to initial reports, at least 64 people have lost their lives and 80 others have been injured. Search and rescue operations are still ongoing, and the death toll may rise.

The accident occurred between an AVE high-speed train operated by Renfe and an iryo high-speed train. Emergency responders, search and rescue teams, and medical personnel remain at the scene, where reports indicate that some passengers may still be trapped inside the train cars.

Following the accident, all high-speed services along the main rail corridor connecting Madrid with southern Spain were suspended, and the affected line was closed to traffic.

Spain’s Ministry of Transport and the Commission for the Investigation of Railway Accidents (CIAF) have launched an investigation to determine the cause of the disaster. Investigators are expected to examine whether the signaling infrastructure, automatic train-control systems, and emergency braking mechanisms including the LZB system, which is designed to continuously monitor train movements and prevent trains from approaching one another at dangerous speeds functioned properly.

The investigation will seek to determine whether the accident resulted from a technical failure, a signaling malfunction, human error, or a combination of factors.

https://news.sky.com/story/spain-train-crash-latest-numerous-injuries-reported-after-high-speed-collision-on-madrid-andalusia-line-13604696

Will miss them both but so pleased I saw!

I always want more rail, but this seems like a really poor effort at it. They're looking to run 3 round trips per day in 3 years, and that's just between Fort Collins and Denver. Depending on timings, you could run that with a single set (likely with one extra set as a spare). And their goal after 20 years is 10 round trips per day?! It's ridiculous!

I appreciate the relatively fast rollout, but they're also bragging about running it on existing track. If anything, they should be trying to hide that, not use it as a selling point. It just means you're going to run into one of the big problems Amtrak has; having to wait for freight trains. It'll also mean dealing with the quality of freight lines, which is very often total garbage. And running it through the B line, in Denver seems like an insane choice from my perspective.

I'm worried this project is going to be used as a political tool to avoid future rail projects, and put those resources into car infrastructure. I feel like it's going to set us back, not bring us forward.

I just don't see why we should be doing this half-ass implementation with the goal of slowly improving it over time. We know how to build a good rail line. We've known for 150 years, at least. Why do we always seem to have to start bad and work our way to slightly less bad with projects like this? Why couldn't they make it better from the start? I know that costs money, but surely the budget could be increased enough to at least make it 6 per day, at the start.

I'm voting on it, and I'm having a really hard time deciding whether I want to support it or not, which feels insane. Before this, I couldn't have imagined voting against a new rail service. I really want other people's input on this. Is there something I'm missing? Am I being too pessimistic? I genuinely don't know. Please tell me what you think.

CN Railroad Chicago land

Found this warning sign by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT) in Japan.I find it interesting how it features multiple languages (English, Chinese, Korean) along with a very visual, cartoon-style warning.

Have any of you seen similar colorful danger signs in your country?

Saw this at Union Station in DC while waiting to leave!

Caught these two coming at each other in Tokyo yesterday.

Just wanted to show you a new toy I've been developing.

The thing I like the most about trains is passenger traffic and the kinetic energy of stations.

So I had this idea some time ago to have a small arrivals/departures board that I could configure to any station, and see the real time traffic of it.

Currently, the application has:

- Information on the German network. It uses the Timetable and Stations API from DB.

- UI that resembles DB boards.

- Arrival and Departures boards, updated every minute.

- Configurable to any DB station via name or EVA number.

- Resizable, with a narrow and a wider view. The latter also shows intermediate stations, and in the future, live updates on traffic. That comes from another API that I still have to integrate.

- Platform Board (still in development). For the selected station, there's also another board, with information on a specific platform. It shows the next services stopping or terminating at that platform. The platform can also be changed to the desired on.

- The windows can show above all other windows on the screen

Planned for future updates:

- Make it open source if there's interest (it's now a PoC, so I would need to rework it)

- Have other networks

- Show information on the trains, lines and services

- Native application (the app is now a webview basically, and there's a fastAPI server running in a docker container that handles the API requests and renders the page).

- And where the project actually comes from: being able to have this boards on an e-ink display (or displays: one for the board, and another one for the platform) that I can attach to the monitor and doesn't take desktop space. Not sure if the app will continue running on the mac with the displays connected to it, or in a raspberry pi or similar.

Anyway, just wanted to share this with you :) Let me know if you'd like me to share the project or not, and any ideas for improvement you may have.

Including a cameo from Canadian National 8500, the railroad’s new Tier 4 hybrid diesel-battery locomotive.

Semi-doxxing myself but I had to share. I live right next to the storage location of the Pere Marquette 1225 and early Sunday I heard her whistle and hopped up to go grab this video. Spoke to a woman who’s job is a caretaker of this beautiful engine. Also, the man responsible for the MSU train club that restored this train in the 1980s was there as well. Here they were doing an event where people can actually drive the train down the track and getting it ready for the Polar Express experience coming up soon. End of the video you can hear the whistle. Enjoy!

Finally found one of these, I love the motor noises.

After a while spent out of service due to repairs, METX 104 is back on the rails again! I caught it leaving LaSalle Street Station on the Rock Island District, helping provide power to train 427, a rush hour train to Joliet. Since 104 hasn't seen action in a long time, it is working with an MP36PH-3C so that it can undergo retesting so that Metra can see if it can run consistently reliable again. It was exciting to see my most favorite Metra F40PH again, and I would highly recommend keeping an eye out for it whenever you're riding or railfanning on the Rock Island District!

Note: I apologize for the fuzziness of the photo, especially near the rear of 104. I was trying to get a good image of it, and my camera struggled to get a good framing of it.

Photo taken on October 27, 2026

Southern West Virginia is at (or very near) peak fall foliage and while the passing coal train may not add much color to the scene, in my view it completes it. The train in question is C138, a loaded coal train from Emmett, WV for Newport News, VA.

The train is eastbound but is taking the number one track through the New River Gorge account maintenance of way having the number two track across the New River (the track in the foreground is the infrequently used Fayette siding).

While the railroad is signaled for running in any direction on any track, number one track has traditionally been used as the westbound main line with number two track traditionally carrying most eastbounds. The operation today only further proving you never know what you’re gonna see when you get trackside.

https://stoptherailmerger.com/vena-goes-off-the-rails-up-ceo-questions-federal-regulator-compares-merger-review-to-poker-game/

I made a ~9 minute explainer on the Gotthard Base Tunnel, the longest railway tunnel in the world, and I’d love feedback from people who actually know trains.

A few things that surprised me while researching it:

• At its deepest point there are 2,300 m of rock above the trains, and the rock inside reaches about 45 °C.
• They dug it from five places at once. At Sedrun, workers and machines went down an 800 m vertical shaft to start digging in the middle of the mountain.
• Underground there’s no GPS, so surveyors measured forward roughly every 400 m, and even corrected for the mountain’s mass pulling their plumb lines sideways.
• When the last rock fell in October 2010, the two crews were off by less than 10 cm, after years of digging toward each other.
• Passenger trains now run through at 200 km/h, and a test train hit 275 km/h inside the mountain.

Video: https://youtu.be/l0c4UjCiAec?si=moDzAvJZISrhFX0x

It’s a small channel and this is only my third video, so honest feedback is welcome: what worked, what didn’t, and which rail megaproject I should cover next.

Siemens has won the contract to build up to 40 new high-speed trains for the Madrid–Catalonia–France line, with an operating speed of 350 km/h. The model chosen is the Velaro Novo, and the contract comprises 30 firm orders and 10 optional orders.

The contract stipulates that the first unit must be delivered within 40 months and the last within 60 months.

https://www.eleconomista.es/transportes-turismo/noticias/14023675/10/26/key-international-https://www.eleconomista.es/transportes-turismo/noticias/14023757/10/26/siemens-gana-el-pedido-de-40-nuevos-trenes-de-alta-velocidad-para-renfe.html

I'm trying to write a realistic scene set in the United States and was wondering how plausible this would be.

Imagine someone near a freight yard or rail line finds a boxcar with its large sliding side door partially or fully open. The car appears to be empty, and they climb inside and end up traveling with the freight train.

Does this ever happen in real life? Are boxcars ever left with their sliding doors open while waiting in a yard? Would it be plausible for a boxcar with an open door to end up moving as part of a freight train, or would that be extremely unusual?

I'm interested in both modern-day America and more recent historical periods, including the era when hobos commonly rode freight trains. I'm not necessarily looking for a specific time period; I just want to know whether this kind of scenario is realistic in either setting.

I'd appreciate any insights from railroad workers, railfans, or anyone familiar with freight operations or the history of freight hopping.

Only a couple of Months left for those Iconic Shinkansen Sets so I wanted to Share my video of Set Number 9 leaving Okayama as a Kodama Service towards Osaka