A Caterpillar Tractor maybe.
This isn’t a physics question as much it it a question about the “The Butterfly Effect”.
Is it possible for an object thrown at a train to cause a chain of events that cause the train to derail?
If you believe that it possible for an spontaneous formation of a Rube Goldberg machine, yes it is possible.
I call this “The butterfly effect of flash mob formation of Rube Goldberg machine causing unintended consequences.”
I am still working on the title.
Force is NOT mass x Velocity^2. Force is rate of change of momentum. Kinetic energy is (1/2)mv^2.
The bowling ball would simply shatter upon impact.
Are there ways to derail a train? Well, I am not going to supply info to our enemies. Enuf (maybe too much) said...
Will a train going through that curve at 106 mph derail?
Let’s try it again.
No, but pushing the train’s speed up to over one hundred MPH going into a fifty MPH curve can......
You mean like a LEAD FOOT on the gas pedal?
I don’t know how heavy of an object it would take to derail a train, but as a child I was warned that if I kept putting pennies on the track, it would derail the train.
(But I did. And it didn’t)
During a traffic safety class (military) a train engineer speaks about his encounters with cars on the tracks - he said he never felt the impact of any of them....Don’t know if your calculations for the object are correct, but don’t forget the other side of the equation....