Wifey heard of a significant train derailment from one of her friends who live not too far away from the location of the incident.
What a mess! But, very luckily(!), no one was hurt, no hazardous chemicals were involved, etc. Just think: This could well happen to, say, The City Of New Orleans passenger train (nod to Arlo Guthrie), or to a train carrying nasty stuff and in an urban area to boot. :-(
I’ll bet this will still take a pretty penny to clean up, scrap rail cars and / or the locomotives damaged beyond reasonable repair, salvage or replace goods on said cars, and so on.
There were some severe t-storm warnings in that area at various times, the last day or so — I wonder if the tree was downed by a storm?
Given the advances in drone technology, it wouldn’t take all that much to have a cheap drone fly at just over stopping distance out in front of a train. Maybe 5 drones per train — at any given time: One drone scouting, one headed to / from scouting position, two on charge, and one in reserve. Once set up, the whole thing could likely be run by AI. Maybe bring in new defense companies as partners: I’ll bet the program could be “piggybacked” for all sorts of developmental data and such.
“Driving that train, high on cocaine
Casey Jones you better, watch your speed
Trouble ahead, trouble behind
And you know that notion just crossed my mind...”
Now I HAVE to listen to some Grateful Dead tonight, LOL!