Excellent explanation, CH. I was going to offer to work out some vectors for DoughtyOne, but it’s really way too late in the day for me. (And I just got back home from a funeral.) ___ :-(
In fact, it can be seen in the pic in post 53 that several cars followed the engine off the track, but eventually the rear end of a car kicked to the left, and some following cars relatively (relatively!) unhindered thundered down the left side of the embankment.
It’s also worth noting that some of the rearmost cars may not have even been in the curve as the derailment and abrupt slowing began.
Someone mentioned that a simulation had already been done - a link would be most interesting...
I’M trying to imagine tooling down the highway and suddenly a train car or locomotive is coming at me!
And that should be the ONLY time the news media shold be ALLOWED to print "Train hits car"; instead of how they do it now.
FOOL drives in front of speeding TRAIN should be the headline; but it NEVER is...
“I’M trying to imagine tooling down the highway and suddenly a train car or locomotive is coming at me!”
I recall one time on the outskirts of Manhattan coming across an accident. A semi-truck and trailer missed the bridge and went off the cliff landing on a car below. The car was squashed, and the cab and trailer were still standing almost vertically against the cliff and the bridge.
I thought “Man - you can be the most careful driver in the world, but....” From the looks of it I’m guessing they didn’t suffer.