She said speed-limit signs are posted two miles before the lowered speed zone and then just before the zone.
“Engineers are trained to slow trains according to posted speeds,” she said.
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In this day and age of hi-tech isn’t there an onboard instrument that an engineer can refer to also? Or at least some place to post a post-it note: “slow down at curves”?
It’s called Positive Train Control, and eventually it’s supposed to be implemented nationwide. It’s very expensive, and the railroads have been pushing back at the government for years.
Airliners have fly by wire, and high speed trains have sleeping engineers at the throttle. Bizarre!
1 sign 2 miles away is not much warning either for such a huge mass to slow down. They should have flashing when above like on road constructions n
Engineers are supposed to be familiar with the route before they run it. I don’t know if railroads still publish division rulebooks (meant for internal use), but the rulebook would list speed restrictions in relation to mileposts. The rulebook also describes sidings, interlockings, and other operating details.
This was a Talgo trainset, which, due to tilting technology, can handle curves faster. But still, the curve reportedly has a 30 mph speed restriction per rulebook. That is significant. Even with some tilting technology, hitting a 30 mph rulebook curve at over 60 is way excessive.
High speed trains, as run in Europe and Japan (this means 200km/h+, 125mph+) typically have curve radii in excess of 1 mile.