I want to know what they mean by “derail”. Because you can’t expect me to believe that every day three trains truly derail in the sense that we think of it
It's right in the name. Any time a train car or locomotive has its wheel leave the track, a derailment, it is counted as such. Long ago I worked in a facility that had rail for shipping and receiving materials, which oddly enough included vinyl chloride, and we were all given training for the safety aspects of having rail run through the facility even if our jobs did not involve rail at all. In the years I was there, we had quite a few derailments, but none were serious because the majority of them were simply a tank car having its wheel trucks jump the rail. Those incidents had to be reported as derailments because they were derailments.
So yes there thousands of derailment incidents annually. You don't hear about them because the vast majority of the derailments are extremely minor and do not result in spills, injuries or deaths. They are the fender-benders of the train world. Just like with cars, we only really hear about the twenty-car pile-ups and not the minor accident that resulted in a small dent. Thousands of minor vehicle accidents every year but how many can you recall making the national news? This make more sense now?
I actually have not
They'd count anything as a derailment as any time a single wheel/axle on a single car comes off of the tracks as a derailment. Most go unreported because they usually only are minor and only effect those blocked at a crossing. Stupid Pete saying "it happens all the time" is just them trying to downplay the severe derailments.
I asked about electric/model train because any time intervention by the user of that requires touching a car to put it back onto the tracks correctly would be a derailment.
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