STOP SIGNAL

Issue #3 - June 1998

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Welcome to issue #3 of Stop Signal the FREE newsletter for Danger Ahead!

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What's in this issue:

Danger Ahead is Moving
Eschede ICE Disaster
More accidents in the news
WWW Train Wrecks
Books
Tail Lamp

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Danger Ahead is Moving 4th July

Danger Ahead! - Historic Railway Disasters is moving to a new home on Saturday July 4, 1998. The site will then be hosted by Blue Moon Network and the new URL will be http://danger-ahead.railfan.net. Follow the link for a preview. (WARNING - the site is under heavy construction. Some internal links may not be working and parts may be incomplete)

There are many benefits gained from the move. The two most visible to visitors will be faster loading times and we shall lose the insidious Geocities branding intrusions. At Blue Moon, we shall have the opportunity to implement several developments that have been in the pipeline - watch this space for more information.

After July 4, the <travel.to/danger> URL will point to the new address. For the time-being the email address for the site will remain as railtec@geocities.com

Expect another mailing on Saturday July 4.

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Eschede ICE Disaster

Wednesday June 3 1998 saw a tragic rail accident in Germany when a high-speed ICE (Inter City Express) train crashed into a road over-bridge in the town of Eschede. In terms of lives lost, it counts as Germany's worst railway disaster in fifty years. The accident was widely reported and there has been much speculation about the cause of the accident. Danger Ahead! carried reports of events as they happened, and continues to provide updates. The site has refrained from joining in the speculation as only the investigation and subsequent enquiry will provide the answer to the cause. With the move to the new server, there will be a Special Feature on the accident including an examination of the facts gathered from a variety of sources.

All the Danger Ahead! reports have been gathered at the new site and can be seen at

http://danger-ahead.railfan.net/reports/eschede/eschede.htm

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More accidents in the news

June has not been a good month for the world's railways. At Concord near Sydney, Australia on 9 June a CityRail Tangara train was derailed while apparently travelling too fast through a turnout. Danger Ahead! report...

http://danger-ahead.railfan.net/reports/concorde.htm

Following the ICE tragedy, in Britain a high-speed IC225 train was derailed on 17 June. Danger Ahead! report...

http://danger-ahead.railfan.net/reports/sandy.htm

On18 June at Portage, Indiana a commuter train smashed into a truck that was straddling a grade crossing. Three people were killed. Danger Ahead! report...

http://danger-ahead.railfan.net/reports/current3.htm

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Train wrecks on the WWW

Other WWW sites that deal with railway Disasters...

Clint Chamberlain maintains a site of US RR photographs which includes three galleries of US train wrecks...

Older Wrecks - http://www.northeast.railfan.net/wrecks1.html

Later Wrecks 1 - http://www.northeast.railfan.net/wrecks.html

Later Wrecks 2 - http://www.northeast.railfan.net/wrecks2.html

Robert has submitted the following information about official sites that deal with railway accidents...

There is an official Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB) report of a rail accident of Canadian National (CN) Westbound Train No. 117 freight train on 12 August 1996 at http://bst-tsb.gc.ca/rail/er96c0172.html It is a large file ... about 330kb, but includes several jpegs. It examines the rail safety issues of the head-on collision in detail.

There is a complete list of rail accident reports on the Transport Safety Board of Canada site at http://bst-tsb.gc.ca/raillist..html

The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board has a list of railroad accident reports at http://www.ntsb.gov/Publictn/R_Acc.htm

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Books

I recently posted a message to several newsgroups announcing some updates to Danger Ahead!. This prompted a question from one reader about Books concerning railway accidents. As ever, the always helpful "posters" to the groups sent in details of a number of excellent books on the subject. I was also able to do some research and I have produced a list of books all of
which are related to accidents in the UK. The list will be added to the website and I hope to maintain it with updates as new material appears.

http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Lab/7806/bibliog.htm

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Tail Lamp

Following the mishap with the subscribers database, I have tried to recompile it from limited backups and other information that I have available. In order to try to prevent a recurrance of this, I have decided to maintain the database at Annuit. If you have received this newsletter and you did not subscribe to it, please accept my apologies. It is not my intention to send spam. It is very simple to remove your name from the list, just follow the instructions below.

Danger Ahead! - Historic Railway Disasters
http://travel.to/danger