Two passenger trains collide on the Swiss Federal Railways
The name Rekarail is perhaps … unfortunate (http://www.largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-wink.gif)
It’s either that or the infamous Swiss humour. (http://www.largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-wink.gif)(http://www.largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-laughing.gif)
In the meantime I went and read some of the reports in the Swiss press. Turns out that the line in question has the newest PTC but it hasn’t been fully implemented i.e. presently it functions in hybrid mode, that is the new system still depends on some functions being picked from the old system.
In this case the new system expects that any train will run point to point between major stations (that’s the normal routine) and returns from there. This particular train “terminates” at one of the intermediate stations (push-pull commuter) and returns from there.
The most interesting part on this “glitch” is that one of the private railways (BLS) had the same problem when they implemented the new PTC, luckily they noticed that without having a crash and fixed the software accordingly.
Now they just have to figure out who to blame a) the schedule planers b) the software coders or c) the train crew? Since both trains were running with a qualified engineer and a trainee it will be more than just interesting. (http://www.largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-frown.gif)
