Thieves in LA are looting freight trains filled with packages from UPS,FEDE,AMZ | Hacker News Reader

Thieves in LA are looting freight trains filled with packages from UPS,FEDE,AMZ

cnn.com

43 pointsneeleshs10 comments

Yesterday’s discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29930970

I think the same story has been posted to Reddit every day since it first went up as well. Either that or they're using a very common stock image.

If thievery keeps going up like this and law enforcement continues to take a kid gloves approach to this, there are two likely outcomes: the cost simply gets passed on to the consumer or we get a Pinkerton re-incarnation. This latter option is a phenomenon that already happens in developing countries where law enforcement ignores these kind of issues.

Years ago I would have thought the Pinkerton option unlikely, but between privatized prisons and military contractors, I do kind of wonder if we are far off from it.

The original Pinkerton company still exists and operates private security services.

And now there's been a derail incident on that same stretch of track. Could have been caused by all the debris.

https://twitter.com/bellikemike/status/1482480779544256514

This account is the one that first posted video, check his other posts for more stuff.

The YouTube channel "German in Venice" was there today and asked one of the train workers which told him the derailment was not caused by the trash.

Looking at another video on Twitter where the train is riding on both tracks it appears and railway switch failed halfway while the train was running over it. I saw this happen to a light rail here in Zürich during a very cold day, the railway switch snapped back in the middle of a railcar running over it. One track turned up another street so the railcar ripped apart at the flexible junction.

Of course a piece of trash could easily have caused the failure of the railway switch.

It takes a lot of trash on the tracks to derail a train. Trains frequently just run over downed trees because clearing them would involve hours of waiting and it rarely does any damage of note. Maybe if the trash is scrap steel you might have a shot.

It's pretty likely that the derailment is a switching failure because the train is riding on two different tracks. If it was just dragging along on the ties and rail bed that would be more indicative of some other kind of derailment.

Does this mean that the switch points were blocked by the trash/dumped packages? There was a video showing that one of the rails had fallen over on its side. I have never seen that in a derailment. I did see a WWII-era film where the US Army had a tough time derailing trains they were trying to sabotage, so this is all amazing to me.

>Does this mean that the switch points were blocked by the trash/dumped packages?

Potentially, I know they can get clogged up with the right mixture of snow turned into ice. Trash is hard to pack that densely without trying though I suppose a large object could have jammed the switch gear.

>There was a video showing that one of the rails had fallen over on its side.

A train riding two rails will put a lot of sideways force on the rails pulling them together. Rails aren't shaped to resist very much force in that direction.

>where the US Army had a tough time derailing trains they were trying to sabotage, so this is all amazing to me.

They were working under very different constraints than you or I.

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