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If it’s true that rail companies are running fewer, but longer, trains then wouldn’t absolute derailments decrease even if per ride derailments have increased?

And longer trains derailing means that the impact will be more spectacular, which would explain why we are seeing more news coverage of these fewer absolute derailments.

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Maybe not? If what we care about isn't derailed trains but the actually derailed cars, like say lost packets on a network. Here's a graph of total derailed cars. He has a lot of graphs I haven't reviewed all of them. But might be some other interesting ones in there.

https://twitter.com/mike10010100/status/1628072318491668500?...

Unlike a lost network packet a single derailed car can slow down the whole train and any trains behind it on either side. By using longer trains they are putting more eggs in one basket.

On top of that longer periods of stress on a particular part of rail due to the longer trains is probably uncovering new failures in problem spots especially if heating is involved in the problem. Longer train = more time for a piece of rail to heat up.

I think the metric of concern would be total consecutive time the rail is loaded or something like that.

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