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Comment by usrusr | Hacker News Reader

True, but we are talking about American trains.

This example is not in Montana, but apparently minor derailings are a thing. And the cars that are not derailed don't really look much better.

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I live in Montana, near a railroad (not the line with the Grizzlies). There are derailments every couple of years on the ~50 miles of track I have visibility for. Two of those were corn/grain that ended up in big piles on the track.

Those tracks are an insult to any rail engineer. Unbelievable.

Thinking you were overreacting, I gave the video a look.

I'm not sure if that's a example from reality, it cannot be real that people are allowed and do drive trains over those "rails"?

I have a hard time imagining what could cause them to get deformed like that in the first place.

If you look at the shape of those tracks it's more surprising that this only turned into a "minor" derailing, although of course the initial video is sped up quite a bit.

John Oliver had a segment on train derailments a while back (can't find the YT video) and it seems that a lot of US rail infrastructure including the trains are just in very bad shape and there don't seem to be any federal regulations forcing them to invest whereas the environmental damage often ends up being swept under the rug.

Not that German rail is anything to brag about but I can't imagine we'd be allowed to let a train go anywhere near a track that looked like that.

I'm curious why you brought that video up. Because that doesn't look like a representative example if you ask me.

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