Sacramento, CA: Freight train derailment AND Staggering Statistics re Derailments throughout North America

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I just caught the tag end of this in a radio news report, Friday, March 31: a freight train derailed in the freight yards in Sacramento. Cause unknown. This was not picked up here in this forum. Does anybody know the details?

Because derailments have to do mostly with switches, and, because switches, in turn, have mostly to do with computers, I watch North American (U.S. & Canada) derailment reports closely. And, measure them against the 33-year average of 13 per year. I watch these as a leading indicator of what's probably going on with embedded chips everywhere. Most everwhere embedded chip incidents are easily cover-upable. But, when a train runs off its tracks, people notice.

So far this year derailments have been as follows:

January: 7

February: 6

March: 10

As you can see, we are running well ahead of the 33-year average of 1 derailment every 29 days. The rate is now 1 derailment every 4 days. Quite a difference. And, the trend line is up.

-- JackW (jpayne@webtv.net), April 04, 2000

Answers

Response to Freight train derailment in Sacramento, Ca.

Jack clarified the frequency of derailments in an email to me, which he as agreed to be posted here:

23 derailments in the first three months on the year---through March 3l. That comes to 1 derailment every 3.95 days. STAGGERING.

Early in the year I was scratching for some simple method to keep up with the progression of y2k, which I thought, through corrupted data, would be a slow, evolutionary process in developing. In early January it hit me when I read of trains in Australia flying off the tracks left and right--a big government scandal about 7 derailments in a 4-day period. I then resolved to keep track of similar incidences in North America. All this, on the simple theory that, because derailments have to do primarily with signals and switches--AND ARE HIGHLY VISIBLE TO THE PUBLIC--that they would accurately portray the degeneration of most other systems, in most other industries.

Now, there are 2 kinds of derailments.

1. Accidents that cause derailments.

2. Derailments that cause accidents.

I have eliminated #1. Only #2 is included in my counts. (No trains colliding head-on, no trains hitting trucks at crossings, etc.) #2, I feel, has more, directly, to do with technical failures.

Like everything else, there is no smooth-plane tracing of this trend-line. Examples: From February 20 to March 9 there was not one single derailment. Then, from March 10 to March 31 there were 10. They come in clusters.

But. . .the OVERALL trend-line is up, up, up. A BAD sign (to me, at least) indeed.

Based upon the above (plus some other progression trends I trace) I anticipate a belated y2k punch to deck this country along about July-August--critical fuel shortages combined with power outages that will send us into an economic spin, along with a stock market and economic collapse.

I have six battery-operated fans, and, I believe I am one of the few left on the planet earth who is still adding to his preps."

-- Jan Nickerson (JaNickrson@aol.com), April 07, 2000.


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