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Last night in Saltsjöbanan, Sweden, a young woman decided to try her hand at driving a train. It didn’t end well: she careered off the end of line and straight into this house.
Swedish newspaper GP reports that the woman, a twenty-something cleaner for the train operator Arriva, was injured in the accident but — amazingly — nobody else was harmed. The wannabe train driver has since been arrested on suspicion of endangering the public.
Bertil Grandinson, who lives on the third floor of the house in the picture, explained: “We woke up at half past two by a terrible bang, it was as if an aeroplane crashed. I looked out the window and noted then to my great surprise that the train had run into the house. It is terrible and very shocking.” Terrible and shocking indeed.
It’s currently unclear how the woman managed to start the locomotive: even with a key, being able to drive the train apparently requires training. [GP (Swedish) via AP]
Image by AP
Looks like a nice house, too.
*Looked
Sounds like she must have been a bit off the rails…
I don’t get it.
You don’t understand his train of thought?
Is rails a saying?
Oh I get that lol… gotta stop drinking lol.
Surely now they can control the trains from some main HQ? They obviously knew it had been stolen because the driver would have at least said something. They would have seen it running red lights or generally not running normally. So couldn’t they operate the emergency brakes from their end and direct other train accordingly?
Apparently not.
The train doesn’t appear to be modern, although automation is only just beginning to make its way into locomotive systems.
May be HQ is asleep as well. Trains stop operating after a certain hour.
This is Sweden we’re talking about, and it’s an old train. Here in the UK with have AWS (Automatic warning system) and TPWS (Train protection and warning system) that will save lives if the driver is incapacited or the train goes run-aways. These don’t have it, they go until they run out of fuel, or find a nice house to crash into.
And also, the train has to sign into HQ for HQ to follow it, and that’s pretty much all they can do. They can watch it crash into the house, and talk to the driver on the intercom but they can’t control it remotely.
Grand Theft Loco.
“It’s currently unclear how the woman managed to start the locomotive: even with a key, being able to drive the train apparently requires training.”
Are you kidding me? Everything is labelled… The reverser is labelled to go forwards of backwards and the throttle… well, is the throttle. Trains are so easy to drive… anyone with a standard intellegence level can work it out within minutes. The training is mostly not how to drive the train, but what to do incase things go wrong, and how to follow protocol used on the rail network throughout the country.