33 injured when LIRR trains sideswipe each other

[cteno4]

Nytimes:

 

Thirty-three people were injured, four seriously, when two Long Island Rail Road trains, one carrying about 600 people, sideswiped each other on Saturday night, the authorities said.

 

The collision, involving a single-car maintenance train and a 12-car commuter train as they traveled eastbound, sheared chunks off the commuter train cars, several of which derailed just east of the New Hyde Park station in Nassau County. Frightened passengers were trapped in the darkened cars for nearly an hour as rescue crews worked to free them.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/10/nyregion/lirr-train-crash-injuries.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share

 

Jeff

[MechaDen]

With so much land available it's curious how maintenance crews are always encroaching on the main. I don't know of an immediate fix other than reduced speed limits in the stretch of a maintenance area, if that's not already a thing.

 

Glad there weren't fatalities in this one, hoping it stays that way.

 

Inward facing cameras? How about for cars and drivers on the road? Only seems fair to me.

[kvp]

From the photos it looks like some bits of equipment were hanging out of the loading gauge of the maintenance train. If both trains were moving (according some news sites in the same direction), then the accident didn't happen at a construction area. It's just an assumption based on the damaged area on the passenger train, but i would say a piece of equipment was not where it should have been while under way on the maintenance train. Luckly the forces involved were not as severe as in a head on collision and the size of the equipment getting in the loading gauge of the passenger train was relatively small, so the damage caused to the passenger cars look to be minimal.