Poland’s prime minister has said an explosion on a railway line leading to the Ukraine border this weekend was caused by “an unprecedented act of sabotage”, and vowed to catch those responsible “regardless of who their backers are”.
Visiting the scene this morning, Donald Tusk said the damage done to the railway tracks on Sunday was deliberate and likely aimed at blowing up the train. He expressed relief there were no casualties.
Speaking later in Warsaw, after an emergency meeting of security officials, Poland’s special services minister said there was a “very high chance” that the blast was carried out on the orders of “foreign services”.
I’m actually surprised train derailments don’t happen more often. It seems relatively easy to remove a section of rail—without explosives.
Modern rail is welded at each seam, it also gets work hardened, so unless you find a recently installed section, cutting it is going to be quite difficult.
Plus they monitor continuity on the rail and the trains would be alerted if there is a break.
Other obstacles on the rail would probably work, but in not sure what kinds of countermeasures the trains might have for those either.
Come to the US, it happens all the time here. Mostly due to lack of maintenance. The companies that own the rails don’t pay for it since it’s not profitable, and the government lets them.
actually its intentional neglect. they cant bother to hire more railworkers so they squeeze out the ones that are employed, which led to the strikes. somewhat similarly to the ATC situation.
That is so US :)
Rail integrity is monitored in several ways to aid in prevention of non-intentional derailments so it’s a little more than trivial to do, but yeah they are still extremely vulnerable. The biggest reason not to do it is that, at least historically, the response to even minor fuckery of rail infrastructure has been vehemently disproportionate.