Casa Santo Estevo

The quotes 'if true' from the Driver says he was going too fast, he messed it up and he wish he was dead. However one should ask in what context was this said.
Yes he was going too fast, but why? Was he distracted? It seems so. But why? Should he have answered the phone? Did he know it was not an emergency? Should the conductor have phone the driver? Should there not have been a safer means of communication between the two? Was it because the infrastructure was inadequate?
He wishes he was dead, I would too after seeing the wreckage.

The news about the driver are superstition (sorry about the typo before). The facts are the works and changes to the operation system(s) presently begin undertaken by ADIF.
The political need behind the original plans to have this up and running before a certain date will have influenced many factors in this project. Like the actual train; it was a “bastard” train made especially to run on this line.

agoreira

Not being picky, you got another typo, it should be "supposition". Wish my Spanish was as good as your English!
I think it's safe to say, a lot of things were wrong, including the cover up going on, but as yet, we don't actually know. The subsequent enquiry, the contents of the black box, will perhaps give us a definitive report of what actually happened.

Dick Dasterdly

Clarification ?

Whose words are those and what are they all about ?

agoreira

Think he might mean "hybrid". It can run on diesel and electric.

Fred James

And it is also a dual gauge as it can run on the Spanish wide track and the newer narrower International track that the AVE runs on.

It can change gauge while moving - clever stuff!

Fredbargate

Yes it's rather interesting it goes through the guage changing machinery whilst passengers are still onboard.

However the engines are not dual guage only the carriages.

Fred James

I was under the impression that the Talgo 250 was the only tractor unit that could do this. If not the train would have to stop at some stage to change tractors.

http://www.talgo.com/index.php/en/cambio_a.php

There is a video of it doing it here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qaV1tI3Auo

Dick Dasterdly

How come Spain got into such a mess with these two track gauges ?

As I understand it most countries quickly adopted the standard gauge for their main systems at least a century and a half ago.

Fred James

Some theories suggest it was deliberately made different in the 19th century to stop the French invading by train!

A better theory is that the engineers responsible just got is wrong as they thought that as the country was so mountainous a larger gauge would allow wider, more powerful locomotives but that turned out not to be the case.

Article on WiKi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iberian_gauge

Fredbargate

Apologies Fred I was not aware that the Talgo could do that.

My experience was on the Altaria from Algeciras to Madrid, being regauged at Bobadilla where the photos were taken

Fred James

They were doing it manually at Irun for many years, mainly to accommodate the night sleeper from Paris to Madrid.

This new system does look pretty clever.

Spain is not exactly renowned as an engineering world leader but they sure know how to build trains!

Casa Santo Estevo

agoreira, has it.
The AVE is described in WIKI
The train that crashed was at first proclaimed to be an AVE, by government officials, but it was in fact a class S730. It is similar to the Talgo 250, the S730 train runs with a diesel at one end and electric power at from the other. In other words a bastard. neither one thing or another. A quick fix solution.
Perhaps the first paragraph of this page describes the train set the best.

Dick Dasterdly

<snip quoted post out>

ok apologies, it wasn't meant to offend so I have deleted anyway.

Casa Santo Estevo

DD. I too have asked for my posting, which quoted you, to be removed or edited so that does not show. I am now in the hands of the Moderators as i cannot edit or remove the posting myself for some reason.
Thank you for the removal of the posting. I appreciate it.

Dick Dasterdly

Fine, obviously I should have worded it better, but my point is possibly much the same as yours.

Surely with a Diesel loco at one end and Electric at the other, it is going to involve a much more complex control system than with standard matched power units.

Wether or not this makes the drivers job more difficult, either with controlling the train itself or monitoring two entirely different power units, I haven't a clue, but it did cross my mind.