Am I right in supposing that the move to continuous welded track has contributed to the accident?

NB I don’t recall seeing any warnings against discussion but would understand if the question is deemed out of order.

There was a rail engineer on the radio the other day who explained that kind of distortion usually starts with the track bed moving or sinking, sometimes due to the soil underneath drying out.

Doesn’t need AI as generally understood, just some image processing and machine learning.

On 21 August 2026 at 17:41 ega Said:

In my commuting days I often saw parked at Bromley South station an elaborate locomotive with projecting arms designed to maintain the track. I think its main function was to manipulate the ballast so that it kept the sleepers, etc in correct alignment, a job presumably otherwise done manually.

I saw one of these in action on a Saturday night on the Hastings line in Tunbridge Wells.

It would stop and the arms were jammed down between the sleepers deep into the ballast. They then vibrated vigorously to fluff up the ballast – it made a lot of noise and the ground shook. The arms were then retracted and it moved forward to the next set of sleepers.

You could see through a window into the control room with two or three operators and loads of computer monitors and coloured lights.

It was quite a sight – and sound.

There has been talk of painting the rails white

MichaelG.

AI will will make things safer in the future? I think that could or might be highly debatable depending on where and how its being used. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjTaPtYhAo8