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" 1. Paris, 1903  The Crash /// By the official count, 84 people died in the Couronnes Disaster, a tragic rail fire in turn-of-the-century Paris. After the train caught fire, many passengers tried to flee, but found no escape from the tunnel. Here&amp;#039;s the original New York Times story on the disaster, which reported that 100 were dead, &amp;quot;Suffocated in Tunnel by Smoke From Burning Train.&amp;quot; The Lesson /// Transit historian Brian Cudahy, who wrote about the disaster in A Century of Subways tells PM that that the French disaster led companies to adopt some of the fire safety procedures we&amp;#039;re familiar with today. Most notably, it established the idea that fire exits should be available and marked.  2. Brooklyn, 1918  The Crash /// Multiple factors conspired to make Nov. 1, 1918, a dangerous day to ride a train in New York City. A union of locomotive engineers had just gone on strike, pressing an inexperienced motorman into service. And the tunnel on Malbone St. in Brooklyn had just opened. That day, operator Edward Luciano took a tight corner at more than 30 miles per hour, wrecking the train. Cudahy wrote an entire book about the disaster. In his research he confirmed 93 fatalites, though other sources claim as many as 103. The Lesson /// Cudahy says that by 1918 New York&amp;#039;s subways were already using &amp;quot;dead man&amp;#039;s controls,&amp;quot; which stop the train if the driver is incapacitated. And some had controls that automatically slowed a train that was going too fast, especially downhill. But unfortunately, &amp;quot;the line over which the fatal train was operating did not have such hardware,&amp;quot; Cudahy says. 3. Chicago, 1977  The Crash /// The Windy City&amp;#039;s most catastrophic rail accident occurred in 1977, when three cars fell off the elevated tracks after two trains collided at the Ravenswood stop downtown. Chicago had just installed a system that made a train brake automatically if it sensed another one ahead, much like the train in the D.C. accident on Monday should have done. However, Chicago operators back then could override the stop signal if the train was traveling at less than 15 miles per hour. And because &amp;quot;ghost signals&amp;quot; happened occasionally, many drivers did roll past red lights. &amp;quot;The system interpreted the station stop as the required stop, and so the motorman should have been operating under `sight rules,&amp;#039;&amp;quot; Cudahy says. &amp;quot;But he didn&amp;#039;t. And he didn&amp;#039;t even keep his eyes on the track ahead.&amp;quot;  The Lesson /// In the aftermath of this wreck, the Chicago Transit Authority changed the rules and forbade operators from proceeding on their own--from then on they had to call Central Control before continuing through a stop sign.  4. England, 1988  Firefighters and policemen work to free the dead and rescue the injured from the derailed carriages after a rail crash near Clapham Junction in London. (Photograph by Tom Stoddart/Getty Images) The Crash /// Great Britain has seen plenty of rail accidents over the years. The deadliest in recent times occurred near Clapham Junction in southern London. Thirty-five people died in a rush-hour collision of two trains carrying an estimated 1300 people between them. The Lesson /// An inquiry into the accident recommended that the entire British rail system install automatic train protection. But the government balked at enormous bill--nearly \u00A3750 million--and instead privatized the rail system. 5. Australia, 1999  The Crash /// Another disaster on a curve occurred in 1999, this time near Glenbrook, Australia. After stopping at a signal, an intercity passenger train came around the bend and ran into the back of an Indian Pacific long-distance passenger train, killing seven and injuring 51. The special commission of inquiry report cited several problems that led to the crash. First, it noted, &amp;quot;there has been a general failure in New South Wales organisations to embrace advances that have been made in the management of rail safety internationally and in other industries.&amp;quot; However, in this case the more important problem was the failure of communication. Before the accident, while sitting at the stop signal, the driver of the intercity train reportedly asked the signaler, &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m going past it am I, mate?&amp;quot; The signaler replied, &amp;quot;You certainly are,&amp;quot; and the driver took off, only to hit the Indian Pacific train parked at another red light further up the road. While the two trains shared the same track, they used totally different communications systems and couldn&amp;#039;t talk to each other. So the intercity train driver had no idea the other train was up ahead until he pulled around the corner and saw it, but by then it was too late. And when the Indian Pacific driver tried to call the signaler before the accident, he didn&amp;#039;t get through. The Lesson /// In 2004, the Australasian Railway Association put together a plan to unify communications for all its rail lines.   RELATED STORIES * PLUS: How to Spend $14 Billion to Improve U.S. Rail  * ANALYSIS: Could Maglev Fix America&amp;#039;s Trains?   * EARLIER: The Top 5 Fastest Trains  * REBUILDING AMERICA: U.S. Infrastructure News   6. Baltimore, 2001  (Photograph by Emmett Tullos) The Crash /// People aren&amp;#039;t the only cargo endangered by rail accidents. In 2001 a cargo train carrying hazardous materials caught fire in the Howard Street tunnel in Baltimore, burning for three days with temperatures as high as 1800 F.  The Lesson /// The Baltimore train wasn&amp;#039;t carrying spent nuclear waste, but other trains that pass through that tunnel do carry such cargo. The state of Nevada and the National Science Foundation both issued reports in 2003 stating that a nuclear fuel disaster in the area could contaminate 32 square miles, and that the Baltimore fire in 2001 appeared to exceed the temperatures that casks carrying spent nuclear fuel could withstand. However, a report by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission disagreed, finding that no nuclear fuel would have been released in such a fire. 7. South Carolina, 2005  Two Norfolk Southern trains collided head on releasing chlorine into the air and other chemicals on the ground near downtown Graniteville, SC on January 6, 2005. (Photograph by Andrew Davis Tucker) The Crash /// America&amp;#039;s next toxic train disaster spilled liquefied chlorine in Graniteville, South Carolina. A cargo train collided with a parked locomotive because a switch was in the wrong position. The Lesson /// As a result of that wreck and others like it, the Next Generation Rail Tank Car Project is rolling out new designs for cargo cars that could minimize the damage from these disasters by using double walls, crumple zones and stronger steel. 8. Japan, 2005  Rescue personnel work at the train crash site in Amagasaki, Japan. (Photograph by AFP/Jiji Press/Getty Images) The Crash /// More than 100 people died in 2005 when a train jumped a curve in Amagasaki, Japan. The rail company, JR West, admitted the accident could have been avoided if the train had been equipped with an automatic stopping system to prevent the operator from taking the curve too fast.  The Lesson /// The accident also provided a cultural lesson. While the driver took the blame for taking a corner 46 kilometers per hour faster than he should have, the rail company took flack for putting too much pressure on its drivers. Before the accident, conductors who made mistakes were forced to go through &amp;quot;re-education programs,&amp;quot; so they were under intense pressure to keep on schedule.  9. Los Angeles, 2008  Firefighters search for survivors in the wreckage of a Metrolink commuter train that collided head-on with a freight train on the previous afternoon, on September 13, 2008 in the Los Angeles area community of Chatsworth, California.(Photograph by David McNew/Getty Images) The Crash /// It is calamitous enough when one train rear-ends another, as happened yesterday in Washington. But it&amp;#039;s often deadlier when two trains hit head-on. That happened last year in Chatsworth, Calif., when a Metrolink commuter train collided into a Union Pacific freight train and 25 people died. The investigation concluded that the Metrolink operator missed a signal that he wasn&amp;#039;t clear to enter a single track area because the freight train had right-of-way. The Lesson /// Kathryn O&amp;#039;Leary Higgins, chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board panel that probed the incident, said she found four major safety violations leading to the crash (for one, a conductor was texting just beforehand). Metrolink will soon install cameras on its trains to monitor operators and engineers. 10. Staten Island, 2008  The Crash /// Last December, an MTA train derailed on Staten Island after the operator, who had only a little more than eight hours off to celebrate Christmas between shifts, missed a safety stop and crashed into a steel bumper. In the final seconds, she reached for the emergency brake but pulled the air horn instead. The train was out of service, so no passengers were on board. But the train operator lost her job. The Lesson /// Make sure that train operators are getting enough sleep.  RELATED STORIES * PLUS: How to Spend $14 Billion to Improve U.S. Rail  * ANALYSIS: Could Maglev Fix America&amp;#039;s Trains?   * EARLIER: The Top 5 Fastest Trains  * REBUILDING AMERICA: U.S. Infrastructure News   "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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