All is not what it seems within China's High Speed Rail development.

Hendrik_2000 said:

You cannot design electronic drive or component to completely mitigate the effect of lightning Coup Plane downed by lightning happened all the time

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People should not quick to condemn as crappy design . It is tremendous force of nature. A direct hit will result in temperature reaching 3000 deg easily will melt any fuse

Lightning can occur with both positive and negative polarity. An average bolt of negative lightning carries an electric current of 30,000 amperes ("amps") — 30 "kiloamps" (kA), and transfers fifteen coulombs of electric charge and 500 megajoules of energy. Large bolts of lightning can carry up to 120 kA and 350 coulombs.[15] An average bolt of positive lightning carries an electric current of about 300 kA — about 10 times that of negative lightning. [16]

The average peak power output of a single lightning stroke is about one trillion watts — one "terawatt" (1012 W), and the stroke lasts for about 30 millionths of a second — 30 "microseconds".[18]

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Ive heard it asked in various forums "why wasnt the electrics grounded to prevent the effects of a lightning strike"

bladerunner said:

One forum speaks of a oncoming train that also got caught up in the lightning strike. It managed to cruise to a stop.

Meanwhile heres a comment I got from the comments section written by luhai167 in the Time Magazine which supports Red Swords version of events

"Here is a video claimed to be filmed at the moment of the crash.

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... You can see the clear arcing as D301 goes off the track.


If it's true, it would confirm the initial Xinhua report that D3115 was in fact moving at the time of the crash. Thus you can construct probable sequence of events;
1. According passenger accounts D3115 was struck by lighting, and stranded on the track for ~10 minutes. This probably cause delay on the entire line, with a already delayed D301 right behind it.
2. According the initial Xinhua report, D3115 was moving at time of the crash. So PERHAPS (it's all speculation here,but all over Chinese forum if you can read Chinese), the control center give a green light to D301 AS SOON AS D3115 starts moving IGNORING the 8km blocking rule from standard procedure, in a effort to clear delays and get the line moving. However, PERHAPS due to damages or malfunction D3115 did not reach to speed and D301 is gaining on it rapidly. With automatic breaking triggering malfunctioning due to lighting (according to recent Ministry of Rail press conference), D301 could only apply manual breaking when the conductor saw D3115 in front of him. But it's too late, and D301 struck D3115 in the back.

If this scenario is true, then Ministry of Rail clearly put speed and revenue before safety. This probably explain why the officials are sacked, however the challenge for them is how to manage this information with putting the Rail Ministry and in turn the Chinese government in a extremely bad light, which while still maintaining a bit of credibility. Cause right now, no one is buying the "blaming the weather" story."

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And that's only about 2 safety measures? One of them rendered ineffective by lightning, the other made useless by bad management and the result is disaster. For such a high tech and high risk system, you would expect much more safety measures than that. Btw, who gave the greenlight to ignore the 8km rule and who's the smart guy to even suggest it?

bladerunner said:

Ive heard it asked in various forums "why wasnt the electrics grounded to prevent the effects of a lightning strike"

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Or are they talking about the installing of lightning rods? Electrical chassis is always grounded to earth which is also the reason why it's prone to attracting lightning.

bladerunner said:

One forum speaks of a oncoming train that also got caught up in the lightning strike. It managed to cruise to a stop.

Meanwhile heres a comment I got from the comments section written by luhai167 in the Time Magazine which supports Red Swords version of events

"Here is a video claimed to be filmed at the moment of the crash.

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

... You can see the clear arcing as D301 goes off the track.


If it's true, it would confirm the initial Xinhua report that D3115 was in fact moving at the time of the crash. Thus you can construct probable sequence of events;
1. According passenger accounts D3115 was struck by lighting, and stranded on the track for ~10 minutes. This probably cause delay on the entire line, with a already delayed D301 right behind it.
2. According the initial Xinhua report, D3115 was moving at time of the crash. So PERHAPS (it's all speculation here,but all over Chinese forum if you can read Chinese), the control center give a green light to D301 AS SOON AS D3115 starts moving IGNORING the 8km blocking rule from standard procedure, in a effort to clear delays and get the line moving. However, PERHAPS due to damages or malfunction D3115 did not reach to speed and D301 is gaining on it rapidly. With automatic breaking triggering malfunctioning due to lighting (according to recent Ministry of Rail press conference), D301 could only apply manual breaking when the conductor saw D3115 in front of him. But it's too late, and D301 struck D3115 in the back.

If this scenario is true, then Ministry of Rail clearly put speed and revenue before safety. This probably explain why the officials are sacked, however the challenge for them is how to manage this information with putting the Rail Ministry and in turn the Chinese government in a extremely bad light, which while still maintaining a bit of credibility. Cause right now, no one is buying the "blaming the weather" story."

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That video seems to have been deleted. Anyone know of any copies of it? perhaps on youtube?

Quickie said:

Or are they talking about the installing of lightning rods? Electrical chassis is always grounded to earth which is also the reason why it's prone to attracting lightning.

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If they had them where would expect to see them positioned so we can see if other trains have them.?

Meanwhile found this comment on another forum:

"Here is some more commentary regarding the failure of safety systems:

???????? ?__

Google translation.

Basically, the train is normally grounded but grounding is not always perfect. However it's deeply puzzling why the signaling system failed at the same time, as that system is on a separate power source positioned lower than the supply lines for the motive force, and is therefore seldom struck by lightning. Even if the power line had been struck, there was a redundant battery power. In this case all of these systems apparently failed, which is strange."

P.S. the above link doesnt seem to work but here is what it took me to when i clicked on it in another forum

Vhttp://news.sina.com.cn/c/2011-07-25/031222869082.shtml

bladerunner said:

If they had them where would expect to see them positioned so we can see if other trains have them.?

Meanwhile found this comment on another forum:

"Here is some more commentary regarding the failure of safety systems:

???????? ?__

Google translation.

Basically, the train is normally grounded but grounding is not always perfect. However it's deeply puzzling why the signaling system failed at the same time, as that system is on a separate power source positioned lower than the supply lines for the motive force, and is therefore seldom struck by lightning. Even if the power line had been struck, there was a redundant battery power. In this case all of these systems apparently failed, which is strange."

P.S. the above link doesnt seem to work but here is what it took me to when i clicked on it in another forum

Vhttp://news.sina.com.cn/c/2011-07-25/031222869082.shtml

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Engineering fault, one in a million accident, or cover up for administrative failure?

Love how the ghouls have come out gnawing on the bones of the dead. Like the critics have no such incidents happening in their countries? This is equivalent to how the New York Times declared China's system a failure because their reporter saw a homeless person on a street in China. It's no different from US Presidential hopeful Michelle Bachman signing her name to a pledge that declared slavery was better because there were no single parent families back then. The liberal New York Times has declared no different.

Well according to this researcher, In the main China's rail protection system is not up to date.



Abstract: Now, the signal mode of railway blocks in our country is not unified.

However an article in Wiki, states that it shares some similarity with the European one



The Chinese Train Control System (CTCS) is a train control system used on railway lines in People's Republic of China. CTCS is similar to the European Train Control System (ETCS).[1]

It has two subsystems: ground subsystem and onboard subsystem. The ground subsystem includes responder, track circuit, wireless communication network (GSM-R), and Radio Block Center (RBC). The onboard subsystem includes onboard devices and onboard wireless module.

CTCS has several levels:

CTCS-0: Track Circuit + Cab Signalling + ATS, [2]
CTCS-1: Track Circuit + Cab Signalling + ATS,[2]
CTCS-2: Track Circuit + Balise + ATP,[2]
CTCS-3: Balise + GSM-R + ATP,[2] CTCS-3 is functionally equivalent to the European ETCS Level-2.[3]
CTCS-4: Balise + GSM-R + ATP, moving block

Levels 2, 3, and 4 are back-compatible with lower levels.


NB Hitachi winning the contract to supply all control systems for dedicated HSR in 2008
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@ AssasinsMace

"Like the critics have no such incidents happening in their countries?

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well they've got themselves to blame as one Mainland critic said on another forum

"The PR skills of the Ministry are non-existent. And so is the professionalism of the press. The former keeps dodging responsibility and coming up with ridiculous comments.(to which Ill add actions, refer sacking) The latter keeps bashing and blaming without solid investigation or research."

T-U-P said:

That video seems to have been deleted. Anyone know of any copies of it? perhaps on youtube?

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Oh.. You should be able to get it from Luhai167 post from the comments in the Time Magazine article.

I tried it just now, but I don't think one can see all that much?

try this its a bit slow to load though

latenlazy said:

Engineering fault, one in a million accident, or cover up for administrative failure?

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Issue is lightning strikes are causing way too many accidents on Chinese conventional and high speed rails (most of which are, fortunately, inconvenient stoppages). Perhaps there is a way to harden the system against lightning.