Rail tragedy in Spain

A talgo passenger train has collided head on with an intermodal freight in Spain. According to BBC News, the death toll has now risen to 19, and is expected to rise as some of the wrecked and burned carraiges haven't yet been searched.

A head on collision on a single line track is just about the worst possible accident, with almost all the kinetic energy from the two trains going into disintegrating the trains themselves. With diesel haulage there's a great risk of fire as fuel tanks rupture. Sadly this is what happened in the Spanish crash.

We're lucky in Britain that such accidents are very rare, thanks to the fact that almost all main lines are double track. I can only remember one single line collision in the past thirty years, at Crowden in Sussex. Other head ons, such as the Ladbrooke Grove disaster have been conflicting movements across junctions.