As I say in English: Donât ride the Alishan train, donât go to Taroko, donât ride a gondola, donât ride on a bus into the mountainsâŚ
An accident waiting to happen. Pretty much everybody concerned knew that this was not just a possibility but the most likely outcome. I hope the real perpetrators will be the ones sent to jail, but of course, thatâs not going to happen. Wonder whoâs been paid off to take the fall?
I was wondering: it is not raining that hard yet, why would trees be falling? Wouldnât they clear a path on both sides of the train? Those Alishan trees are huge. Why donât they have a system to keep an eye out on the line? Didnât they just fixed the tracks?
trees fall
hmm⌠its taiwan so maybe⌠no?
i would think ehm⌠well⌠its taiwan?
taiwan?
am i too negative in my view of taiwan or are you too positive?
i think it should spell the end of the alishan railway. Although theres a bit of a history and its one of the few high mountain railways left in the world, but the human price is too high to pay.
I would say this latest accident should mark the end of the line for this railway.
Well, the big trees really make the train ride.
not in the same way as a steam train, but scenically.
Too positive. It will not be the end, Tommy. Remember the dead in Sun Moon Lake?
Talking about that, 6 dead now.
It seems that the general disregard and passive attitude of this culture in view of safety to potential hazards is coming to a boil this year. Corruption and ignorance donât help much.
Too bad lives have to be lost from such slackness in safety and awareness.
Talking bout the tour boat sinking one year at SM lake? I think something like 50 people drowned ? It was at nite or something. Never did take a tour boat on the lake .
were the dead tourists or locals? Taiwanese or furrin? Mainlanders?
There is no way to prevent a possible accident like this unless you clear the sides of the railway line as far as the height of the tallest tree around. That would look hideous and defeat the whole purpose of taking the train. In addition, on steep sloped sections it would be impossible unless you denuded the entire mountainside.
In 2003 there was an even bigger accident killing 17. These things are awful but trains are derailed all the time. Was there a way to prevent this? I donât know. If it was related to the reconstruction of the line then possibly that might affect the future completion. I think they should just keep the line from the village up to the sunrise platform, and make then much more frequent. There is already a gondola being built up from Fenqihu to the village which will doubtlessly be way cooler than the railway. Rebuild the line as a hiking trail. That would do far more to help the villages along the way.
Good points, MM. It would have been carelesness if the rail had given out because of the weight of the train or something. But a tree falling⌠unless the erosion is man-made. I know it is hard -itâs a long line, 250 kms, but isnât there some way to tell if there are debris on the track?
Hiking trail, definetively a plus.
The line is only 86km and the parts that are open now are much shorter. From the sacred tree to the village. Not sure if it goes up to the sunrise area yet. I think not, Which of course makes this tragedy all the more heart wrenching. Dying on a 10km ride is pretty awful.
Other reports are saying that it was merely a large branch from a cedar that fell and derailed the train. Really hard to deal with that.
This appears to have been posted around five p.m.:
[quote]
Five of the fatalities were Chinese nationals, the Tourism Bureau said, adding that five Chinese tour groups comprising 110 people were on the eight-carriage train when the accident occurred.[/quote]ââDeath toll in Alishan train accident rises to six,â CNA, on Focus Taiwan News Channel sit
http://focustaiwan.tw/ShowNews/WebNews_Detail.aspx?Type=aSOC&ID=201104270021
Below are two Chinese-language news videos, apparently PRC-based (edit, or maybe Hong Kong-based), covering the accident. The first does a good job of showing the extent of the damage (edit: unless itâs a file video from an earlier accident) and shows the obstacle on the tracks that seems to have caused the derailment (just a warning: I saw something that looked like it might be blood in the interior of one of the train cars, there may have been a little blood on some clothing or a shoe or something that was shown lying outside the train, and the first vid also shows one person who is lying on a bed or stretcher and receiving medical attention (but that last scene doesnât look too bad)). The second video is, I guess, additional commentary. When I watched them, after I watched the first one, the second one appeared automatically, so you shouldnât have to click it here. Anyway, here they are:
v.ifeng.com/news/taiwan/201104/a ⌠68d3.shtml
v.ifeng.com/news/taiwan/201104/e ⌠291d.shtml
Itâs strange: The two Taiwan news vids I watched on YouTube earlier appeared to show only file videos of the Alishan train (maybe I missed one/some?). But the above (apparently) Beijing-based website (I just did a whois check on it; anyone ever heard of Phoenix Television? I donât have a TV, as you can probably tell) has a current vid (edit: or I think itâs current) that does a good job of showing you what actually happened. Are they a foreign outfit with a branch here or something?
Edit: Okay, according to Wikipedia, theyâre based in Hong Kong, and they cover Taiwan:
thanks for the news links. it does look like an unfortunate accident. How sad for those killed and hurt. just a terrible tragedy.
but apparently its not happened before, trees causing a derailment on this line.
if it was a constant danger, they may perhaps want a locomotive (only) to preceed the train by 15mins in each direction to make sure the coast was clear.
iv been on this ride only once and i was just a lil boy. It was quite fun. 49 tunnels i think it was.
Before Morakot when the whole line was operational, they used to have a mini-car on the line to check the route. Probably different teams would check sections between stations. I camped at one unmanned station and I saw a team pass by in the late afternoon and another one early in the morning before the first down train.
There was talk on the news that though it was an unfortunate accident -the falling of the tree branch, which was not little at all, from the footage- that the train might have been overloaded -too many people. This is also under investigation. In that case, it would be human error compounding the fact.
No WAY! You are not loving Taiwan enough, young lady!
doesnât it have some distinction of being the steepest gradient rail line in asia or something along those lines(no pun intended)???
How about setting up rail monitoring system (slopeindicator.com/pdf/el%20 ⌠asheet.pdf
slopeindicator.com/stories/h ⌠aiwan.html etc) to allow enough advance warning to stop the train before reaching the obstruction?
This being Taiwan of course I think they will just shut it down the line instead of trying to use technology (of which Tiawn is a big exporter) to provide satifactory (safe and ecological) solution.
Ummm⌠no. Japan, Indonesia and India all have rack railways that I am pretty certain are more steep.
It is a few years since I had business dealings with them, but under the regular government control the line was in somewhat of a technological time warp (although they could not really get their shay steam engines to work properly, and Lin MouSan the engineer with the knowledge to repair them properly there was already very old then but he is seen by many in railway circles in Taiwan as the most knowledgable about stream engines person on the island). The number of staff was huge for a line that was not really operating much and the track appeared to be in a very bad state.
I canât imagine it ever really being fully shut down though. It is too much or a railway icon to Taiwanese people and it is quite well known among Japanese and mainland Chinese people too.