You may have heard that a French test train crashed Saturday causing fatalities. If your sense is it is related to events in Paris, you are likely correct, but probably for a different reason than you think.
This is brand new track for high speed rail only. It will connect Strasbourg heading to the west. If you remember history, Alsace Lorraine was very important to both the first and second world wars as France and Germany both asserted it was part of their country. France tried to expel the ethnic Germans from the area and take control of what was intended to be neutral turf. Now the map
The red pin is the location of the crash. Germany is to the East (right) and North'(up) – the border with Switzerland is also in the picture. You’ll notice road closures on the map. With no actual physical border any more, how does one “close” a border?
Here is the actual crash location
For immigrants who evade the “closed” non-border, the canal is the real border. The bridges are an obvious path for migrants to head West into France. My working theory is someone “closed” the bridges without contacting the railroad – after all, these tracks are not open yet. Putting a train into emergency stop always risks causing a derailment.
We’ll always have Paris, right?
It turns out there were a lot of people on this train, not just technicians. Perhaps someone wanted to disable the safety and “see how fast this baby will go”
PTC is good, but it isn’t idiot proof.
Monsieur Le President Hollande promised to have a “pitiless” response against these animals. Unfortunately the Socialist definition of “pitiless” is to go to the U.N. and pass some resolutions against ISIL. ISIL will naturally laugh at these resolutions and in a week or so everything will be forgotten until…the next time. The French used to be a strong fighting force to be reckoned with. Now they have become weak and France is sinking into another Banana Republic. The men have become soft with little stomach for a good fight and lots of “appeasing” non-confrontational solutions. Vive (le doux) France!
One problem is that when people are wearing suicide vests, a “pitiless” response has negligible deterrent effect on others willing to go down the same path.
Looking at the Casablanca movie, it’s an interesting contrast. Europeans were fleeing from the Germans by becominging illegal migrants going to Algeria without travel documents – to try to get to Portugal and on to America. Admittedly, the movie was fiction, but generally based on the situation at the time
A major earthquake right about now would really unify Europe