Derailment
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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A derailment is an accident on a railway or tramway in which a rail vehicle, or part or all of a train, leaves the tracks on which it is travelling, with consequent damage and in many cases injury and/or death.
There are several main causes of derailment: broken or misaligned rails, excessive speed, faults in the train and its wheels, and collisions with obstructions on the track. Derailment can also occur as a secondary effect in the aftermath of a collision between two or more trains. Trap points protect main lines from runaway vehicles by deliberately derailing them to bring them to a stop.
Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Derailment" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.
