hmmm

Hey, this past week our funny photo went viral throughout the whole world. Thousands of shares and likes in many different countries! Once and for all: the picture was taken in Belgium, in a small village called Bornem.

After a minor intervention, we had some time left near the railway to make this picture. Since there were no trains running at all for a week due to maintenance works, we can state that our joke was a real success! Thanks to our entire team, 2nd sqdn Firefighters Bornem!

Well played, Belgian firefighters.

Stuff like this is what the internet is made for.

My question is, would it work?

Then, would it work safely?

My thought would be that the engine would be heavy enough to either go through the risers anyway, or at least bite in enough that the rest of the cars would finish the job. But maybe I'm wrong; some materials could survive that kind of weight being focused on that small an area.

But, if it did work, would the train go off the tracks? Or, would each set of wheels stay in line since al the others on the train length would still be aligned by the rails? I can see it working, though I'm dubious because there's a lot of room for error in each side hitting at different times could shift things enough to be a problem, maybe start the train rocking, even if it didn't derail.

Or, would that lift be enough for the train to rise enough to make it catastrophic immediately? If the front wheels pop up enough to leave the rails, it could be horrible when they come back down; and if they don't land back on the rails, crash ensues.

Firefighters aren't idiots when it comes to their gear. Some of them are dumb as rocks about anything other than fire fighting, but you don't stay on the job long if you can't do the job and keep each other as safe as possible. So, why would they deploy this in that way if it wouldn't work safely? Having to run hose over train tracks would likely be common enough to need a solution, so maybe this is it?

I dunno, I'm going to go see if I can find answers. I have family that are, or were, firefighters and I've never seen these things before, or heard about them. So I'm extra curious.

Edit: First link I found lol

Edit 2:

So, my cousin actually texted me back promptly. He said that if they had to run hose across tracks, they'd contact the companies directly and have rail traffic stopped while they were working. If that's not possible, they'd likely just run them across and hope no trains made it there before they were done.

However! What would happen if it was done is not much.

Either the ramps would get crushed/cut under the train, or would get bumped out of the way as the wheels hit it. Most likely the first one, depending on materials used. It's way harder to derail a train than that.

Apparently, most firefighters know about this picture, EMTs too. I didn't even have to send him a copy of the image, he knew right away what it was lol.

@the_picard_maneuver@lemmy.world

You already found the answer but I was going to comment that the pic was a joke.. a train wouldn't even notice those things on the track.
They do have derailers that are designed to specifically pop a train off the tracks though. They are made of steel and are usually put on the end of secondary lines just before they meet a normal line. In the event that if a train car rolls away it ensures that it can't roll into an active line and cause an accident but will instead get derailed and popped off the tracks.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derail
If you find out, please report back!
I assumed that this was the doing of a rookie or someone having a laugh.
- I just texted my cousin that works as a firefighter to ask about details, but the picture itself was staged by firefighters, and isn't what they would use to run hose across tracks.
  I edited in a link about the staging, and I'll ping you if/when my cousin responds

Accelerationist here, full speed ahead and then the train just jumps over everybody. It's the only way forward.

maybe they have Rubber-tyred trams there 🤷

A few things. Those are train tracks. Trolleys are something else that you have to go to San Francisco for. Second, "Tyre" is a city in Lebanon. "Tire" is a rubber wheel component. "Wheel" is the metal part which, in this case, goes on the tracks.
And finally no, "tyre" is not correct because the US has the largest English speaking population of any country - more than the next 3 combined, none of which is England. England is 5th; they don't get to be in charge of their own language anymore.
- Except British English is spoken by, oh, I dunno, India, which easily outpaces the US by a factor of like 4.
  And let's get down to it - both spellings are correct.
  And if you must claim one to be "correct", then tyre wins by a huge margin, as it's the original form and I would assume a result of the French/Middle English amalgamation starting on 1066, so predating "tire" By some 700+ years.
  So by age and number of speakers, "tyre* would handily be "more correct".
  All this before even discussing the "synthetic" form created by Daniel Webster, whilst "tyre" would've developed organically. Let's not be prescriptivist.
  In the end though, the greater import is there is no "correct" form - they're both correct, in context. If you can't handle that, maybe you should go back to school and take a linguistics class, along with some history, social skills, and respect for the cultures of others. That's usually called Kindergarten (or do you misspell this too?).
  Respectfully
  A Fellow American who uses some British spellings because they make more fucking sense
- Just open the article you schmuck
- Damn, that's a brave rant right there.
- !shitamericanssay@lemmy.world
- Besides being wrong about tire/tyre, I also really like how you are completely wrong about "Trolleys" being something you have too go to San Francisco for... And that the OP didn't even talk about "Trolleys" , but "Trams"...
  First of all... There's plenty of different types of Trolleys around the world, like:
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shopping_trolley https://www.nationalclubgolfer.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Stewart-Golf-R1-S-Push-Trolley-3-2.png
  But now that we are specifically talking about Trams, they also exist in:
  Melbourne (159 miles)
  Kyiv (144 miles)
  Saint Peter's burg (127.7 miles)
  Cologne (121 miles)
  Berlin (119 miles)
  Moscow (114 miles)
  Milan (113 miles)
  Budapest (107 miles)
  Silesian Interurbans (106 miles)
  Vienna (110 miles)
  Just to name a few of the 403 cities around the world that operates a tram network. And comically enough, the San Francisco doesn't even get near any of the above with it's measly 5.16 miles of track. Even Los Angeles (82.7 miles) and Dallas (96 miles) has San Francisco beat.
- 🤓