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Comment by elnatro | Hacker News Reader

Unless there is evidence that the accident was caused by the Iryo train, I wouldn’t be so fast to blame the private companies on a decaying infrastructure.

There are plenty of cases of lack of maintenance in the railway network.

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> Unless there is evidence that the accident was caused by the Iryo train

I'd say the same about the railway network. We don't know what happened yet.

The railway network has been mismanaged and plagued with incidents for years. See it for yourself: ADIF was aware that there were issues in Adamuz for months[1].

[1]: https://www.elespanol.com/reportajes/20260119/adif-notifico-...

That doesn't mean we know for sure it was that, don't you think? Your comments seem very politically motivated, and you're asking others to not blame it on the train as the reasons for the accident are still unknown and at the same time you're pushing the maintenance issues narrative.

I am nos asking anything. You can think what you want. What the data that we have right now tells us is: new train built in 2022, checked 4 days ago[1], and issues on that part of the railway track for months[2].

[1]: https://elpais.com/espana/2026-01-19/el-fabricante-hitachi-r...

[2]: https://www.elespanol.com/reportajes/20260119/adif-notifico-...

Were you so quick to blame the government in the Alvia accident in Santiago? Just wait for the investigation.

The machinists were warning about issues in the curve of Angrois for a long time.

Why are you so quick on disregarding their opinion?

You mean the People's Party (PP) which was in charge when the Angrois derailment happened didn't do anything to address the warnings from the machinists? Because they had been in government for more than a year and a half already.

You mean the socialist party whose minister José Blanco opened the track?

No, I mean the party who was in charge when all that happened (PP). They had plenty of time to fix that if, as you claim, the machinists were warning about issues in the railroad.

But like the OP says this particular infrastructure area was brand new.

But brand new doesn't mean the repairs / mainenance were done correctly. It could both be brand "new" and defective.

We've seen lots of serious fuck ups in Europe lately: including for a start several cases of maintenance improperly done on big passenger planes that nearly led to hundreds of passengers deaths (several planes have been diverted in the last months and the cause was improper maintenance).

I'm not saying improper repairs/maintenance on the rails are the cause: I'm saying it's a fact we've seen improper repairs/maintenance on passenger planes in the recent months.

I think much manufacturing adheres to the die-young, die-old principle (Often mentioned in the Backblaze reports), manufacturing defects shows up early on, time of stillness and then as it ages it starts to fail.

The tracks were laid in May 2025, that means no winters had passed before now and any defects in the tracks due to temperature differences hadn't had a chance to appear before now.

Railways are neither consumer electronics, nor software. There is a final inspection after construction work, in which the network operator releases the constructor from responsibilities, which should catch any issues. When the network operator later claims, that there was a manufacturing defect, the first question is why didn't it has known earlier, because that is their job.

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