I’ve googled it but just can’t seem to grasp it. How do they stay on as well as they do at such high speeds, with so few incidents of crashing or derailing? Especially when anything could be lying across the track waiting to get lodged in the wheels.
I hear so often that trains are so safe, but I don’t think I can get over my anxiety with them until I understand *why* they’re safe.
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the wheel has a flange, meaning the inner part is considerably larger than the outside, this basically means it’s almost impossible for the wheel to go over the track as the flange prevents it from going over the rails unless something goes really wrong
the wheels aren’t meant to scrape the flange against the tracks, so ideally the wheels are made to self center and the flange is extra safety, but occasionally they do scrape, this is the noise you sometimes can hear going around tight corners
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