That french engineer, if he really is an engineer, is a complete fool and it is no credit to the ABC to even air such stupid and incorrect views.
Most of what he said is factually incorrect. He criticized the track but the track in that location is one of the best in Australia. Heavy continuous rail on concrete sleepers all perfectly aligned. Then he says the guage is too narrow and france has six foot guage. In fact france has standard 4feet 8inches guage. The Japanese bullet trains which are much faster than the tilt train run on 3 feet 6 inches queensland guage track. The man is a complete fool.
The route from Brisbane to Rockhampton has automatic train control and the tilt train has onboard computers that would know where the train was and are supposed to control it. The computers can over-ride the driver controls and the fact the train entered a 60km/hr curve at 112 km/hr indicates a major system failure. The driver may or may not be to blame.
Also, given the excellent track and new condition of the train it does not look like mechanical failure to me. I suspect a small object on the outer rail which caused the train to bounce high enough that combined with the excessive speed the wheel flange climbed the rail.
It is worth also pointing out that a high speed train crash in france last year claimed many lives and in queensland everyone survived...not bad I would think and certainly beats the french.
