I wonder how common it is for train tracks to fracture? And what systems are in place to actually detect this. There was recently a post on a German subreddit where the OP found a fracture in the German rail[0], albeit much smaller.

0. https://old.reddit.com/r/drehscheibe/comments/1qe9ko2/ich_gl...

▲

iSnow 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

In November, a bigger missing part of a train track was due to sabotage: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp85g86x0zgo

	▲	red75prime 4 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		It happened near Polish-Ukrainian border and officials were vocal about sabotage.
	▲	dmix 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		That’s pretty far from Spain

▲

dv_dt 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Fractures could happen with ground shifting - perhaps recent flooding could have contributed

▲

mschuster91 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> I wonder how common it is for train tracks to fracture?

That entirely depends on which class of tracks we're talking about. And on top of that, remember that Europe is at war with Russia, railway sabotage has been attributed to Russia already in Poland [1] - and if you ask me, I don't believe for a single goddamn second that "cable thieves" were the cause behind the infamous 2022 attack on Germany's railways [2] either.

> And what systems are in place to actually detect this.

In Germany, dedicated railway cars called "RAILab" [3] that can measure track performance at up to 200 km/h perform the bulk of the work. In addition, each piece of infrastructure has something called an "Anlagenverantwortlicher", a person responsible for it - and that person has to walk each piece of infrastructure every two years at the very least, sections that have shown to be problematic get walked sometimes weekly.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gknv8nxlzo

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_2022_German_railway_at...

[3] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAILab

▲

bahmboo 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Nice find. The gap in the Spanish track is massive. I don’t know enough to speculate on technical reasons but it seems quite odd.

	▲	laurencerowe 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Rails expand and contract according to the temperature (11mm per degree C per km). They are continuously welded together and installed under tension and heated to a neutral / median temperature for the location. It was around 0C that night in an area that gets up to 47C (and rails might get hotter under the sun) so there was at least 300mm of contraction per kilometre of rail.

▲

blibble 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> I wonder how common it is for train tracks to fracture?

very

> And what systems are in place to actually detect this.

track circuit detection would pick up most cases I would have thought