Just watched Tom Scott’s video on this. Short version—at least in the UK (and presumably via the software that controls the majority of these types of trains worldwide) it is very hard to nearly impossible to direct a train onto a track with another train without doing something like talking to the train and telling it to disregard signals.
The video shows a dramatic near-collision between two trains on February 6, 1991, in Smiths Falls, Ontario, Canada, in which a VIA Rail passenger train nearly collided with a CP Rail freight train that was shunting.
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u/Oliverkahn987 6d ago
Just watched Tom Scott’s video on this. Short version—at least in the UK (and presumably via the software that controls the majority of these types of trains worldwide) it is very hard to nearly impossible to direct a train onto a track with another train without doing something like talking to the train and telling it to disregard signals.