The other thing I wonder about from a materials standpoint, this summer's weather in the area was weird, if you look at the temperatures in the area of Joplin this summer it got very hot, like into the upper 90's and 100, but they also had cool stretches way cooler than that (and obviously it gets cold at night there, can be 30 degrees or more colder at night). Could this pattern have weakened the rail, caused it to crack and it finally gave way as the train was passing over it? Yeah, it is speculation, but looking at the swings in temperature during the summer I wonder about that.
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