How Two Trains Collided in Spain
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Just before 9 a.m., a train belonging to the private company Iryo was stopped on the tracks when a train operated by Spain’s national rail company, Renfe, barreled into it, officials said.
The crash followed the failure of an automated system that normally controls train signals. Operators in a control center in Madrid took over, but they made an “inexplicable” decision to tell the train to continue its journey even as the second train was stopped on the same tracks, Spain’s transportation minister, Óscar Puente, said on Wednesday.
Here is how the crash happened:
According to Mr. Puente, when the automatic system is out, train drivers are required to travel at a speed that allows them to stop should they encounter an obstacle on the track. That is known as “running on sight” — but it appears that it did not happen Wednesday.
When the crash occurred, the train was negotiating a curved, hilly section of track that may have limited the train driver’s ability to see the second train that was stopped ahead.
“Had the train been moving at a much slower speed, it is possible that the Renfe train could have spotted the other train that was stopped,” said Fernando Minaya, a forensic expert specialized in transport. Source:
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| from the scene showed that both trains appeared to have sustained substantial damage. The nose of the Renfe train, which was traveling to Seville from Madrid, appeared to be completely destroyed after impact. Two rear carriages of the Iryo train appeared to have been overturned, and a third car derailed. |
Local news outlets reported that 397 passengers were aboard the Renfe train and about 150 aboard the Iryo train.
The accident comes months after a deadly collision in southern Spain that involved the same carriers and the same route. In that crash, in January, 46 people were killed when two high-speed trains collided near Adamuz. It was Spain’s worst rail disaster since 2013.
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in January, a commuter train near Barcelona struck a collapsed retaining wall and derailed, killing one person.
Opened in 1992, Spain’s high-speed rail network is the largest in Europe and the second longest in the world.
Investigations into the crash in January were continuing, but initial reports pointed to a broken rail as the likely cause.
The crash on Wednesday was the third in Spain this year. Days after the accident in January, a commuter train near Barcelona struck a collapsed retaining wall and derailed, killing one person.
Opened in 1992, Spain’s high-speed rail network is the largest in Europe and the second longest in the world.
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