Passenger train crash. The largest railway accidents in Russia and the USSR

Rail transport is one of the most inexpensive, convenient and safe. That is why passengers often choose it. However, disasters still happen railways Oh. When trains collide at full speed or derail, powerful destructive forces are at work.

The rumbling trains become uncontrollable, and man can no longer stop the catastrophe. Inside the carriages, a real hell is unfolding, which makes a real mess out of human bodies. People discuss plane crashes, forgetting about the most major accidents on the railways. But these disasters also claimed the lives of hundreds of people.

Train fire in Egypt, 2002. This disaster happened to a passenger train that was traveling from Cairo to Luxor on February 20, 2002. An explosion occurred in one of the carriages at 2 a.m. gas cylinder- with its help, passengers were warmed up. The driver did not notice that his train was on fire and continued driving at full speed. A total of seven carriages burned out, almost to the ground. Of these, six were in the cheap third class. Each of them was designed for 150 people, but in fact they carried twice as many passengers. The disaster reached such proportions due to the train being overloaded. The unfortunate people had to jump out of the burning cars at full speed, which also led to death and injury. According to official information, about 383 people were burned in the fire, and several hundred were seriously injured. However, it was never possible to find out the exact number of victims, since there was no full list passengers. The fire was so intense that many of the corpses turned to ash, making it impossible to identify them. Rumors speak of a thousand victims, which can no longer be proven. As a result of this incident, Egypt's Minister of Transport was forced to resign.

Awash disaster, 1985. This train accident is considered the worst in African history. It happened in Ethiopia on January 14, 1985 with a train traveling on the Addis Ababa-Djibouti route. The train drove onto a curved bridge at high speed. The driver was unable or forgot to slow down the train. As a result, four of the five express cars with a thousand passengers and seven cars collapsed into the ravine. At least 428 people were killed, and the number of wounded exceeded five hundred. Almost all of the victims were in serious condition. The nearest decent hospital was a hundred kilometers from the accident site. If earlier in Ethiopia local separatists attacked trains, in this case there was no talk of any sabotage initially. The driver was blamed and was immediately sent to trial.

Torre del Bierzo, 1944. On January 3, 1944, near the Spanish village of Torre del Bierzo, a mail train with failed brakes began to enter tunnel number 20. There was a shunting train with three cars, which did not have time to leave the track. Two carriages ended up inside the tunnel when a collision occurred with a courier train. The fire immediately devoured wooden structures and destroyed the first six carriages of the mail train. On the other side, a steam locomotive with 27 loaded cars entered the tunnel. The driver of the shunting train signaled as best he could, but he was ignored. The alarm system was damaged due to the fire. The disaster turned into a major fire that could not be extinguished for two whole days. This made it impossible to launch a rescue operation. Exact number It was not possible to count the victims - the Franco regime officially announced 78 dead. However, there were many stowaways on the train, and the fire destroyed human remains. Today it is generally accepted that the number of victims was in the hundreds - the train was overcrowded, because many were going to the Christmas market. Already in the 40s they talked about 200-250 dead, but today it is believed that there could be 500-800.

Balvano, 1944. During World War II, disruptions in the supply of goods led to the flourishing of the black market. By 1944, speculators and small businessmen were hiding on freight trains to reach their suppliers' farms. But in those years, a situation arose on the railway with a shortage of high-quality coal. As a result, lower-order substitutes went into the furnace, which produced a huge volume carbon monoxide. It was extremely poisonous, but had no odor, which made it undetectable. On March 2, 1944, significantly overloaded train 8017, carrying cars, got stuck inside a steep tunnel. Its crew, passengers and several hundred passengers, including those illegally huddled outside, were exposed to those same carbon monoxide fumes. The only survivors were those who were traveling in the last carriages and did not have time to enter the tunnel. That accident officially claimed the lives of 426 people, but in reality there were one and a half times more victims.

Ufa, 1989. This train accident considered the largest in the history of the USSR and Russia. It happened on June 4 on the Asha-Ulu-Telyak stretch. Nearby was the Western Siberia-Urals pipeline, through which a liquefied mixture of gas and gasoline was transmitted. A narrow gap formed in it, through which gas accumulated in the lowland. It was there that the Trans-Siberian Railway ran. Shortly before the disaster, instruments showed a drop in pressure, but the duty officer decided not to look for a leak, but increased the gas supply even more. As a result, even more flammable hydrocarbons leaked through the crack, which could ignite from any spark. The drivers also knew about the heavy gas pollution in the area, but the railway workers did not attach much importance to this. At 01:15 at night, two passenger trains met on the stretch - traveling from Novosibirsk to Adler and back. It is quite possible that as a result of braking, a spark was formed, which caused a volumetric explosion. Its strength was such that in the city of Asha, 10 kilometers away, the blast wave broke the windows. In total, there were 1,284 passengers on the trains, including 383 children. The shock wave threw 11 cars off the tracks, seven of them were completely burned. According to official data, 575 people died (unofficially - 645), almost all survivors became disabled and received severe burns. The rescue operation was difficult due to the inaccessibility of the area.

Bihar crash, 1981. The disaster occurred between the cities of Mansi and Saharsa. June marks the monsoon season in India. A hurricane wind rose and overturned seven carriages of a train that was crossing the bridge into the river. According to another version, the flood simply washed away the train. It contained from eight hundred to three thousand people. They also talk about a cow that appeared inopportunely on the way. The driver braked sharply, and the cars began to slide along the wet rails, falling off the bridge. Help was hours away, and most of the passengers drowned or were swept away by the raging river long before rescuers arrived. In the first five days, two hundred dead were found, and the fate of several hundred passengers remained unknown.

Guadalajara, 1915. That year the Mexican Revolution was in full swing. Despite the change of power, President Carranza continued to wage armed struggle against his opponents. On January 18, 1915, government forces captured the city of Guadalajara in the southwest of the country. The President ordered that the soldiers' families be transported there by rail from the city of Colima to Pacific coast. On January 22, 1915, a special train with 20 overloaded cars set off. People even sat on the roofs and clung outside. Somewhere along the way, the driver lost control of the train on a long, steep descent. Many people flew out of the carriages at sharp turns. As a result, in a deep canyon the train finally derailed. Of the 900 passengers, less than a third survived. It is known that many Mexicans even committed suicide after learning about the death of all their loved ones. There were those who wanted to take revenge on the traveling crew, but they also all died during the disaster.

Disaster near Churya, 1917. The route between the Romanian Ciurea and Barlad is marked by a steep 15-kilometer gradient, which in some places is up to 6.7%. On January 13, at one o'clock in the afternoon, a train with 26 cars, driven by two locomotives, passed here. It transported wounded Russian soldiers and refugees hiding from the advancing Germans. And in this case, the train was crowded - people were riding on the roofs and even between the cars. Such an abundance of people led to the fact that they simply damaged the pipelines of the brake system. As a result, during the descent, the drivers discovered that they could not slow down. The braking power of the two locomotives was not enough. The drivers noticed that they were rushing straight towards another train standing at the platform. When trying to cross to another track at high speed, the train derailed. 24 cars went downhill. A fire broke out in a pile of twisted metal, killing between 600 and 1,000 passengers.

Saint-Michel-de-Maurienne, 1917. This railway accident was the largest in French history. On December 12, in train No. 612, more than a thousand soldiers were returning home for Christmas. The train was made up of different carriages, mostly Italian. It turned out to be so long that it had to be carried by two locomotives. In addition, part of the route ran through a steep descent of 33%. But only one locomotive was found; the second was requisitioned to transport ammunition. And of all the cars, only three had air brakes; the rest had special brakers. The driver agreed to drive such an overloaded train only under the threat of a tribunal. At first it was possible to control the speed, but on the descent the train accelerated to 135 kilometers per hour. During one of the sharp turns, the coupling broke and the first car went off the rails. The others began to crash into him and the wooden structures burst into flames. The fire intensified due to the fact that many soldiers were carrying ammunition and grenades with them. Despite the help that quickly arrived here, there was no one to save. In total, about 700 people died in that disaster; many bodies could not be identified at all. People were buried in a single mass grave. At first the disaster was hushed up as a military secret, but four days later the press informed the whole world of an unprecedented accident. Six railway workers were brought to trial, but they were acquitted.

Peraliya crash, 2004. This disaster was the largest in the history of railway transport. The culprit was not the human factor, as in most other cases, but the natural elements. The Queen of the Sea passenger train made regular trips to the southern part of the island. Obeying semaphore signals, the train stopped in an open area 170 meters from the sea. More than one and a half thousand passengers were traveling on the train. At that moment, a tsunami up to 9 meters high hit the island. Panic arose; local residents began to flock to the train, seeing it as a refuge from the water. The second 7-meter wave tore apart the train. Due to the crush, passengers were unable to escape from the carriages, which turned from a refuge into a death trap. 30-ton carriages were thrown hundreds of meters into the jungle, even an 80-ton diesel locomotive was carried away 50 meters. Those of the unfortunate passengers who were not crushed by the train simply drowned. Only 150 lucky ones survived. Due to the scale of the disaster caused by the tsunami quick help and there was no talk. And the main road to the accident site turned out to be a damaged railway track. The number of victims is believed to be between 1,700 and 2,000. It turned out to be impossible to identify most of them, and two cars were even carried away into the ocean.

26 years ago, on the night of June 3-4, 1989, in the bearish corner of the Urals on the border of the Chelyabinsk region and Bashkiria, a pipeline through which liquefied gas pumped from Western Siberia to the European part Soviet Union. At the same moment, 900 meters from the scene of the incident, Trans-Siberian Railway took place in opposite directions two resort trains at once, crowded with vacationers. It was the worst train disaster in Soviet history, killing at least 575 people, including 181 children. Onliner.by talks about the incredible chain of random coincidences that led to it, which had monstrous consequences in their scale.

Early summer of 1989. While the still united country is living out its last years, the friendship of peoples is bursting at the seams, the proletarians are actively disunited, the only food in stores is canned bulls in tomato sauce, but pluralism and glasnost are in their heyday: tens of millions of Soviet people cling to their TV screens, watching the meetings with desperate interest Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR. The crisis is, of course, a crisis, but the vacation is on schedule. Hundreds of seasonal resort trains are still rushing to the hot seas, where the population of the Union can still spend their full labor rubles on a well-deserved vacation.

All tickets for trains No. 211 Novosibirsk - Adler and No. 212 Adler - Novosibirsk have been sold. Twenty carriages of the first and eighteen carriages of the second were filled with families of Uralians and Siberians who were just striving for the much desired Black Sea coast Caucasus and those who have already rested there. They carried vacationers, rare business travelers, and young guys from the Chelyabinsk hockey team “Tractor-73”, two-time national champions, who decided instead of a vacation to work in the grape harvest in sunny Moldova. In total, on that terrible June night, there were (only according to official data) 1,370 people inside the two trains, including 383 children. The numbers are most likely inaccurate, since separate tickets were not sold for children under five years of age.

At 1:14 a.m. on June 4, 1989, almost all passengers on both trains were already asleep. Some were tired after a long journey, others were just getting ready for it. No one was prepared for what happened in the next moment. And you cannot prepare for this under any circumstances.

“I woke up from falling from the second shelf onto the floor (it was already two o’clock in the morning according to local time), and everything around was already on fire. It seemed to me that I was seeing some kind of nightmare: the skin on my hand was burning and slipping, a child engulfed in fire was crawling under my feet, a soldier with empty eye sockets was walking towards me with outstretched hands, I was crawling past a woman who could not extinguish her own hair, and in the compartment there are no shelves, no doors, no windows..."- one of the miraculously surviving passengers later told reporters.

The explosion, the power of which, according to official estimates, was 300 tons of TNT, literally destroyed two trains, which at that very moment met at the 1710th kilometer of the Trans-Siberian Railway on the Asha - Ulu-Telyak section, near the border of the Chelyabinsk region and Bashkiria. Eleven cars were thrown off the rails, seven of them were completely burned. The remaining cars burned out inside, they were broken in the shape of an arc, the rails were twisted into knots. And in parallel with this, tens and hundreds of unsuspecting people died a painful death.

Pipeline PK-1086 Western Siberia- Ural - Volga region was built in 1984 and was originally intended for oil transportation. Already at the last moment, almost before the facility was put into operation, the Ministry oil industry The USSR, guided by a logic understandable only to it, decided to repurpose the oil pipeline into a product pipeline. In practice, this meant that instead of oil, a so-called “wide fraction of light hydrocarbons” was transported through a pipe with a diameter of 720 millimeters and a length of 1852 kilometers - a mixture of liquefied gases (propane and butane) and heavier hydrocarbons. Although the facility changed its specialization, it was built as ultra-reliable with a view to future high pressure inside. However, already at the design stage, the first mistake was made in a chain of those that five years later led to the largest tragedy on the railways of the Soviet Union.

At 1,852 kilometers long, a full 273 kilometers of the pipeline passed in close proximity to the railways. In addition, in a number of cases the object came dangerously close to populated areas, including fairly large cities. For example, in the section from kilometer 1428 to kilometer 1431, PK-1086 passed less than a kilometer from the Bashkir village of Sredny Kazayak. A gross violation of safety standards was discovered after the launch of the product pipeline. Construction of a special bypass around the village began only the following year, 1985.

In October 1985, during the earthworks when opening PK-1086 at the 1431st kilometer of its length, powerful excavators working on the ultra-protected pipe caused it significant mechanical damage, for which the product pipeline was not designed at all. Moreover, after the completion of the bypass construction, the insulation of the opened and abandoned open area in violation building codes has not been checked.

Four years after those events on damaged area a narrow gap 1.7 meters long formed in the product pipeline. The propane-butane mixture began to flow through it into environment, evaporate, mix with the air and, being heavier than it, accumulate in the lowland through which the Trans-Siberian Railway passed 900 meters to the south. Very close to the strategic railway line, along which passenger and freight trains passed every few minutes, a real invisible “gas lake” formed.

The drivers drew the attention of the site dispatchers to the strong smell of gas in the area of ​​the 1710th kilometer of the road, as well as a drop in pressure in the pipeline. Instead of taking emergency measures to stop traffic and eliminate the leak, both duty services chose not to pay attention to what was happening. Moreover, the organization operating PK-1086 even increased the gas supply to it to compensate for the pressure drop. As propane and butane continued to accumulate, disaster became inevitable.

The Novosibirsk - Adler and Adler - Novosibirsk trains could not possibly meet at this fateful point. Under no circumstances if they followed the schedule. But train 212 was late due to technical reasons, and train 211 was forced to make an emergency stop at one of the intermediate stations to disembark a passenger who had gone into labor, which also resulted in a shift in the schedule. An absolutely incredible coincidence, unthinkable even in the most cruel nightmares, coupled with a blatant violation of technological discipline, nevertheless occurred.

Two late trains met at the damned 1710th kilometer of the Trans-Siberian Railway at 1:14 am. An accidental spark from the pantograph of one of the electric locomotives, or a spark from the train braking after a long descent into a lowland, or even a cigarette butt thrown out of the window was enough to ignite the “gas lake”. At the moment the trains met, a massive explosion of the accumulated propane-butane mixture occurred, and the Ural forest turned into hell.

A policeman from Asha, a city 11 kilometers from the crash site, later told reporters: “I was awakened by a flash of terrible brightness. There was a glow on the horizon. A couple of tens of seconds later, a blast wave reached Asha, breaking a lot of glass. I realized that something terrible had happened. A few minutes later I was already at the city police department, together with the guys I rushed to the “duty room” and rushed towards the glow. What we saw is impossible to imagine even with a sick imagination! The trees burned like giant candles, and the cherry-red carriages smoked along the embankment. There was an absolutely impossible single cry of pain and horror from hundreds of dying and burned people. The forest was burning, the sleepers were burning, people were burning. We rushed to catch the rushing “living torches,” knock the fire off them, and bring them closer to the road away from the fire. Apocalypse…".

More than 250 people instantly burned in this gigantic fire. No one can say the exact numbers, because the temperature at the epicenter of the disaster exceeded 1000 degrees - there was literally nothing left of some passengers. Another 317 people died later in hospitals from terrible burns. The worst thing is that almost a third of all victims were children.

People died in families, children - in entire classes, along with the teachers who accompanied them on vacation. Parents often didn’t even have anything left to bury. 623 people received injuries of varying severity, many of them remained disabled for life.

Despite the fact that the scene of the tragedy was in a relatively inaccessible area, the evacuation of the victims was organized quite quickly. Dozens of helicopters were working, the victims of the disaster were taken out by trucks, even by an uncoupled electric locomotive of a freight train that stood at a nearby station and allowed those same Adler passenger trains to pass. The number of victims could have been even greater if it had not been for a modern burn center, which opened in Ufa shortly before the incident. Doctors, police, railway workers, finally ordinary people, volunteers from neighboring communities worked around the clock.

Rail transport, according to the public, is considered the least dangerous. Most passengers would give preference to it, if the issue of travel duration is not considered the main one. Although, according to statistics, injuries during air travel are still lower. Everyone knows that tragic train accidents are possible, but everyone hopes it doesn't happen to them. Meanwhile, the disappointing “primacy” among all passengers belongs to

Railway accidents

Transportation is associated with a high concentration of cargo or passenger traffic. To ensure delivery efficiency, it is necessary to tighten schedules and increase the number of cars in trains. This leads to additional loads on the railway tracks, the track underneath, bearing structures. The wear and tear of trains, locomotives, control and dispatch equipment is increasing. The load on railway management and maintenance personnel is also growing. Everything is taken into account, it seems to be happening in compliance with the standards, but accidents with trains still happen.

Each crash has its own history, causes, consequences. A derailment of a train, resulting in its capsizing, rarely occurs without loss of life. Injuries and injuries cannot be avoided. It's connected with design features carriages, the principles of placing passengers in them, their attitude to the possibility of situations that may pose a threat to life and health. At the same time, it is difficult to imagine how passenger safety can be effectively improved. Derailment of a train and overturning of a carriage are accidents for which it is impossible to prepare. Only the right decision- a set of measures to reduce the risk of their occurrence.

Technical reasons

As it turns out, it’s easier to write it down on paper than to implement it. One of the main reasons is technical condition railway tracks. It is no secret that most of them were laid several decades ago. Since then, speeds and loads have increased. But there is no possibility of changing paths to suit new conditions or laying new ones. This comes with significant costs. At best it is carried out partial replacement blades in areas with the most pronounced wear.

The same can be said about equipment, which also wears out and inevitably happens. Therefore, train accidents are inevitable, but we must try to prevent them. But how? If the train does not start moving without replacing a worn-out engine part, then it will still run on wheelsets. This approach is partly justified - do not stop large-scale transportation. We have to devote more time to inspections and additional maintenance. But this does not make the cars any newer.

Human factor

Accidents and wrecks for these reasons cannot be predicted. But it's one thing if a passenger train crash is related to objective reasons. Human body- though flexible system, but it is not iron. Both the dispatcher and the driver can have health problems. Not everyone medical checkup can identify these risks.

Another question is when the cause of the crash is dishonest performance of official duties, negligence, or a gross violation of safety rules. Particularly significant are cases when, during the investigation of the causes of accidents, facts of persons being intoxicated at the workplace are revealed.

How to justify the actions of a driver trying to make up for delays along the way by increasing speed in a dangerous section? And what about the situation when, while putting things in order in the cabin, the cleaning lady was able to accidentally set into motion a locomotive that was standing still, and at the same time there was not a single specialist on board to stop it?

Races between train drivers for the right to be the first to enter the station and ignoring the prohibitory semaphore signal are the height of cynicism towards passengers. The unpreparedness of train crews to eliminate the consequences of a fire and the frequent lack of equipment to extinguish them can have dire consequences even without the fact of a train crash. The above situations are not a complete list of negligent attitude towards official duties at transport facilities with an increased risk to life.

Fatal Accidents: Train Derailments

It is difficult to compare the severity of the consequences of disasters if there were human casualties and big number injured passengers. But to understand the danger a railway accident poses, you need to remember at least some of them. Thus, an accident in the Krasnoyarsk Territory in 1958 occurred when two freight trains carrying petroleum products in tanks collided. The reason is a semaphore malfunction. There was a fire on a parallel path at that time. The explosion led to the death of more than 60 people.

Rostov region, 1987. Then, in front of the station, he was unable to slow down and then urgently brake the locomotive of the freight train. Safety rules were violated, which resulted in a collision with a passenger train standing near the platform. The result of the crash: more than 100 people died and more large quantity received serious injuries.

Ufa, 1989. Leak on main pipeline led to the explosion of a cloud of its vapors. This happened in close proximity to the tracks along which two passenger trains were passing at the time. The largest disaster in the USSR then claimed the lives of almost 600 people.

Train accidents in dreams

Oddly enough, the human brain, even in the absence of mentions of railway travel, in some cases is capable of reproducing them in the subconscious. Moreover, according to researchers, dreams of train crashes can also be of a warning nature. It is not yet possible to either confirm or deny that such visions can be prophetic in nature. However, it makes sense to at least think about the reasons for their occurrence.

A railroad accident seen in a dream may symbolize the need to be careful and be prepared for any unexpected situations. First of all, according to experts, this concerns financial issues. If in visions a person finds himself in the epicenter of a disaster, but everything turns out well, there are prerequisites for real life get out of a serious situation without significant damage. If it was still not possible to avoid damage, such a dream can warn of frivolity and imprudent actions, which are most likely doomed to failure in advance.

There is less talk about phobia regarding traveling on trains than about aerophobia. Being in an environment familiar to a person, and not in the air, creates the illusion of complete safety. However, a large-scale passenger train disaster in Spain, in which more than 70 people died and more than 150 were injured, reminded how relative safety is in our technological age.

In less than 13 years of the 21st century, several dozen major disasters have occurred on the world's railways.

Express hit by tsunami

On December 26, 2004, perhaps the largest train derailment in the history of railway transport occurred. It was not the fault of people and equipment - the cause was the violence of the elements.

The infamous tsunami hit Sri Lanka in December 2004. At that moment, when the destructive waves approached the coast of the Southern Province of Sri Lanka, a passenger train packed to capacity was moving along the railway that ran close to the sea.

Ironically, the express wore beautiful name"Queen of the Sea". The composition was very popular among tourists because most during his journey he moved several tens of meters from the water. On the eve of the Christmas holidays, it contained a huge amount and local residents, traveling home from business centers for the holidays, and travelers who decided to admire the views of Sri Lanka.

The exact number of passengers remains unknown - in addition to the 1,500 officially traveling on the train, there were several hundred free riders, which is common in Asian countries.

A train stopped at a red signal was hit by a tsunami near the village of Peraliya. The train with people was literally swept away by water. An 80-ton diesel locomotive was thrown 50 meters, and 30-ton carriages were scattered around the area. Two carriages were carried into the ocean.

The destruction in the region was such that the first rescuers were able to reach the train only on the third day. The exact number of victims is unlikely to ever be established - according to the most rough estimates, out of 1,900 people on the train, no more than 150 survived.

This train is on fire

On February 20, 2002, a passenger train was traveling on the route Cairo - Luxor in Egypt. This route is always extremely busy, the cheapest third class carriages are especially crowded. With a capacity of 150 people, they manage to accommodate more than 300 at a time.

Near the city of Al-Ayyat, one of the third-class carriages caught fire. For unknown reasons, the driver did not immediately notice the fire, and the flaming train drove for about ten kilometers.

On high speed the flames were rapidly gaining strength. As a result, the flames engulfed the entire train, seven cars burned to the ground. Six of them belonged to the third class.

People burned alive, jumped out of windows at full speed in fear and fell to their deaths. In total, more than 380 people became victims of the disaster, several hundred received burns and injuries.

Dangerous cargo

On the night of February 17-18, 2004 in Iran, near the city of Nishapur at the Abu Muslim station, a train consisting of 51 cars suddenly rolled out of its parking lot and rushed down the slope. The unauthorized journey lasted about 20 kilometers until the carriages derailed and caught fire near the village of Khayyam at about 4 am.

Rescuers and firefighters arrived at the scene of the emergency, and hundreds of curious people gathered around. The cars were loaded with sulfur, gasoline, nitrate fertilizers and cotton. In most countries, such cargoes are classified as explosive, but in Iran they were all considered non-hazardous until February 2004.

In addition to ordinary onlookers, journalists and even local politicians turned up at the crash site, trying to increase their popularity before the upcoming elections.

The firefighters seemed to have the situation under control, but at about half past nine in the morning the cargo suddenly detonated. Experts subsequently estimated the power of the explosion at 180 tons of TNT. The village of Khayyam was destroyed, and the explosion itself was heard even 70 kilometers from the epicenter.

The death of 295 people was officially announced, including more than 180 firefighters, rescuers and officials. 460 people were injured. Foreign observers believe that the data on casualties and wounded are significantly underestimated.

Terrorist attack

The suicide bombings were carried out during the morning rush hour in order to achieve the maximum number of victims. Initially, the Spanish government suspected Basque separatists from the ETA movement of organizing the terrorist attack, but representatives of this movement categorically denied their involvement.

As it turned out later, the sabotage was carried out by radical Islamists close to Al-Qaeda.

The attacks were carefully planned: they were carried out three days before parliamentary elections in Spain and exactly 911 days after the attack on the United States on September 11, 2001 (“9/11”).

The explosions killed 192 people from 17 countries and injured more than 2,050.

A year later, on March 11, 2005, a memorial in honor of the victims of the terrorist attack, “Forest of the Dead,” was opened near Madrid’s Atocha train station. In memory of the victims, 22 olive trees and 170 cypress trees were planted.

Over speed

Japanese railways are considered one of the most reliable and safe in the world, but even here they are not without incidents.

On April 25, 2005, the late high-speed train 5418M significantly exceeded the speed when passing a dangerous turn. Instead of the required 70 kilometers per hour, the train entered the turn at a speed of 116 kilometers per hour.

As a result, the train derailed and literally flew into a multi-level automatic parking building near Amagasaki Station. The first two carriages were literally flattened by the impact, and the rest were also hit hard.

There were about 700 people on the train, of which 107 died and 562 were injured.

Various versions were considered as the causes of the disaster, but an analysis of all the data showed that the culprit of the tragedy was a 23-year-old driver Ryujiro Takami. The young specialist had already been reprimanded for driving mistakes, and on this trip, shortly before the accident, he made a mistake with the braking, driving at the station 40 meters further than expected. It was for this reason that the train was late.

Fearing another penalty, Takami became, as they say, “reckless” and destroyed the train and people. Ryujiro Takami himself also died in the disaster.

TASS DOSSIER. On August 11, 2017, in Egypt, near the city of Alexandria, a passenger train heading to Cairo crashed at full speed into a train that had stopped due to a breakdown, traveling along the route Port Said - Alexandria.

According to the Egyptian Ministry of Health, 41 people were killed in the clash and another 132 were injured.

The editors of TASS-DOSSIER have prepared material about major railway accidents that occurred in various countries peace.

January 3, 1944 near the city of Leon (Spain), about 500 people died during a collision between two trains in a tunnel.

August 6, 1952 At the Drovnino station on the Western Railway in the Mozhaisk district of the Moscow region, a train traveling at high speed collided with a horse, causing the train to derail. 109 people died.

October 8, 1952 two trains collided within London (Great Britain), and 30 minutes later a third train crashed into them. 112 people were killed and 340 people were injured.

June 6, 1981 near Patna in the state of Bihar (India), seven carriages of a passenger train were overturned from a bridge into the Bagmati River by hurricane winds. More than 800 people died.

August 7, 1987 V Rostov region(USSR), an electric locomotive of a freight train, accelerating downhill to 140 km/h, crashed into the rear cars of the Rostov-on-Don - Moscow passenger train. 106 people were killed, 114 were injured, and material damage amounted to over 1.5 million rubles. During the investigation, it turned out that the crash occurred due to a malfunction of the brake system on the freight train.

June 3, 1989 The largest train accident in the history of Russia and the USSR occurred near Ufa. As two passenger trains passed by, an explosion occurred on a nearby pipeline as a result of an accident. 575 people were killed and more than 600 were injured.

January 15, 1989 near Dhaka (Bangladesh), as a result of a collision between passenger trains, 135 people were killed and more than a thousand were injured.

January 3, 1990 Near the city of Sukkur (Pakistan), a collision between a passenger and freight train killed 307 people and injured 430.

1April 6, 1990 In the state of Bihar (India), about 100 people died due to a fire on a passenger train.

June 9, 1991 Over 100 people were killed and about 250 injured in a train accident in southern Pakistan.

September 6, 1991 Near the city of Pointe-Noire (Congo), more than 100 people were killed and dozens were injured as a result of a collision between a freight train and a passenger train.

September 22, 1994 In the province of Huila (Angola), 300 people were killed and 147 were injured as a result of the crash of a freight train carrying many people on the platforms.

August 21, 1995 In the state of Uttar Pradesh (India), about 350 people were killed and over 400 were injured in a collision between passenger trains.

March 3, 1997 In the province of Punjab (Pakistan), 128 people died in a train accident.

April 29, 1997 At Rongjiawan station in Hunan province (China), a collision between passenger trains killed 100 people and injured about 300.

June 3, 1998 in the federal state of Lower Saxony, near the city of Eschede (Germany), a car, having broken through the barrier, fell from the bridge onto the railway tracks. A train traveling at a speed of 200 km/h, carrying more than 700 passengers, derailed and crashed into a support of another bridge. As a result, the bridge collapsed and its debris fell onto the passenger cars. More than 100 people died.

November 26, 1998 In the state of Punjab (India), a train accident killed 108 people and injured 230.

August 2, 1999 At the Gaisal station in the state of West Bengal (India), 280 people were killed as a result of a collision between an express passenger train and a train standing at the platform.

February 20, 2002 As a result of a fire on the Cairo-Luxor (Egypt) passenger train, 373 people were killed and 74 people were injured and burned. The cause of the incident was short circuit in the electrical wiring of the train. This is the largest disaster in the history of railway transport in Egypt.

May 25, 2002 in Moamba (Mozambique), a train consisting of passenger and freight cars crashed. More than 200 people died, 400 received various injuries.

June 24, 2002 In Tanzania, a collision between a passenger train and a freight train killed 281 people and injured about 900. The cause of the disaster was a failure of the passenger train's brakes.

September 9, 2002 In the state of Bihar (India), a passenger express train derailed and fell from a bridge into a river. At least 150 people were killed and more than 200 people were injured.

February 18, 2004 Near the city of Nishapur (Iran), gasoline tanks exploded during a collision between freight trains. As a result of the fire, about 400 people died and 460 were injured.

April 22, 2004 At the Rencheon station (DPRK), a collision occurred between trains, one of which was transporting oil, the other - liquefied gas. The disaster resulted in a massive explosion that killed 170 people and injured about 1,300.

December 26, 2004 near the village of Peraliya (Sri Lanka) a train accident occurred in which about 2 thousand people died. The cause of the tragedy was an earthquake and tsunami. This disaster is considered the largest in the history of railway transport.

April 25, 2005 in Amagasaki, Hyogo Prefecture, o. Five of seven high-speed train cars derailed in Honshu, Japan. The first carriage of the train crashed into a 9-story residential building at high speed. 108 people were killed and more than 450 were injured.

1July 3, 2005 At the Ghotki station in Sindh province (Pakistan), a train crashed into a train standing on the tracks. The derailed cars blocked the adjacent track, where they were rammed by a passing express train. About 300 people were killed and more than a thousand were injured.

October 29, 2005 near the village of Valukodu in the state of Andhra Pradesh (India), a locomotive and seven carriages of a passenger train derailed and fell from a bridge. 200 people were killed and about 100 were injured. The disaster occurred in conditions of severe flooding.

August 1, 2007 In the Democratic Republic of Congo, more than 160 people were killed in a train accident in Kasai province in the central part of the country.

July 10, 2011 In India, 120 km from the city of Lucknow, the administrative center of the state of Uttar Pradesh, a passenger train crashed. The driver applied the emergency brake to avoid crashing into a herd of cows crossing the railroad tracks. As a result, 12 carriages and the train's locomotive derailed. 80 people were killed and more than 350 were injured.

July 6, 2013 In Lac-Mégentique (Canada), a train of 72 tanks with oil, which was traveling from the United States to an oil refinery in Quebec, derailed. As a result of the disaster, a fire started in which 47 city residents died, 30 people who were previously considered missing were declared dead. 2 thousand residents of nearby areas of the city were evacuated. The fire destroyed over 40 buildings. The total amount of damage exceeded $200 million.

July 24, 2013 In Santiago de Compostela (the administrative center of Galicia, Spain), a train traveling from Madrid to Ferrol crashed. 80 people were killed, 178 people were injured of varying severity. The train driver took the blame, admitting that he was speeding on the turn.

April 22, 2014 to Katanga province Democratic Republic Congo, 15 carriages of a freight train carrying hundreds of illegal passengers were derailed. 48 people were killed and about 150 were injured. The cause of the crash was exceeding a safe speed due to an engine problem in one of the two locomotives.

March 20, 2015 In India, a locomotive and two carriages of a passenger train traveling on the Dehradun-Varanasi route derailed at Bahrawan station in Rai Bareli district (Uttar Pradesh). 58 people were killed and more than 150 people were injured. According to the Ministry of Railways of India, the accident occurred due to the fact that the train passed a prohibiting traffic signal.

August 4, 2015 When two passenger trains crashed on a bridge over the Machak River near Harda (Madhya Pradesh, India), at least 32 people were killed, five were missing and over 40 people were injured. The structures of the railway bridge were washed away as a result of the flood and could not withstand the weight of two trains traveling in opposite directions. The main cause of death was electric shock.

July 12, 2016 Between the settlements of Corato and Andria in the vicinity of Bari (Apulia region, Italy), a head-on collision of two passenger trains occurred on a single-track railway line. As a result, 23 people were killed and over 50 people were injured.

October 21, 2016 passenger train traveling from the capital of Cameroon, Yaoundé, to The largest city country, Douala, derailed 120 km west of the departure station. As a result, at least 79 people were killed and over 550 more people were injured of varying degrees of severity. A large number of casualties and injuries were caused by overcrowding of the train (the train, designed for 600 passengers, carried more than 1 thousand 300 people).

November 20, 2016 100 km south of Kanpur (Uttar Pradesh, India), in the area of ​​the town of Pukhrayan, 14 carriages of a passenger train traveling along the Indore - Patna route derailed. As a result, 151 people died and about 200 more were injured. According to preliminary data, the cause of the disaster was damage to the rail.

November 25, 2016 near the Haft Khan railway station (Iran), a passenger train traveling from Tabriz to Mashhad stopped for an unknown reason, after which another passenger train crashed into it. As a result, five carriages derailed and two carriages caught fire. At least 36 people were killed and about 70 more people were injured.

January 21, 2017 In India, the Hirakhand express passenger train, traveling from Jagdalpur to Bhubaneswar, derailed near Kuneru station (Vizianagaram district, Andhra Pradesh). A diesel locomotive and nine carriages overturned. As a result of the disaster and the crush that occurred in the carriages, 41 people died and 68 were injured.