The Ministry of Transport has made public the first official data on the train accident which took place last Saturday in Madrid, when a Renfe train that was being transferred to the Fuencarral workshops became uncoupled from its drive unit and circulated without brakes through the high-speed tunnel that connects Chamartín and Atocha until it ended up derailing and overturning. File 108/2024 labels the event as a “derailment” It happened at 4:20 p.m. at kilometer point 6+900 of the railway line that connects Madrid Chamartín with Valencia Joaquín Sorolla, in the vicinity of the “Jardín Botánico” banalization post.
The Railway Accident Investigation Commission, the body in charge of analyzing this type of incident, published this Friday the preliminary version of the event while waiting to specify all the aspects of the accident, which has been classified as “serious” by the agency due to “the amount of damage caused and its effect on safety management.”
It is a range below the maximum (“very serious”) due to the absence of deaths or injuries. The crew of the affected train consisted of a driver and two maintenance technicians. These last two, who were on the accident train, “were able to escape safely after it stopped.”
According to the committee’s preliminary report, train 97015 left La Sagra bound for the Fuencarral workshops with two Renfe series 114 trains coupled together, where “the first unit was towing the second, which was damaged.” The train was circulating through the aforementioned tunnel, “but at the entrance to the Chamartín station the lead unit (tug) suffered a traction failure that prevented him from climbing the entrance ramp to the station (about 30 thousandths)”.
That’s when, “To overcome the ramp, the engineer and the command post agreed that the train would go backwards to gain momentum from a flatter section.“. While this maneuver was being prepared, the damaged train unit (the towed one) became loose from its hitch and It began to drift down the tunnel without brakes, without a battery and with the two technicians on board.
CIAF recognizes that the train circulated “more than four kilometers through the tunnel”whose slopes of between 12 and 30 thousandths caused the unit to move due to the mere effect of gravity. This made it arrive “at great speed to the trivialization position of the Botanical Garden”, at which time, according to the Minister of Transport, Óscar Puente, a technician from the Adif command post decided move the needle change to divert the train from track 1 to track 2, the latter fact confirmed by the commission itself.
But that didn’t stop the train completely.since “in the next curve after the track change, the unit derailed and went off on a tangent, crashing into the tunnel wall.” This caused the first three cars of the unit to overturn, while the fourth managed to remain upright, although derailed. “After sliding a certain distance losing speed, the unit stopped approximately at kilometer point 7,000.“says the report.
The official version recognizes that this accident has caused “serious damage, both to the accident unit and to the tunnel infrastructure.” In fact, the unit remains parked in the same place, without Adif or Renfe having yet communicated the planned date to remove it from there due to the lack of clearance and space necessary to maneuver with it.
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