Category: RAIL

More than 280 people were killed and hundreds more injured when a passenger train derailed and struck two other trains in eastern India on June 1. The crash, in the state of Odisha, has renewed long-standing questions about safety problems in the system. Odisha’s chief secretary, Pradeep Jena, said that an additional 900 had been injured. Officials said they expected the toll to rise. The crash occurred when several cars derailed and collided with a second train, the train’s operator, South Eastern Railway, said in a statement.

As many as 12 French police officers were injured during protests against the rail link in the Alps. Around 2,000 protesters were in the Maurienne Valley protesting the construction of a rail link that includes a tunnel between Lyon and the Italian city of Turin. There were reportedly “300 dark-clad hardcore” protesters who were said to be throwing rocks at riot police. The police sprayed tear gas and one protestor was wounded, Francois Ravier, the local prefect said at a news conference. The protestors said their count of injured was 50 demonstrators, including six who were hospitalized.

Emine Yilmaz Ozsoy was shoved against a speeding subway train on her way to work. A man pushed her head into the train as it pulled out of the Lexington Avenue/63rd Street station. She underwent two surgeries, after being violently battered by the rushing train. Ozsoy remained partially paralyzed, but was gathering strength and was reported to be cognizant of what happened. The attack was carried out by Kamal Semrade, 39. New York law enforcement officers were able to arrest him at a homeless shelter near La Guardia Airport in Queens, several days after the attack. He was charged with attempted murder and held without bail.

Dozens of passengers were killed near Tempe, Greece, when two trains collided at high speed, head on. One train was carrying freight and the other carried passengers. Rescue crews searched for survivors through flattened cars as the wreckage smoked Wednesday, March 1. There were many additional passengers injured in the accident which some called the deadliest rail accident in Greece in a decade. “When something so tragic happens, it’s impossible to continue as if nothing had happened,” Kostas A. Karamanlis, Greek transport minister, said in a statement shortly after the accident as he announced he would resign. “It’s a fact that we inherited the Greek railway in a state that is not fitting for the 21st century,” he said. “In those three and a half years we made every effort to improve this reality. Unfortunately, those efforts were not adequate to avert such a tragedy.”

A large train of about 50 cars derailed in Ohio near the Pennsylvania state line. The train was carrying a freight from Madison, Ill., to Conway, Penn., according to the operator, Norfolk Southern. At the time, no information was released about what caused the derailment. Officials in the area issued an evacuation order which remained in place through Saturday morning for people within a mile of the scene. No injuries were reported. Reports say firefighters from three states (Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia) responded due to the location of the derailment about 50 miles (82 km) northwest of Pittsburgh and about 20 miles (32 km) from West Virginia. The train was carrying chemicals like vinyl chloride, butyl acrylate, ethylhexyl acrylate and ethylene glycol and monobutyl ether which the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) later determined had been released into the air, surface soil and surface waters.

Webtec Corporation disclosed a data breach after a Lockbit ransomware attack in 2022. Wabtec says hackers breached their network and installed malware on specific systems as early as March 15, 2022. The U.S. rail and locomotive company disclosed a data breach that exposed personal and sensitive information. Wabtec is a U.S.-based public company producing locomotives and rail systems. The company employs approximately 25,000 people and has a presence in 50 countries, being the world’s market leader in freight locomotives and a major player in the transit segment. On June 26, Wabtec said they detected unusual activity on their network leading to an investigation of the attack and whether the hackers had stolen data. The company started sending notices of a data breach to all impacted individuals on December 30, 2022, but the exact number of people affected by the incident remains undisclosed.

On October 28, 2022, about 12:02 a.m. local time, a PSC Group train conductor was struck and killed by train 3832 during a reverse movement at the ExxonMobil refinery plant in Beaumont, Texas. The train consisted of one locomotive and 19 tank cars. The conductor, part of a four-person PSC Group train crew, was protecting (spotting) the train movement from the ground to position the rear tank car near the end of track 7 for product loading. Visibility conditions at the time of the accident were dark with clear skies, and the temperature was 64°F.

On September 8, 2022, about 2:40 a.m. local time, a conductor and engineer of Union Pacific Railroad (UP) train ISILB5-07 were killed when the train collided with railcars stored in a siding near Imperial County, California. The train was traveling eastbound about 28 mph on Mainline 2 when a UP dispatcher routed it into the west end of the signal-controlled siding (Bertram siding) at milepost 646.1 on the Yuma subdivision. The train then collided with 92 empty intermodal railcars that had been stored at milepost 646.3 since December 2021. The two lead locomotives and one intermodal railcar of UP train ISILB5-07 derailed, along with two of the empty stored intermodal railcars.

Railroads in the U. S. stopped accepting shipments of hazardous and other security-sensitive materials due to the looming threat of a strike Friday the 16th of September. A major national railroad, Union Pacific, whose operations would be stopped by a strike, said it was being done to “protect employees, customers, and the communities we serve.” A statement from the railroad’s trade group said they needed follow federal rules to “ensure that no such cargo is left on an unattended or unsecured train.” The unions that represent the members of those threatening to go on strike say the railroad’s new restrictions are designed to “put pressure on Congress to block the unions from walking out,” adding the move was “completely unnecessary” and “no more than corporate extortion.” As we went to press, Amtrak had begun cancelling all long-distance trains as the strike loomed.