Balvano railway accident

Class 740 locomotive, two of which pulled the train involved in the accident

In the Balvano railway accident on March 3, 1944 near Balvano , Basilicata , Italy , probably more than 500 people died from carbon monoxide poisoning in a tunnel . This was the most momentous railway accident in the history of Italy and one of the worst railway disasters of all time.

Starting position

In the south of Italy the Allies had already defeated the fascist government of Benito Mussolini , but civil life was still in chaos. Civil rail traffic was completely disordered and unreliable. Numerous people therefore traveled illegally on freight trains , especially for hamster trips , in order to get food from the country due to the insecure supply situation . For the same reason, Ferrovie dello Stato had great difficulties in procuring suitable quality hard coal for its steam locomotives and usually had to fall back on inferior coal .

The accident occurred on the Battipaglia – Metaponto railway line . This crosses the Apennines , it has considerable inclines and declines as well as numerous tunnels.

On the day of the accident, over 600 people traveled illegally on freight train No. 8017, which was traveling east on the route . The train consisted of 47 freight cars , including numerous flat cars , 41 of which were not loaded. Because of the inclines ahead of the train, he received an additional leader locomotive at Romagnano station . The two locomotives came from the class 740 , according to other sources 476.058 (an ex- Südbahn locomotive) as a train locomotive and 480.016 as a leader locomotive .

the accident

Some of the victims of the Balvano railway accident

Since only inferior coal was available for the train's steam locomotives , their tractive power was limited, and their smoke emissions contained an above-average amount of carbon monoxide . When the train in the Armi tunnel between the breakpoint Balvano- Ricigliano and the station Bella Muro import, the tension reached the locomotives not more, to pull him by the almost 1.7 km long tunnel with a gradient of 14 ‰. The train came to a stop when the locomotives were about 800 meters in the tunnel and most of the cars were already inside the tunnel.

Due to the inadequate ventilation of the tunnel, there was not enough oxygen for the fire of the steam locomotives to burn , which was so incomplete, and the exhaust gases from the locomotives increasingly no longer consisted of asphyxiating carbon dioxide , but of toxic carbon monoxide . This carbon monoxide poisoning occurred so insidiously that most of the passengers and the train crew didn't even notice it, but simply fell asleep. The few survivors were all on the few wagons at the end of the train that were not yet in the tunnel.

consequences

At least 426 people died in this accident. However, depending on the source, the numbers differ considerably (402–549 deaths). In any case, it is the railway accident with the highest number of victims in the history of Italy.

In pop culture

Terry Allen's song Galleria dele Armi (on the album Human Remains ) refers to the Balvano railway accident.

literature

• Gianluca Barneschi: Balvano 1944: I segreti di un disastro ferroviario ignorato . Milano 2005. ISBN 88-425-3350-5
• Alessandro Perissinotto: Treno 8017. Palermo 2003. ISBN 88-389-1878-3
• Ascanio Schneider u. Armin Masé: Disasters on the rails. Railway accidents, their causes and consequences . Zurich 1968, pp. 261–263.
• Peter Semmens, Railway Disasters of the World , Patrick Stephens Ltd (1994).
• Michele Strazza: La Più grande tragedia ferroviaria Italiana (Italian with further references to sources and literature) .
• Henning Wall u. a .: Railway Atlas Italy and Slovenia . Aachen 2010. ISBN 978-3-89494-129-1
• David Wallechinsky & Irving Wallace: Railroad Disaster on the Balvano Limited Part 1 .

Web links

Commons : Balvano Railway Accident  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Report of the Council of Ministers v. March 9, 1944 (in Italian)

Remarks

1. ↑ Strazza names "more than 500 dead"; Schneider / Masé, p. 263, state - citing information from the then head of the southern Italian US military railroad service, General Gray - 509 dead and a further 60 injured; the report of the Council of Ministers v. March 9, 1944 names the number of 517 dead.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Balvano: il più grave incidente ferroviario fu nell'Italia spaccata ( Italian ) corriere.it. Retrieved September 8, 2016.
2. ^ The world's worst train disasters ( English ) railway-technology.com. Retrieved July 27, 2019.
3. ↑ Henning Wall, plate 84.
4. ↑ This number is given by two contemporary newspaper reports ( Memento from August 1, 2013 in the Internet Archive ).
5. ^ Galleria dele Armi ( English, Italian ) torreomnia.it. Retrieved July 27, 2019.

Coordinates: 40 ° 40 ′ 9.4 "  N , 15 ° 30 ′ 6.8"  E