Ciurea railway accident

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Derailed train in Ciurea station

The Ciurea railway accident was the derailment and fire of an overcrowded train at high speed due to brake failure in Ciurea station , Romania , on January 13, 1917. The accident claimed between 600 and 1,000 lives.

Starting position

Locomotives of the derailed train in Ciurea station

The station Ciurea (now Gara Piciorul Lupului ) is located south of Iasi on the single-track railway line , which from there to Bârlad leads. At the time of the accident, he had a crossing track that swung out from the main track. The route coming from Bârlad runs on a steep gradient between 25 and 67 ‰.

The train involved in the accident was pulled by two steam locomotives and consisted of 26 wagons that were overcrowded with wounded Russian soldiers and civilian refugees . They fled from the advancing German army of General Field Marshal August von Mackensen . Romania had declared war on the Central Powers in August 1916 , but after initial successes suffered several catastrophic defeats. At the time of the disaster, the Romanian army was on an unorganized retreat from the German troops who were pushing hard. Accordingly, the train was overcrowded with people - these were also on the roofs of the train and in the space above the buffers between the cars.

the accident

While the train was on the move, the train's Westinghouse brakes were probably inadvertently put out of action: On the one hand, a soldier is said to have turned off a tap on the brake system, and on the other, the brake hoses connecting the cars were probably damaged by passengers who stepped or stood on them .

As the train pulled into the gap import who tried train drivers to slow down, but realized that the brakes on the train no longer spoke. The braking power of the locomotives alone was not enough. Although everything was tried and the machines were also working backwards, the train accelerated increasingly.

The through track at Ciurea station was occupied by another train. The dispatcher had therefore set the route over the swinging crossing track for the arriving train . When the train drove over the switch , it derailed due to its excessive speed, only two of the 26 cars remained on the track. The remainder wedged into one another, some of the debris caught fire and burned completely except for the iron parts.

consequences

With 600 to 1000 fatalities, this was one of the most serious railway accidents worldwide to date caused by the operation of a railway . Accidents with a comparably high number of victims, which also occurred in connection with the transport of soldiers in the First World War, are the

literature

  • Constantin Botez: Epopeea Feroviară Românească . Editura Sport-Turism, Bucharest 1977 (Romanian).
  • Klaus Marx: Lawson Billinton. A career cut short . Oakwood Press, Usk 2007, ISBN 978-0-85361-661-0 (English).
  • Ludwig Stockert : Railway accidents (new episode) - Another contribution to railway operations theory . No. 17 . Berlin 1920.
  • Christian Wolmar : Engines Of War. How Wars Were Won & Lost On The Railways . London 2010, ISBN 978-1-84887-172-4 (English).

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Klaus Marx: Lawson Billinton. A Career Cut Short 2007, p. 81.
  2. ↑ Constantin Botez: Epopeea Feroviara Românească 1977
  3. ↑ Ludwig Stockert: Railway Accidents (New Series) - Another contribution to Railway Operations Study 1920, No. 17 claims a head-on collision on the open road, without giving details about the course of the accident; The numbers of victims mentioned there are all the more precise: 374 dead and 756 injured.
  4. ↑ Klaus Marx: Lawson Billinton. A Career Cut Short 2007

Remarks

  1. ↑ The Peraliya railway accident triggered by a tsunami on December 26, 2004 resulted in more than 1,000 deaths, but is not considered to be an accident caused by railway operations because it was caused by a natural disaster. In the railway accident in Hamont , Belgium, on November 19, 1918, an ammunition transport exploded in the midst of hospital trains . Depending on the source, 1007 to 1750 people died. In this incident it is a matter of opinion whether the accident was caused “by rail operations”.

Coordinates: 47 ° 5 '48.4 "  N , 27 ° 34' 1.8"  E