Saint-Michel-de-Maurienne railway accident
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The railway accident at Saint-Michel-de-Maurienne was the derailment of a military train that got out of control on December 12, 1917 on the north ramp of the Mont-Cenis railway , a railway line operated by the Compagnie des Chemins de fer de Paris à Lyon et à la Méditerranée . The number of dead is estimated at 700. This is one of the world's largest fatal rail accidents caused by a railroad operation.
Starting position
The military train 612 with French soldiers on the way to Chambéry for the Christmas vacation came from Italy from the Italian front during the First World War . He had reached the summit and French border station of Modane via the south ramp of the Mont-Cenis railway . There two more wagons were attached to the train . Because there was a shortage of locomotives , only one locomotive (wheel arrangement 2'C) was provided for the descent over the north ramp, which has a gradient of up to 33 ‰. Officially there were 982 soldiers as passengers on the train, but there were probably more. The train now consisted of 19 cars: one baggage car at the beginning and one at the end, 15 four-axle passenger carriages with bogies , all of the older Italian design with steel frames and wooden bodies, and the two two-axle cars attached in Modane. Of the cars, only the first three had air brakes , seven only had hand brakes, the others no brakes at all. The train weighed 526 tons and thus had a weight that was four times what was permitted. It was 350 meters long.
the accident
The engine driver had concerns about being able to keep the heavy, mostly hand-braked train under control. An officer threatened him with a court martial if he refused to continue. He then drove the train downhill at 11:15 p.m. and immediately began to brake.
From Freney onwards , however, it hardly had any effect. The train moved downhill with increasing speed and reached up to 135 km / h. After about 6.5 km at a speed of 100 km / h (40 km / h were permitted here) 1,300 meters in front of the Saint-Michel-de-Maurienne train station, the first car derailed in a sharp bend in a notch and turned sideways . The other wagons ran into him and shoved together. Candles, which served as the lighting in the car, put the debris on fire and the spreading fire brought by soldiers illegally carried ammunition to the explosion . The coupling between the tender and the wagon broke and the engine driver managed to bring the engine to a halt in the Saint-Michel-de-Maurienne station. Completely fixated on the braking, he only noticed here that he had lost the train.
consequences
The train had crashed in a difficult-to-reach place, which made rescue work difficult. The fire was so strong that it could only be extinguished after about 24 hours. The number of dead is estimated at 700, only 420 victims were identified. The remaining bodies were so disfigured by the force of the collision and the subsequent fire that it was no longer possible to identify them. The victims were buried in the Saint Michel de Maurienne cemetery. In 1961 they were reburied in the Lyon-La Doua national military cemetery .
The accident was immediately declared a military secret, so it was barely mentioned in the press. Six employees of the Compagnie des Chemins de fer de Paris à Lyon et à la Méditerranée , including the engine driver, had to stand trial before a court martial , but were acquitted . The officer who ordered the descent was not prosecuted.
In June 1923, the French Minister of Transport, André Maginot , inaugurated a memorial to the victims of the accident in the Saint-Michel-de-Maurienne cemetery. In 1998 another memorial was inaugurated in La Saussaz, near the accident site.
literature
- Bruno Carrière: La tragédie du train fou de Saint-Michel-de-Maurienne . In: Rail Passion 12 (November 1996), pp. 70-77.
- Jean-Louis Chardans: Le train fou de Saint-Michel-de-Maurienne . In: Historia 311 (October 1972).
- André Pallatier: Le tragique destin d'un train de permissionnaires: Maurienne December 12, 1917 . Éditions L'Harmattan 2013. ISBN 2-3430-0849-3 et 9-782-3430-0849-3
Web links
Remarks
- ↑ 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”. The number of deaths in the railway accident in Ciurea , Romania, on January 13, 1917, varies between 600 and 1,000, depending on the source.
Coordinates: 45 ° 12 ′ 39.9 ″ N , 6 ° 29 ′ 11.1 ″ E