Italy - transport incidents and issues, merged posts

[whole diary]

[stuving]

This picture shows its face, from which I think it can be recognised as an Alstom ETR610 Cisalpino Due with Trenitalia's logo on its nose. So it is a tilter.

From International Business Times: Michael Buholzer/AFP/Getty Images.

Now, does that offer a specific explanation of how it derailed? Because it is an odd one - only one carriage involved, and it lurched over sideways far enough to demolish an OHLE portal and finish at an angle of more than 45^o.

[trainer]

So it is a tilter.

So it would appear. 

[Tim]

Now, does that offer a specific explanation of how it derailed? Because it is an odd one - only one carriage involved, and it lurched over sideways far enough to demolish an OHLE portal and finish at an angle of more than 45^o.

My thoughts are that this all happened at very low speed.  The only reason that the vehicles "behind" the derailed one are not derailed themselves may be because the train stopped quickly before those vehicles reached whatever (incorrectly set points/track defect/whatever) caused the derailment. 

[stuving]

The swiss investigators (SESE/SUST/SISI/STSB) are quoted as saying the train derailed at points, and they are allowing the train to be mended enough to be taken to its depot in Italy. And, looking at those pictures again, the three carriages after the capsized one are only close to the track, not running on it. Moreover, that track isn't the one the front of the train is on. So a more likely explanation is that the back of coach 4 derailed and/or the points moved under it, so it was travelling slightly sideways and when one of its bogies was blocked it rolled over. But as always, time and investigation will tell.

[Noggin]

I wonder if those units have a Swiss or Italian driver?

One hypothesis of course is that it was an Italian driver and they somehow misunderstood a nuance of the Swiss signalling or Swiss German language, and went before they should have, with the points changing beneath the train.

Of course the other possibility is that it was a simple human error.

[grahame]

Learning from experience elsewhere in the world - I wonder if something like this would be useful to a city like Cambridge, where they love to try out innovative technologies.

https://www.amt.genova.it/amt/trasporto-multimodale/ascensori/ascensore-montegalletto/

[stuving]

Learning from experience elsewhere in the world - I wonder if something like this would be useful to a city like Cambridge, where they love to try out innovative technologies.

https://www.amt.genova.it/amt/trasporto-multimodale/ascensori/ascensore-montegalletto/

Apart from the vertical bit, which seems a bit superfluous in Cambridge!

This video makes it all a bit easier to understand.

[stuving]

There are other approaches to 2-D lifts. ThyssenKrupp are promoting one using linear motors (look mum no wires!), which they have been demonstrating in their test tower in Rottweil*. There's a video of that too, which shows it working (and there's more in their sales material online too).  I'm not convinced by that as a solution - it just looks wrong, somehow. No doubt other makers are also working on similar ideas - and in the case of Kone, their test facility goes the other way: it's in an old mine shaft.

*Yes, of course it's where Rottweilers come from.

[SandTEngineer]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-42816003

A commuter train has derailed near the northern Italian city of Milan, killing at least three people and injuring about 100, officials say.

Firefighters are trying to free several people trapped in the carriages of the train that derailed at the Pioltello Limito station.

Ten people are critically injured. Hundreds of commuters were on board.

A problem with the coupling between carriages is being investigated as a possible cause of the accident.

The Trenord train was heading to Milan's Porta Garibaldi station from Cremona when the incident happened at around 07:00 (06:00 GMT).

[SandTEngineer]

Speculation Alert it looks as the derailment might have been started by this:

[stuving]

The investigation into this accident reported in December 2017, and an English summary of the recommendations has been provided by RSSB^▸ (Rail Safety and Standards Board) (in a summary of recent investigation reports).

At 11:05 (local time) on 12 July 2016, two passenger trains collided on a curve on the single line section between Andria and Corato, in Apulia, Italy.

Twenty-three people were killed (including one of the drivers and a person working in a nearby Olive Grove who was struck by debris); 50 people sustained major injuries.
Italy: Head-on collision near Andria

The trains involved were a service from Bari to Barletta (ET1016) and one travelling in the opposite direction, from Barletta to Bari (ET1021). They were travelling at speeds of up to 62 mph at the time of the incident.

The curve meant that neither driver had a chance to sight the other train or attempt an emergency brake application before the impact.

It was reported early on that the station master at Andria had admitted dispatching a train, allowing it onto the occupied single line, in error. The National Investigating Body corroborated that admission, adding that a third train - ET1642, running late from Corato to Andria and preceding ET1016 - had been confused with ET1016, causing said station master to assume the track between Andria and Corato was free of traffic once the late train had departed northbound for Barletta.
Recommendations

•     The Ministry of Infrastructures and Transport should make the Italian legislation consistent with the European legislation with regard to the correct identification of functionally isolated networks in order to develop and improve the safety of the system in accordance with Directive 2004/49/EC.
•     The Ministry of Infrastructures and Transport should ensure that accident reporting is extended to incidents – namely any event, other than an accident, which affects or may affect the safety of operation.
•     The Ministry of Infrastructures and Transport should assess the advisability of reporting accidents and incidents, occurring in all public inland transport services, to an independent investigation body to allow, inter alia, the analysis of elements leading to serious accidents aimed at prevention.
•     The Ministry of Infrastructures and Transport should make every effort to ensure that railway undertakings using the telephone blocking system verify that the Train Movement Regulation contains, in the case of one train following another, a direct control by third parties on the safety operation that must be carried out by the Local Traffic Manager to authorize the second train, by analogy with the control of the crossing trains which must be carried out by the on-board staff.
•     The Italian National Safety Authority for Railways and the Ministry of Infrastructures and Transport should make every effort to ensure the railway undertakings using the telephone blocking system verify that the filling out of the Movement Protocols is consistent with the actual situation of the rolling stock that the Local Traffic Manager is managing, avoiding the presence of blanks in the register ascribable to vehicles no longer present in the station.
•     The Italian National Safety Authority for Railways should make every effort to ensure that the infrastructure manager adopts measures to prohibit access by third parties to premises intended for staff working in the Local Traffic Manager’s room.
  
•     The Italian National Safety Authority for Railways and the Ministry of Infrastructures and Transport should verify that both the infrastructure managers and the railway undertakings have adequate audit/inspection activities in place on safety critical staff, aimed at maintaining competences.

If you can cope with the original report, the ERA has a link to copy of it here.

[SandTEngineer]

Thanks for posting that.  Is there anyway of converting an Italian PDF into an English one as I would like to have a read of the full report?

[stuving]

Thanks for posting that.  Is there anyway of converting an Italian PDF into an English one as I would like to have a read of the full report?

You can try popping bits of text into something like Google Translate - but I find the result pretty wearing to read: it alters my comment above to "if you can cope with a machine translation".

There are several claimed online document translators, some of them free. I just tried onlinedoctranslator.com, and the result is a lot better than Google's efforts. Obviously it still takes a lot of interpreting, for example in the meaning of technical terms, but it does not look impossible. NOTE: Malwarebytes detected an attempt to download "malware", and stopped it - always an issue with something that looks helpful and is free.

[SandTEngineer]

Thanks again, STUVING.  I'll give it a try.

[SandTEngineer]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-45183624

A little bit railway related as it fell onto railway tracks below.

A motorway bridge has collapsed in the northwest Italian city of Genoa, killing at least 35 people as vehicles plummeted to the ground, emergency services say.

Dramatic video footage captured the moment of the disaster when one of the huge supporting towers crashed down during torrential rain.

Vehicles and debris fell 45m (148ft) on to rail tracks, buildings and a river.

Rescuers are trying to free people caught in crushed vehicles or rubble.

Fears that other parts of the bridge might fall have prompted the evacuation of buildings in the area, a rescuer told Italy's Ansa news agency.

Interior Minister Matteo Salvini promised that anyone found to be responsible for the bridge collapse would be held to account.