Today it is difficult to imagine our life without a railway. It connects cities and countries, hundreds of tons of cargo daily ply on its track, and travel in a train carriage is pleasant and does not hit the wallet. The railway mode of transport is considered to be the safest. Unfortunately, accidents sometimes happen here, some of them are striking in their scale.
Disaster statistics
A disaster on the railroad is a pile of twisted metal and the grief of families who have lost their loved ones. With the advent of railway lines, no one could have imagined what the inept management of the train could turn out to be.
It is known that the very first railway accident in the history of mankind occurred in 1815 near Philadelphia. During the demonstration, a diesel locomotive boiler exploded, killing 16 participants. Major accidents happened in Britain and France about every 15 years or so, most often caused by a steam locomotive explosion. In 1840, in Shushary near St. Petersburg, a railway tragedy claimed the lives of six, dozens were injured. Then similar accidents occurred at the Klin station, in the Tula region and on the Odessa railway. So people had to pay for the development of world progress.
Accidents happened all over the world, and Russia was no exception. Dozens of major accidents have occurred during the years of the Soviet Union. In the 21st century, with the increase in the share of rail traffic, the number of accidents increased. Russian Railways is not very willing to share statistics on accidents in its industry, so the public has access to information only on the most high-profile train crashes.
For the most part, people trust the railway; during the trip, many do not feel fear, like in the cabin of an airplane. But it is worth considering that the illusion of complete security is relative in our technogenic age.
The first disasters in the USSR
For Soviet railroad workers, 1930 turned out to be terrible. This period was marked by two major accidents at once. For a certain period of time, these events frightened the population of the country and many began to choose a more reliable mode of transport.
The first case occurred in September at the Pererve station near Moscow, near the village of Maryino. The driver of the passenger train # 34 Makarov arrived at the station and reported a malfunction in the locomotive. On the way, he had to stop several times and carry out repairs. Instead of giving another locomotive to replace the faulty locomotive, the management added another locomotive to hedge and strengthen the composition. When Makarov tried to get under way, the additional locomotive tore all the fasteners. Five carriages with passengers remained in place, and the locomotive went ahead. At this time, another steam locomotive arrived at the station, which at the last moment noticed the pastures standing at the edge of the platform and urgently braked. 13 people were killed, dozens were injured.
In the same year, an absurd accident led to a collision of a freight train with a passing tram. It happened in Leningrad, near the Moscow Gate. It turned out that on that day there was a malfunction in the operation of the control center and the railway workers did not have time to switch the switch in time. The tram driver noticed the approaching train in the last seconds. From the strongest collision, the last carriage was torn off, and it lay down on the rails, a fire started. This day claimed the lives of 28 people.
1952 crash
The war wiped out not only dozens of cities and villages, but hundreds of kilometers of railway tracks were damaged and bombed. Much had to be restored, even more rebuilt. The railway network stretched to the most remote corners of the USSR, Siberia was conquered. But not everything went so smoothly, and soon the country heard about a major train disaster. It happened in August 1952 at the Drovnino station near Moscow. The driver of the night train brought his passengers to the capital, there was not much left to get to the city. A terrible blow woke up the sleeping people, the reason for this was a horse that was in the path of the train. And although the weight of the animal was small, the train cars went downhill. When the rescuers arrived at the scene, they saw a terrible picture: a third of the passengers were buried in a pile of crumpled metal. 109 people found their death at this place, more than 200 were admitted to hospitals.
Ashinskaya tragedy
The incident in Drovnino has long been considered the biggest railway tragedy. Four decades later, the 1989 disaster eclipsed her. A gas leak occurred near the city of Ashi. The gas company recorded unstable pressure in the pipeline and was aware of the situation. Instead of shutting off the fuel supply, she increased the pressure in the pipe. Explosive condensate began to accumulate, and when two high-speed trains to Novosibirsk and Adler passed on the Asha-Ulu-Telyak section, an explosion was heard. A tremendous force scattered the cars around the area, and then the ground flared like a torch. The city of Asha, near which the explosion thundered, is located in the Chelyabinsk region, a hundred kilometers from the capital of Bashkiria, Ufa. The townspeople were awakened by the news of the terrible events of the June night, many remembered the pillar of fire that flared up in the sky. Dozens of people remained in the carriages that had burned out to the ground, begging for help, and not all of the firefighters were saved, as evidenced by the terrible photos of the tragedy. Almost 600 people died from burns and wounds.
A similar major traffic accident occurred near the city of Arzamas in 1988. At the crossing, wagons carrying a dangerous cargo - hexogen for the mining industry exploded. A deep crater was formed at the point of the explosion, 91 people died, 1,500 were injured. Hundreds of families were left homeless, and public buildings suffered significant damage. The government commission investigated the incident for several months.
Tragedies of the 90s
After 1991, railroad disasters continued in Russia. A new shock was the accident in 1992 on the section of the Velikiye Luki-Rzhev track. Due to the severe frost, the warning system ceased to function, the passenger diesel locomotive did not know about the freight train standing at the crossing and crashed into its tail. The strongest blow instantly took the lives of 43 citizens, twice as many were seriously injured, both drivers died on the spot.
In August 1994, an hour's drive from Belgorod, several freight train cars detached from the train and fell onto the tracks. An oncoming train crashed into them. This accident killed 20 passengers. A similar situation occurred on the section of the Kemerovo railway. The train drove out towards the carriages with cement, which rolled away from the train to the station. A year later, near Nizhny Novgorod, mail and freight trains collided. The blow was so strong that the gas in the tanks exploded. This resulted in the death of 6 people.
In the new century
Disasters continued with the onset of the new century. In November 2009, on the route Moscow - St. Petersburg, two carriages of high-speed train No. 166 went off the rails due to an explosion of an explosive device, which tore out a piece of rails about half a meter. The investigation established that the cause was a terrorist act, the charge was laid under the electric locomotive "Nevsky Express". One carriage lay on its side immediately, and the second, before falling, drove another 130 meters until it collided with a concrete support. In this crash, 28 people died, two of them women who were expecting a child, 132 passengers required medical assistance. The victims of terrorism on the railway were passengers in Essentuki and the Nizhny Novgorod region in 2003 and 2009.
In 2011, the Ashinsky region of the Urals was again on the list of major disasters. Near the town of Sim, a freight train traveling at high speed failed the brakes. The train caught up with the train in front and crashed into its tail. As a result, two electric locomotives and several carriages went off the rails, both drivers were killed. The cause of the disaster was the negligence of Russian Railways employees. The culprit of the brake line damage was a bull that had been hit by a locomotive a few hours earlier. The damaged system was restored on the way, but, as it turned out, temporarily, and soon the train became unmanageable. In addition to two victims, dozens of trains were forced to stand idle awaiting liquidation of the consequences of the disaster.
In 2016, at the Balakirevo crossing, the driver of a car broke the rules and went to the crossing. There was a collision with a train, the train pulled the car over 50 meters, but the driver was "born in a shirt." The accident delayed the movement of trains for 3 hours.
Statistics show that the number of train accidents is not decreasing. According to Wikipedia, their number has exceeded the figures for 2017 and 2018 since the beginning of this year. The reason lies in the deterioration of mechanisms, the human factor, the actions of terrorists. But sometimes it turns out that a simple set of circumstances can affect. Recently, a truck fell on the railroad track near Sochi, the driver of which lost control. By a lucky coincidence, they managed to avoid a collision with a train, but the work of the railway stopped for several hours.
