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No official passengers. That’s the important distinction.
I’m talking about the Balvano train disaster. This happened on March 3, 1944. Italy was in the middle of WW2, which had a large effect on the people, who often faced storages and rations of food and other necessary supplies. As a result, black market trading was common. People would hitch rides on freight trains to go to the countryside, trade what they had prepared, and hitch a ride to return to their cities. This was something that wasn’t officially allowed, but no one cared enough to stop it.
On this day, 60ish people hopped onto a train at night. This train was loaded with freight. Along the route, there was a tunnel with a somewhat steep incline (common for that region). As the train entered the tunnel, it reached a point where the wheels could only slip, so the train ended up stuck almost fully in the tunnel. The engines weren’t strong enough to be able to carry both the stowaways and the freight, and the tracks were wet. The coal used was low quality, and pretty soon, people started dying of carbon monoxide poisoning due to the buildup of smoke in the tunnel. Most people died in their sleep, without ever knowing what happened. The person driving one of the locomotives tried backing out of the tunnel, but fainted before he could.
Eventually, the previous station got word of the incident after the brakeman of the last car made his way to the station, and a couple rescue teams were sent. It’s really difficult to say how many people there were, how many victims, and how many survivors, due to the lack of documentation of most of the people. However, estimates for the number of people total tend to be around the 600-650 mark, while the death toll is often put at around 520. Most of the survivors tended to be in the last few cars which had more fresh air.
Initially, this was all covered up. The government didn’t want to give that kind of demoralizing news in the midst of a civil war within WW2. Afterwards, families of the identified victims (not the majority) were entitled to compensation pay as war victims. Most of the whole weren’t identified, and most were buried in common graves nearby. Even now, not all details are always clear. What’s clear is that this story seems to tick off none of the boxes for bad railway accidents: it’s not a passenger train and no collisions were involved. But despite that, it has one of the highest death rates for train accidents, particularly by percentage. And especially heartbreaking for the many victims families who never found out what happened. Crazy stuff.
I’m talking about the Balvano train disaster. This happened on March 3, 1944. Italy was in the middle of WW2, which had a large effect on the people, who often faced storages and rations of food and other necessary supplies. As a result, black market trading was common. People would hitch rides on freight trains to go to the countryside, trade what they had prepared, and hitch a ride to return to their cities. This was something that wasn’t officially allowed, but no one cared enough to stop it.
On this day, 60ish people hopped onto a train at night. This train was loaded with freight. Along the route, there was a tunnel with a somewhat steep incline (common for that region). As the train entered the tunnel, it reached a point where the wheels could only slip, so the train ended up stuck almost fully in the tunnel. The engines weren’t strong enough to be able to carry both the stowaways and the freight, and the tracks were wet. The coal used was low quality, and pretty soon, people started dying of carbon monoxide poisoning due to the buildup of smoke in the tunnel. Most people died in their sleep, without ever knowing what happened. The person driving one of the locomotives tried backing out of the tunnel, but fainted before he could.
Eventually, the previous station got word of the incident after the brakeman of the last car made his way to the station, and a couple rescue teams were sent. It’s really difficult to say how many people there were, how many victims, and how many survivors, due to the lack of documentation of most of the people. However, estimates for the number of people total tend to be around the 600-650 mark, while the death toll is often put at around 520. Most of the survivors tended to be in the last few cars which had more fresh air.
Initially, this was all covered up. The government didn’t want to give that kind of demoralizing news in the midst of a civil war within WW2. Afterwards, families of the identified victims (not the majority) were entitled to compensation pay as war victims. Most of the whole weren’t identified, and most were buried in common graves nearby. Even now, not all details are always clear. What’s clear is that this story seems to tick off none of the boxes for bad railway accidents: it’s not a passenger train and no collisions were involved. But despite that, it has one of the highest death rates for train accidents, particularly by percentage. And especially heartbreaking for the many victims families who never found out what happened. Crazy stuff.
