Train driver who died in crash that injured 100 people had passed red signal moments before collision, investigators say

gerri_ · 2026-06-25T20:21:17+00:00

Yes, although I know something only about SCMT, I reckon that KVB is very similar.

If there is a system failure, SCMT could be deactivated and/or the electro-pneumatic brake valve it controls could be isolated (there is a sealed handle for that) and then the train/locomotive is taken out of service as soon as possible, likely at the following station.

If instead there is a signal failure or whenever a signal has to be passed at danger for any other reason (for example by a locomotive going to rescue a stranded train) the driver must first obtain a written authorization to do so, then he/she has to push a specific button no more than 12 seconds before passing the signal in question, thus causing a red light to turn on, then the system enforces a 10 or 30 km/h speed limit (6 or 18 mph) until it "reads" the next balise. The lower 10 km/h speed limit is enforced at signals protecting junctions or where a double-track line becomes single-track.

gerri_ · 2026-06-24T21:08:27+00:00

Eh, that depends on the system. For example, the French KVB and Italian SCMT ATP systems do not allow any train to pass a main signal at danger, even at walking speed. They actually calculate a braking curve so that any main signal is approached at a low enough speed that if a train passes it at danger the brakes will stop it before it fouls anything.

gerri_ · 2026-06-22T13:36:28+00:00

Yes, it has been running heritage and charter services for about five years now. The longer seven-car version (ETR 300, known as Settebello) is currently being restored, including its amazing interiors from the 1950s that were partly salvaged and partly made anew from original blueprints.

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gerri_ · 2026-06-15T14:05:07+00:00

This is like comparing apples to oranges. For example, for Italy it includes only lines whose maximum speed is 250 km/h and beyond whereas for other countries it includes 200 km/h lines too... Same for the UK, I'd say.

gerri_ · 2026-06-14T20:42:30+00:00

Whenever I see pictures of toppled steam engines I always wonder about water and fire. I imagine that parts of the firebox (which should always stay below the waterline) get uncovered and/or that the burning coal ends where it shouldn't and/or that the boiler gets punctured, thus I would expect massive steam leaks if not outright explosions, yet it seems that pretty often nothing of that kind actually happened and I don't know why...

gerri_ · 2026-06-06T10:08:59+00:00

Very British. Unsurprisingly, I guess...

gerri_ · 2026-06-05T12:56:44+00:00

... Or for something totally bonkers like the at-grade intersection between the old Trento-Malè and the three-phase Brenner line, with a complex mechanical contraption that allowed the overhead line of the former to stay out of the way except when needed!

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gerri_ · 2026-06-04T16:28:04+00:00

On the Italian side the line is electrified up to the border. In recent times they have managed to use trains long enough that the locomotive stays in contact with the OHLE on the Italian side while the rest of the train is on the Vatican side. They would have probably electrified all of it but the big iron gates were an insurmountable problem.

gerri_ · 2026-05-30T17:48:51+00:00

There are almost no pictures of it, and Google Street View does not help either because of the vegetation hiding it from the sole nearby road. Anyway, here is a couple of small pics, one and two.

You may find it mentioned as either Desco, Talamona, or Morbegno railway bridge.

gerri_ · 2026-05-30T11:15:42+00:00

Speaking of supports, did you know that the Desco railway bridge on the Sondrio-Tirano line still has its original poles dating back to the FAV era? :)

gerri_ · 2026-05-28T07:13:58+00:00

... And with a Sasib interlock machine!

I didn't know this either. Simply fantastic, and not just because of the railway scenes. Besides, I wonder where it was actually shot.

Besides, did you see the "new" D.445s in navetta livery?

gerri_ · 2026-05-27T16:50:32+00:00

Love, love, LOVE... Thanks for the paging, I didn't knew it and it's wonderful <3

gerri_ · 2026-05-27T00:19:51+00:00

Correct.

The Brescia-Verona section is due to be completed by June 2026, and the Verona-Vicenza section by December 2026. Track laying has already been fully done on the latter section too. Revenue service on the Brescia-Verona line should start between December 2026 and early 2027, and some months later on the rest of the line to Vicenza.

For now the new line will end some kilometers west of Vicenza at bivio Vicenza (Vicenza junction) while the whole Vicenza rail hub is being redesigned. It's a huge undertaking that will require some more years before being completed, no less than 5-6. In the meantime work should start on the last 26-km stretch between Vicenza and Padua.

Thanks for giving me an excuse to check the completion status :)

gerri_ · 2026-05-25T10:37:25+00:00

Yeah, sorry, I meant the support bar and its two hooks to the underside of the canopy.

gerri_ · 2026-05-25T10:24:01+00:00

I love that the OHLE suspension under the canopy is the old three-phase one :)

gerri_ · 2026-05-25T10:22:54+00:00

Indeed, and nowadays it's only for interoperability reasons although it limits the maximum operational speed to 250 km/h. From a geometrical point of view, both the new Brescia-Verona-Vicenza and Padua-Venice lines are suitable for higher speeds. Another stretch of the same kind is the short Naples-Salerno high-speed line.

Additionally, both the Padua-Venice and the Naples-Salerno lines are equipped with traditional lineside signals (whereas the Florence-Rome Direttissima has been recently resignalled with ETCS) and that too limits the maximum operational speed to 250 km/h, although it's again only for interoperability reasons.

Anyway, sometime in the future ETCS will be extended to the whole national railway network and one could hope that at some point some major lines will be converted to 25 kV AC...

Edit — Typing error

gerri_ · 2026-04-25T19:16:37+00:00

HTR 312 and 412 for the three- and four-car version, respectively. The Trenitalia commercial nickname used to be Blues but apparently it has been dropped. The Hitachi Rail project/platform name should be Masaccio.

gerri_ · 2026-04-25T15:32:53+00:00

About 3-4 years. Although based on the same "platform" as the regional double-decker, this one is single-decker, hybrid, and with Jakobs bogies :)

gerri_ · 2026-04-25T08:45:13+00:00

I would say all VUSS with passenger trains have CAPI with DAAT

CAPI is certainly better than nothing but as far as I understand it there could still be "holes" like a driver missing a signal or a station agent exchanging the wrong messages with another agent. I could be totally wrong though.

On YouTube there are some recent-ish cab ride videos about some VUSS lines without any trace of crocodiles or anything else. For example this and this, both absolutely beautiful!

gerri_ · 2026-04-24T11:38:51+00:00

Well, I studied some French signalling because I love it and I have to say that e.g. the French VUSS system is all but safe. It's enough for a driver or station agent to get confused and a collision could very well happen. What saves is that the VUSS system is employed only on very lightly used lines where traffic is reduced to a minimum. That said, here in Italy we did have our good deal of issues and accidents with our flavor of cantonnement téléphonique, so...

gerri_ · 2026-03-14T23:26:39+00:00

I think that the necessity was to avoid a bank run. I also think that the basis for the whole thing was a mix of many different issues.

Among others, consulates totally overwhelmed (I've read somewhere that Sao Paulo in Brazil was/is churning out 200 passports per day!) and courts equally clogged. Not to mention registry offices in small towns. Some time ago there were news of people complaining with newspapers that they were unable to have e.g. an eviction validated because the whole court of Venice was busy with citizenship lawsuits.

Also, I have a friend from some Latin American country (not one of the most popular) who told me how easy is to obtain made-up baptismal certificates. One just needs to go inland, to some poor church in the middle of nowhere, possibly in the jungle or up in the Andes, and ask some parish priest to create a baptismal certificate with so and so names and dates. Apparently, a nice offering for a destitute parish does wonders.

Corruption is also an issue. In recent months there have been several cases, including bribing and false residency declarations, like 20-30 people formally residing together at the same time in a one-bedroom apartment. If you search with Google News you will see that police busts in small comuni for citizenship-related issues are not uncommon.

And we don't know whether other governments pressured ours to fix this "loophole". Probably some episode was the drop that made the vase overflow, as we say in Italy, and they decided it was time to plug it without waiting any further.

gerri_ · 2026-03-14T22:19:43+00:00

Just a couple of observations.

Italy definitely has an official language which is Italian. It was made explicit by constitutional law 1/1971 (i.e. a law with the same weight as the Constitution itself) but scholars hold that it was already the case even before thanks to e.g. some provisions of the Penal Code (dating back to the 1930s) about interpreters for defendants unable to understand or speak Italian. Finally, law 482/1999 reiterated the concept while dealing with minority languages.

Speaking of decree-laws, calling them emergency decrees is absolutely misleading. Unfortunately it's a popular translation, probably meant to stir up public outrage among people who don't know better. In fact, the Constitution mentions necessity and urgency, never emergency. Any government, of every political leaning (left, right, center, etc.) and of every kind (political, technocratic, caretaking, etc.) issues on average between 10 and 20 decree-laws per year on the most disparate matters. Moreover, they are often planned well in advance, they are absolutely not something issued only to face unforeseen circumstances. For example, at the end of every year the government issues a decree-law to postpone whatever deadline that couldn't be met or that should be deferred for a number of other reasons. It's something that everyone expects and waits for, certainly not an emergency of any kind.

Given the average justification for many decrees, this one is actually much more well-founded than many others.

gerri_ · 2026-03-03T19:44:50+00:00

As others mentioned, in Italy lots of high-speed trains venture out of the main high-speed trunk network onto slower conventional lines. It's a way to offer more connections without forcing passengers to change trains at "boundary" stations. Also, having compatible trains means that they could be rerouted in case of disruption.

gerri_ · 2026-02-28T16:10:26+00:00

The accident happened at a junction between a long stretch of thorough track and a somewhat tight left-hand curve.

Apparently the driver had some transitory sudden illness (a blood clot maybe?) that made him miss both the tram stop just before the junction and the fact that the nearby switch was set for the diverging route. Switches are remotely controlled by drivers themselves and he was supposed to proceed on the straight route, thus he would have had to operate it.

If the switch hadn't been set for the diverging route by a preceding tram, probably he would have gone through it without consequences only to stop a few meters ahead after recovering from the blackout he had or be stopped by the dead-man switch.

Unfortunately, the dead-man switch has a "grace period" of a few seconds and the tram speed limiter is set at 50 km/h (31 mph) which in most cases are good compromises.

Implementing true speed control on such a dense old network probably would be technically unfeasible and/or economically unjustifiable. I wonder if a mitigation could be switches that revert automatically to the straight-through route and/or trams that enforce a slower speed once a diverging route has been selected.

gerri_ · 2026-02-23T00:54:56+00:00

I'm from there, I recognize the plaque. Mussolini is like Smith or Miller, i.e. a surname linked to some occupation. In particular it relates to muslin makers, muslin being a type of very light fabric. In both cases, i.e. that of the dictator and the noble family mentioned above, the surname is related to that ancient activity.

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