Spain train derailment may have been caused by major track failure, report says
A preliminary report reveals the rail was likely broken before the Iryo train derailed and struck a Renfe train in one of Europe’s worst crashes
An investigation into last weekend’s high-speed train collision in Spain that killed 45 people suggests the track was cracked before the catastrophe, according to a preliminary report published on Friday.
The shell-shocked country is searching for answers to one of Europe’s deadliest such accidents this century, which has raised doubts about the safety of the world’s second-largest high-speed rail network.
The disaster struck in the southern region of Andalusia on Sunday evening when a train run by the private firm Iryo derailed and crossed onto the adjacent track, smashing into an oncoming service operated by the state company Renfe.
An inspection of the Iryo train “detected notches in the tread of the right-sided wheels” of four carriages, said the preliminary report by the CIAF rail accident investigation committee.
“These notches in the wheels and the deformation observed in the track are compatible with the fact that the track was cracked,” it wrote in what it called a “working hypothesis”.