The high speed train which derailed earlier this month in north-east France was travelling too fast as it entered its final turn, an initial investigation has found.
Operator SNCF announced late last week the findings of an initial investigation into the derailment of the test train on a new section of track, which resulted in the death of 11 of the 53 people on-board, and left 37 more injured.
According to the investigation the train was travelling at 243km/h as it entered a roughly 950-metre bend.
Due to the nature of the testing, the train was supposed to be going faster than its rating allowed, but SNCF said that even under those conditions, it still should have been going no faster than 176km/h into the bend.
SNCF chief auditor Christian Cochet said the train’s black box recorder showed braking had started too late.
He also said there were seven people inside the cabin of the train when the incident took place.
“For [the train] to have entered the zone at the planned speed, braking would probably have had to start around one kilometre earlier,” Cochet said in a press conference last week (quotes have been translated from the original French).
“In the event, the centrifugal force generated by its speed caused the train to lean outward from the curve.
“The locomotive tipped and fell onto the embankment and the carriages and rear power car separated, left the platform, and crossed the canal to the opposite bank.
“The investigators have not identified any other possible causes of the derailment. They observed no anomaly in the infrastructure that could have triggered a derailment, nor did they observe any anomaly in the trainset or in its maintenance.”
Cochet said the next step was a series of more in-depth investigations.
“Further investigations must now look more closely into the procedures and processes, as well as how these were applied in the context of organizational and human factors,” he said.
“These further analyses will focus in particular on the organization and actual braking sequence, with the presence of seven people in the driver’s cab being a disruptive factor.”
SNCF president Guillame Pepy offered his condolences to the families of those who had lost their lives in the incident.
“This accident should never have happened,” he said.
“It has hit some of our key people directly. Yet there is no reason to avoid a clear-eyed review of the accident simply because our top experts were on board.
“We owe it to the victims, their family and their loved ones, as well as to all rail workers and, of course, to the French citizens who place their trust in us.
“Because we are scheduled to conduct tests on three other high-speed lines in the near future, and because safety is now, more than ever, an absolute imperative, and because doubt is debilitating, we are committed to acting quickly, responsibly and transparently.”
