“Will they allow an airport control tower worker to work non-stop without a day off?” Yesterday 61 year old George Apostoleris there was sadness and anger in him. Stationmaster for 40 consecutive years, from 1982 until his retirement in September 2022, he remembers working seven months without a day off for the last seven months because there was no replacement. “Every day of every month I would come to the station at 3 am and leave at 2.30 pm. I endured because I loved this job, but who can do the same without having a day to see their children?” You shudder at one thought: what was the cost of such fatigue?

The experienced railroad worker also did not sleep at all yesterday. His colleagues called him shortly after midnight on Tuesday with the tragic news from Larisa. They knew she would want to know.

The accident happened near his “home”, on the roads that he knew inside and out. Apostoleris was the last stationmaster of Volos. With his departure, the historic station was left without a permanent staff for the first time in 138 years of operation. The rest of the employees were transferred to Larisa to meet the needs in connection with work on the railway network.

“The stationmaster is not an easy profession. He doesn’t just give the signal and leave.” says “K”. “He only goes to school when the train arrives at the station. He has a huge responsibility, so he is the owner of the station, there is no one above him. But the head of the station is also the same person as you,” he adds. “As you can be wrong, so can he. Some errors can be corrected, while others, unfortunately, cannot. If this happened in this case, then it is something tragic. I don’t want to put iodine on the wound, but no one wants to have 40+ dead people on their conscience because of the wrong choice.”

Giorgos Apostoleris, head of the Volos station for 40 years, talks about the harsh working conditions and the unbearable burden of responsibility.

“Electric chair”

According to him, he was also accidentally removed at the wrong time, pick up the phone and deal with the service problem. “However, these were bugs that have been fixed. Yesterday was not canceled because there is pressure on the system. We railroad workers know how it happened, but the fact is that it could have been avoided if the state had opposed the railroad. Because not only the human factor is to blame. One worker alone cannot judge the safe movement of trains. You are sitting in the electric chair. You don’t know whether you will go home when you study, or to the prosecutor’s office, or to prison.” According to him, such an accident could not have happened in Switzerland or Germany precisely because remote control systems are installed there. “Also abroad you see dozens of trains passing through every station, in Greece there are only 5 Intercity trains running 24 hours a day between Athens and Thessaloniki.”

It is characteristic that when he was transferred to Volos, he discovered at the station a train traffic control panel installed by the Germans in 1941 (kept in the city railway museum). “There is nothing like it today. We know when the courier is 200 meters from our house, but we don’t know where the trains are.”

According to Giorgos Apostoleris, governments should be next to the train. “Now against. They didn’t support the Greek railway. And I’m not speaking politically, I’m speaking officially. No staff, no support. Count how many line workers there were in the 90s and how many in the 20s. How many train drivers, how many bosses This does not mean that because the computer came, we will replace jobs, because … the computer did not come!”

Mr. Apostoleris mourns for nine of his colleagues who died in the Tempi tragedy. “For me, they were relatives, family. To the people you wave and wish a happy birthday, ask how your child is doing, wish them a good rest. The bond between us is special. I also cannot accept the death of so many passengers unscathed. March 1 is not spring, but a national tragedy.”