The 59-year-old Larisa of the head of the station, B.S., was taken into custody. he did not know or preferred not to use the remote control system on the night of February 28, which has been installed and has been operating at Larisa station for several months.

He relied on an old control panel to plot the route, resulting in him losing one of his keys and sending the Intercity 62 train downstream, where a commercial train was running in the opposite direction.

Two of his more experienced colleagues, who were on duty on the fateful night of the crash, did not use the old control panel, but an automated electronic route marking system. However, they left their post early, which led to a fatal incident. The above conclusions are most revealingly reflected in the “black box” of the remote control system, the event registration board, which operates at the “Larisa” station and is exclusively brought to the light “K”.

Until ten o’clock in the evening on February 28, the control panel recorded every minute all the orders of the station chiefs. However, after 22:12, when two experienced employees leave their post, leaving only 59-year-old B.S., the system dies. A little over an hour later, the two trains collided.

According to the OGE, Larisa is one of the 36 stations of the country’s railway network, where a remote control system is already in operation. The stationmaster maps the route of the train electronically, observing on the computer screen the movement of trains, the line on which they move, their direction, etc. In case of an error, the system warns him. In particular, in the Larissa area, the system has a range from the previous railway station (Sirotskaya) up to 5.5 kilometers after the city railway station in the direction of the scene.

The “black box” of Larisa’s remote control system recorded all the movements of the stationmasters from 9:50 pm on February 28 to 2:39 am on March 1, about three hours after the accident. From 9.50 and for the next 22 minutes, the station chiefs start laying routes through the automated system.

The table of events, published exclusively by “K”, revealingly indicates that from 21.50.36 to 21.51.15 the head of the station acted through the remote control system for the “passage of the train to Thessaloniki.” In the period from 21.50.49 to 22.07.05, respectively, the system recorded “passage from traffic light 2, Larisa’s entrance.” Until 12/22/50, three operations were still registered in the automated system under the following description: “marking the exit to Mezurlo”, “moving the train from traffic light 2 with markings” and “moving the train with markings to Mezurlo”. The “variable (BIT)” describes the number of action commands. The 59-year-old stationmaster, as well as the inspector (also charged with a criminal offense) who supervised the shifts of stationmasters, testified that two senior stationmasters left on the night of February 28 before the end of their shift at 23:00. He even added that after the accident he saw that the account book in the station master’s office had been corrected with a gap.

“The actual departure time of P… around 10:20 and X… around 22:10.” said the 59-year-old man, apologizing for his two colleagues. The flight of the most senior stationmasters from their post and the abandonment of the 59-year-old man from the electronic route planning system are also reflected in the event log of the remote control system. And this is because from 22:12. absolutely no manipulation of the system was recorded: a 59-year-old man tried to coordinate the movement of trains through the old control panel, which led to impressive results. Remote control was restored about an hour after the accident, at 1:39. March 1, when OSE officials now wanted to check if the train collision was the result of a malfunction in the remote control system or mishandling by the stationmaster. When asked why a 59-year-old man used an old control panel with keys, Giorgos Zindros, head of the Paleofarsalo station, in his testimony to the investigator as a witness, answers: “The remote control did not work for the last 4-5 years, as it was broken and walking was carried out with keys. In operation for the last 4-5 months, since the beginning of November 2022. There was some experience from the company that repaired the panel, Alstom, that is, some people came and showed us the work. We, the old people, remembered the picture and brought up the youth.”

It is recalled that the 59-year-old returned for mobility to OSE in August 2022, and his training program was completed in January 2023, which means that he did not have time to properly learn how to use the remote control system.