“Safety railings were installed to a large extent, but in the accident at Tempe, the safety protocol required by the railway regulations was not followed.“said the Minister of State and the Minister of Transport. George Herapetritisduring a visit to Larisa, at the new Control and Telemechanics Center under construction at the city station.

G. Gerapetritis was guided as in old local remote control system at the Larisa station office, where OSE Managing Director Panagiotis Terezakis and Station Manager Giorgos Zindros explained to him the local significance of the system and the possibilities it has and has to control the course of trains for a length of about 8 kilometers to and beyond Larisa railway station.

The briefing by Mr. Gerapetritis continued at the Traffic Control Center, which will be completed in a few days, fully operational by the end of June and will control every train movement from Domokos and Paleofarsalos to Aeginio Pieria for 167 kilometers. .

In the subsequent statements by Giorgos Gerapetritis, the minister, among other things, said that “after the accident in Tempe, the government, realizing the scale of the tragedy, undertook three obligations. The first obligation was to complete the investigation into the causes of the tragedy in order to identify those responsible. The second was to restart the railroad under increased security. Thirdly, strictly comply with the deadlines for the modernization of telemechanics and signaling security services and systems, as well as all communication and automatic braking systems.

As for the investigation of the causes, the opinion of the expert commission was presented, and this opinion is impartial, with all the facts, with all the objections that anyone has. However, this is an objective approach. As for the critical night, as well as those pathologies that exist systematically and structurally on the railway, it has already been sent to the competent prosecutor’s office of Larisa, which is conducting an investigation, and judicial investigations are proceeding quickly.

The minister added that “the second requirement was railroad restart. There was an operational plan that includes a number of interventions related to the modernization of security systems. For example, the strengthening of the state, in a short period of time there is a significant increase in the potential of the EfE. As for the critical jobs of the two stationmasters and locksmiths, the possibility of having more drivers and staff on the train. Hellenic Railways has taken very important steps to improve safety at critical points such as tunnels. And this is with surveillance systems and with amplification by means of fire extinguishing and fire detection. The section of suburban Larissa in Thessaloniki will be put into operation at the end of next week. Passengers trust the railway. The completeness shown is very satisfactory. Our task was to execute contracts in a very short time, providing for universal control and signaling, as well as the accompanying automatic braking systems on the part of the main axle between Athens and Thessaloniki.

On the critical night of the accident, he was at full speed. local remote control station, which allows you to have automatic drawing of the route, i.e. draw a course on the scoreboard, which eliminates the risk of a train falling into an oncoming stream. Now in the local console we see, that is, on the scoreboard, the movement of the train. It was possible to observe the train even on a critical night. The board worked perfectly, as it turns out, because there was automatic engraving shortly before the crash. The local array is converted to a hyperlocal array. The traffic control center will start operating at the end of June.”

It is characteristic that in terms of security measures on that tragic night Tempe crashG. Gerapetritis said that “of course there were security gaps. Safety bars were the responsibility of automatic engraving. There were security systems for changing keys, there was the possibility of monitoring on the remote control, there were security locks, which are now becoming more and more. However, there will always be a human factor. The human factor, in the end, is always there … It is obvious that if the systems that are being developed now were in place, there would be even more security loopholes. There are many more small local remote control points on this board … If the protocol for mandatory automatic labeling had been followed, the result would have been different.”

Finally, Mr. Gerapetritis said that at the moment there is a remote control on the Athens – Thessaloniki axis in the Acharnes – Oinoi section, in the Oinoi – Tiforei section it will be delivered at the end of September, from Tiforei to Domokos the remote control is already working, from Domokos to Aeginio Pieria, including Larissa and Paleofarsalos, will be in operation by the end of June, and from Aeginio and Plati to Thessaloniki it is in operation.

Source: RES-IPE