Just minutes after the crash Tempe, the telephone of Panagiotis Paraskevopoulos rang. When he saw that it was his good friend, the head of the station, he realized that something bad had happened. “Front in Tempe. The commercial passenger, he told him dryly. Paraskevopoulos froze. He didn’t need to tell him more. He understood the scale of the disaster. Don’t sleep. His phone kept ringing from fellow railroad workers all over Greece.

Although he retired in October after 36 years at the OSE, he was their federation’s president to the end and they still consider him “one of them”. As did he. When we met with him late that evening, he now had a clear picture of “human error” which – he’s upright – could be “zeroed out” if the systems were working properly.

When he first joined the union in 2001, the decision to modernize the trains had already been made, and theoretically it was only a matter of time before the remote control, lighting and lighting systems purchased a year earlier were brought into service. operation. The train will no longer stop at every station for the driver to take a written order.

Station masters will be in an area with monitors and display of actual traffic. Everything will be automated with security and speed. The goal – also in connection with the upcoming Olympic Games – was to get from Athens to Thessaloniki in less than 4 hours. “We knew that the transition to the new system would definitely take time. In France, for example, it took them two years to build a system for 500 km of the new line. But we are celebrating 23 years and this is not the end,” he emphasizes. This, he explains, means that all these years we have been working on a “mixed” system.

Since speed is non-negotiable, they are forced to apply methods that are unprecedented on a global scale. In the past, the communication to get a train to go through a broken traffic light was… by mobile phone. The light could be red. But the train driver did not know whether he was working or not, and he learned about it from the station master, who called him on his mobile phone. “You are passing,” she told him, and he ignored the red traffic light at 160 km/h.

Six years ago, the chain failed and was not repaired. Stationmasters reverted to a manual system by pushing buttons on a 1990 panel.

In the Federation, they found that there was a large increase in accidents. When they pressured ministers about security systems and warned of dangers, they also tried to pressure their colleagues not to use a mobile phone. However, they did not see everyone. “For some it was a matter of convenience, for others it was a financial issue.

They received bonuses when they achieved good results. Without a mobile phone, they would have had to slow down or stop if the walkie-talkie didn’t pick up the phone, which still didn’t work back then,” he explains. But he also acknowledges another reason why some people used cell phones: “The conversation is not recorded there. If something goes wrong, no one will be held responsible.”

In 2012, the use of mobile phones was banned. Since then, communication has been carried out exclusively through the official radiotelephone, which works normally. “What else has changed since then?” we ask him. “They changed part of the infrastructure, namely the railway tracks. However, everything else remains the same.

Remote control systems only work in some parts of the network. However, even they are not related to each other. That is, we do not have a general picture of the route. Again, on some points I will have to consult with the stationmaster in the old fashioned way. On call.” He also emphasizes that at the particular site where the accident occurred, the remote control was fine, but the circuit was damaged six years ago and has not been repaired since.

Station masters were then forced to switch from the visual display back to the manual system by pressing buttons on the 1990 panel. “If the remote control had worked, this mistake simply could not have been made. At this point, the screen will turn red. The stationmaster will see it.”

As for the stationmaster who made a fatal mistake? He did not know him personally, but he knew his position. He worked as a loader for many years, and when his position was abolished, he moved to another government agency. At some point, the State Mobility Program appeared for the positions of stationmasters and mechanics. There is no age limit for recruiting, Paraskevopoulos said, so the 59-year-old went through a quick training and took over.

“For several years now, they have not replaced those who leave with a pension, as a result of which a serious problem arises. I know someone who has volunteered to service the Diakoftos line since 2015 as needed. We ended up working 28 days a month for ten hours a day, and that could have given us a big financial break from the overtime we were getting, so we got used to it, but it was devastating to personal aging,” he concludes.