Never again will those old carriages be in service.
The decision of the Czech company RegioJet comes quickly after the accident last Wednesday in Pardubice Where four women traveling in the first carriage died following the collision between a night express and a freight train.
Although the accident occurred at a not particularly high speed, the first carriage literally folded in two upon impact near the first compartments, leaving no escape for those inside.
The reason would soon be revealed. The one involved is one of older sleeper carriages in the RegioJet fleet, part of a batch produced by the Austrian company Jenbacher Werke since around 1980.
These cars have been in service at RegioJet since 2013 and, after the Pardubice accident, the company owns 13 more.
According to Czech media reports, Friday afternoon the company management decided to stop them all.
“We are shelving them all from today. They will never travel on our trains again,” he said Radim Jančuraowner of RegioJet.
A company spokeswoman explained that the decision was made after finding the causal link between the breakage of the carriage frame, with the steel evidently now “fatigued” and the excessive damage sustained in the impact which caused the four victims.
A similar deformation of one of these carriages had already been observed in a previous accident in Austria.
In April 2018 in Salzburg a shunting locomotive had hit a column of stationary cars with too much force and, while the others had remained more or less intact, the Bcmz was heavily damaged.
According to information gathered by the Czech press it has been established that the chassis of these carriages had been reinforced but only in the central part, making the ends particularly vulnerable.
Also progressive corrosion it could have had an influence, even if it seems not to have been particularly excessive on the chassis of the car involved in the Pardubice accident.
About ten years ago, the state-owned company České dráhy also purchased used cars from the same production period, but rebuilt them.
Some units, however, were in such poor condition that they were instead only used as spare parts.
Source Hospodářské noviny
