The investigation into the 2023 Atocha derailment leaves it unclear why the monitor broke regardless of laboratory evaluation | Economy | EUROtoday

The Railway Accident Investigation Commission (CIAF), an unbiased physique hooked up to the Ministry of Transport, has made public this week the ultimate report on the derailment of a prepare within the space of ​​Madrid’s Atocha station that occurred in 2023. The evaluation of the occasion identifies “aspects susceptible to improvement in the maintenance” of the railway infrastructure, managed by the state firm Adif, and factors to a “fatigue fracture” within the monitor. But it does so in an inconclusive method, regardless of the analyzes carried out within the laboratory: “The results do not allow us to conclusively establish the origin of the breakage,” the researchers level out. The doc, dated Monday on the ministry’s web site, is printed weeks after the accidents in Adamuz (Córdoba) and Gelida (Barcelona), through which 47 individuals died (46 within the first, and one within the second). Both accidents, which the CIAF can also be investigating, have opened a debate about funding for the conservation of the railway community.

The speculation adopted by the investigation of the accident of a Talgo prepare in November 2023, which left nobody useless however 14 barely injured, factors to the breakage of a sprat, a metallic piece that guides the passage of the prepare when it has to alter from one monitor to a different. The fracture brought on the derailment of some carriages, and the rerailing of the final ones incorrectly on an adjoining monitor. The accident, whose materials harm is estimated at 936,000 euros, occurred in a convoy that was touring between Almería and Madrid-Chamartín at 2:24 p.m. on November 26, 2023. At that point, the prepare was circulating on monitor 4 of the Atocha-Cercanías station and needed to change to a different monitor to enter the Recoletos tunnel, sure for its remaining station. The velocity was 32 kilometers per hour.

Although the reason for the derailment is evident, the report doesn’t specify what brought on the monitor to interrupt. “As for the technical installations, different factors have been analyzed that could have influenced the fracture of the sprat,” states the textual content, which particulars these components: “the type of steel used, the possible existence of manufacturing defects, exposure to external agents such as the presence of water, wear derived from the high volume of traffic, as well as the particular conditions associated with the slab track.” In the conclusions, the analysis factors out as normal components of the incident a systemic one (“the management of the life cycle of the infrastructure at singular points”); and contributing components, comparable to site visitors depth or highway design traits.

The part between Atocha and Chamartín registered a median of two,641 weekly circulations on the day of the accident, making it essentially the most intense of all the Madrid railway community. According to the report, after the accident “the need to define life cycles and specific maintenance strategies in areas of such high demand becomes evident.” Which means that till now upkeep protocols have been uniform for all the community, when they need to be tailored to the site visitors demand of every part.

Furthermore, the evaluation of the occasion additionally brings to mild flaws within the upkeep procedures utilized. For instance, in October 2023 an previous management sheet was used whose model had been up to date in 2020. The investigation has additionally detected inconsistencies within the traceability of the information collected, such because the identification of the kind of lane, data on the needle sliding system or the reference to the devices used. These are circumstances, the textual content states, that “can limit the precision and effectiveness of inspections and make preventive maintenance planning difficult.”

Auscultations

A key course of in detecting doable defects within the pathway is ultrasound auscultations. According to the report, the monitoring of this part was scheduled for 2022, however was not carried out till 2023, and moreover, it was famous that it was carried out partially: solely on the primary lanes, however not on the switches. The time lag is defined by limitations derived from the pandemic, however the CIAF emphasizes that upkeep “should not depend on the availability of material means, but rather be based on risk analysis.”

The report signifies that “a weakness is evident in the internal surveillance systems of the infrastructure manager itself, Adif, and in the supervision and audit mechanisms, which were not sufficiently effective to detect these deficiencies.” And he concludes that the rolling inventory had no affect on that derailment. It was a Renfe prepare made up of two locomotives that towed a department of 9 Talgo automobiles. At the time of the accident they have been 38 minutes late.