Turning Too Fast: The 2013 Santiago de Compostela Derailment
By: Max S
Tags: Accident, Trains, Railways, Technology, Spain

Hundreds of responders soon filled the scene, the Spanish national police alone provided 320 men. Chaplains and psychologists were involved in the response, supporting the witnesses, responders and survivors. Responders worked into the night to rescue the survivors and recover the passengers, handing the site over to the investigators the next morning. Celebrations planned for the next day, a regional holiday, were cancelled and three days of nation-wide mourning were declared by the Prime Minister. The local region of Galicia extended the mourning-period by another 4 days. King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia visited survivors at the local hospitals in the following days, demonstrating their compassion for the dead or injured.

Responders tending to survivors next to a train car that had been thrown up onto the neighboring road. Note the roof-mounted suspension mentioned earlier.

Mister Amo was detained either immediately or a few days after the accident (no clear information), with police officers guarding him at the hospital. Investigators allegedly feared that he may try to escape prosecution. Journalists dug up a post he’d made on Facebook in March 2012, showing a photo of a train’s speedometer at 200kph/124mph and writing about how much fun it is to go so fast and how he’d love to drive parallel to a road and trigger a police speed trap at that speed without getting fined.

Mister Amo’s photo on facebook, and his photo of a train’s speedometer at the scheduled top speed.

A few days after the accidents heavy-duty cranes (both for the road and for tracks) were brought in, pulling the wreckage apart to be taken away either on flatbed cars (once the track was repaired) or with flatbed trucks on the adjacent road.

A crane removing the remains of a train car that was torn to pieces in the derailment.

While investigators acknowledged that 200kph/124mph was perfectly normal to drive on Spanish high speed lines they did note that the post and some matching comments made on the post can be interpreted as a perhaps risky obsession with travelling at high speeds. An unproven theory was thrown around that, maybe, Mister Amo had tried to show off to his coworker. The recovered data-logger supported the theory of excessive speed being the cause of the accident, but there was nothing to prove that Mister Amo had been speeding intentionally. Amo insisted that he had taken the photo while a coworker was driving the train, meaning it wasn’t unauthorized use of a cell phone on duty.

The leading motor car at the beginning of the wreckage. Note that the forward generator car is still attached to the first passenger car by the shared axle as it rests on its side.

Investigators criticized the layout of the railway line ahead of Santiago station, with the rather sharp turn following an 80km/50mi stretch of near-straight track where trains are expected to travel at top speed. When the section of the new railway line was opened engineers called the site of the accident “challenging”, but it was up to code and with the high speed line meant to use ETCS L1 there was no chance of excessive speed causing an accident since the trains would be unable to leave the last tunnel too fast. The turn itself was never fitted with ETCS, which was meant to end at the main signal 200m/656ft ahead of the spot where the forward generator car derailed. With ETCS being disabled after the trial-period that safety-net was gone, meaning it was down to the drivers to remember their position and/or spot the pre-signal telling them it was time to decelerate. After the accident RENFE changed the signaling-layout at the site of the accident, instead of a single signal marking a switch from 200kph/124mph to 80kph/50mph the speed is now reduced over a longer distance in steps of 160, 60 and finally 30kph (99/37/19mph). The speed limit are aided by so-called balises, track-mounted programmable transponders which communicate with the passing train’s control systems and can trigger an automatic stop if the speed limit is not obeyed. At the same time RENFE announced a thorough review of its entire network to eliminate any avoidable safety-risk. The European Union Agency for Railways (ERA) harshly criticized Spain for their investigative office for railway accidents (CIAF) not being able to operate independently from the political oversight of the ministry for public affairs, claiming a risk of biased investigations/results. ERA backed up their claim by pointing out how RENFE and ADIF (the company building and maintaining the railway infrastructure) were part of the investigative team, pulling the neutrality of the investigation into doubt. A report by the EPA concluded that this involvement of parties involved in the accident in the investigation was in violation of European guidelines. When a new government was elected in 2018 the risk of biased investigations ceased to exist. Regardless, in 2017 the European Commission decided to run a parallel independent investigation. RENFE also decided to reintroduce and expand the ETCS-system, but by early 2020 the site of the accident still was not covered by the system.

The rear part of the wreckage during recovery, the field of debris was several hundred meters long.

On the 29th of July 2013 a memorial service was held at the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, attended among other guests by the Spanish prime minister and a large part of the royal family. The same day Mister Amo was charged with 79 counts of homicide by professional recklessness and an undetermined number of counts of causing injury by professional recklessness. While he was later sentenced to 4 years in jail and banned from driving trains for six years several officials who were also investigated for running the railway-network with lacking safety saw their charges dropped, further fueling suspicions of a biased investigation. Meanwhile survivors and relatives of victims sought over 40 million Euros/48.5 million USD in damages from RENFE, who in turn demanded damages from ADIF. The government at the time blocked a possible trial between the two state-owned groups, but after a new government started work in June 2018 the traffic ministry promised a new, thorough investigation and to finally sort out the mess and erase suspicion of some people being “immune from consequence” due to their job or friends. It’s unknown if any money changed hands since, or if any more people faced charges/were sentenced.

The leading generator car being removed from the site, its bogie remained attached to the motor car.

RENFE faced further criticism even from private enthusiasts, who, in long-winded discussions in various message boards, figured out that the generator car design was recklessly “undercooked”, with the car being overly heavy, having a high center of gravity in an unfortunate spot (relatively high and not centered in the length of the car) and being a bad combination with the suspension design of the neighboring passenger cars. The generator car weights approximately 28 metric tons including 2000l/528gal of diesel, twice as much as the passenger cars, and is a mixture of the passenger cars and the motor cars (the two-axle bogie on the leading end is the same as the motor cars’, just with the motors removed). Several of these discussions and investigations ended up suspecting that the creation of the series 730 had been done on a (too) small budget and in a time-crunch to try and get better high speed connections into parts of Spain that don’t have stations on electrified high speed lines. In some places the suspicion that the development was urged along as a favor to politicians lingered, unable to be disproven.