In 1992, 248 passenger trains and a freight train collided on the side of Gongzhuling Station, causing a major accident.
However, this accident is completely avoidable in nature, because this train has several opportunities to save during the journey, but in the end it is not grasped, resulting in the accident. So, what really happened at that time?
On October 13, 1992, a steam locomotive was slowly advancing on the railway. This train belonged to the changchun railway branch of the Shenyang Railway Bureau at that time, and it was performing a 3123 freight task.
The train slowly pulled into Gongzhuling Station on the Changda Line, and the driver yawned involuntarily after stopping the train at three stops. This time the stop was just a very ordinary technical stop, but it still made the driver nervous. Just in front of the train, the automatic exhaust of a passenger train failed, causing it to stop in the liu house station in front of it.
Due to the late notice, two freight trains were also parked at the station, so the road ahead was blocked. The train driver was very anxious, because he did not know exactly when the road ahead would be opened. After a while, a passenger train is approaching behind the truck, and the truck must be vacated three lanes to organize passengers to get on and off after the passenger train enters the station.
But at this time, the train could not transfer the passage, because the freight train in front of it was still unable to move, and the second lane had to be left to the train passing through the station, so the current situation was very embarrassing. After thinking for a moment, the dispatcher of the railway sub-bureau finally decided to use verbal instructions to notify the 3123 freight train to transfer to the airport special line, thus vacating three lanes.
While the front was still arguing about how to stop, the 248 passenger train had passed the signal machine at Gongzhuling Station and was ready to pass through the second lane of Gongzhuling Station. Because the two trains were likely to clash, the duty officer at Gongzhuling Station cancelled the shunting signal without notifying the shunting staff.
But in fact, the station dispatcher has begun to arrange a shunting operation plan to the station according to the previously discussed plan. In the process, no one found that the s3 signal had been canceled. In this way, the freight train began to advance in the opposite direction, and the 248 passenger trains that had left the station at this time were completely unaware of the situation ahead. At that time, the captain of the train was not there, so there was no notice that there was a train in front of it that was reversing.
When the truck driver noticed that there was a truck behind him, he couldn't avoid it. At 0:11 a.m. on 14 November, the retrograde train finally clashed directly with the sixth carriage of the 248 passenger train that was leaving the station in the second lane.
Everyone present at the time witnessed the whole scene, only to hear a roar, the huge train crashed directly into a bus, and the passengers in the bus watched the huge locomotive rushing towards them with black smoke, but they could not move.
At the moment of impact, the impact of the fully loaded truck was amazing. After hitting the side of the sixth carriage, the last three carriages of the 248 passenger train were completely derailed. At that time, the passengers sitting in the car only felt that the sky was spinning, and they all sat on the ground.
According to the passengers' recollections later, he only felt that he was out of his soul at that time, and with the sound like an explosion, he lost consciousness. After a few minutes, I found that the train I was on had been hit by other trains.
The train dispatcher noticed that there was a big disaster and quickly dialed the emergency number. Soon, first responders arrived at the scene and began to rescue the vehicle. A seriously injured passenger was found in the carriage and rushed to the hospital. Unfortunately, the passenger was not successfully rescued in the end, died in the hospital, and the remaining seven passengers suffered minor injuries of varying degrees.
After the collision, the scene was a mess, the horizontal and vertical trains fell on the tracks, and the tracks were also damaged for more than 20 meters, and 35 sleepers were destroyed, the road in front was blocked, and the tracks in the rear were damaged. In order to eliminate this series of safety hazards and repair the railway, the railway personnel worked overtime for several hours before finally letting the railway line return to traffic.
When such a serious accident occurred, the relevant departments immediately formed an investigation team. After the investigation, everyone was stunned by the serious violations of discipline in this incident.
At the site of the accident, the shunting director of Gongzhuling Station completely violated the technical rules during the operation. In the railway rules and regulations, the shunting commander must personally supervise the personnel in the group to be fully prepared before the shunting operation, and at the same time, when the vehicle is running, the confirmation of the forward route must be responsible for the shunting commander.
If there is difficulty in front of the shunting commander's position, other personnel in the car group should be assigned to confirm. However, throughout the process, the shunting team we could see was naturally shunting, and no one was sent to the front to check the situation. At the same time, if the locomotive is shunted at the intermediate station, a shunting operation notice with a schematic diagram must be provided.
However, in this operation, all we can see is the constant verbal prompting, and the train members are even more so, they just blindly follow the instructions of the shunting commander, but they do not observe any railway signals, blindly direct the train to start, and there is no one in the car to look at and find problems.
Moreover, in the entire scheduling process, if according to the normal rules and regulations, only one train dispatcher in the dispatching section can be unified in a dispatching section. But in fact, the person in charge of the command was the duty officer of Gongzhuling Station, who changed the shunting plan of the train without authorization without the confirmation and permission of the dispatcher of the Railway Bureau. After learning that the car could not be started immediately, the shunting signal was cancelled without notifying any relevant operators. It is this series of problems that has led to this tragedy.
Therefore, in the process of accident identification, everyone agreed that the dispatcher must bear the main responsibility. In this accident, both the vehicle dispatcher and the train driver violated the entries in the technical regulations. The shunting driver did not have a lookout, and the dispatcher did not know how to inform, but simply took the underground order. At the same time, the dispatcher did not receive confirmation of the shunting operation from the duty officer, but did not verify it, and eventually several people caused the accident together.
After the incident, the shunting director of Gongzhuling Station was dismissed and handed over to the judicial organs for handling, and the duty officers and dispatchers were also punished with administrative demerits, and the safety bonuses of all the employees of the Gongzhuling Depot were naturally lost.
This accident is not terrible if it is purely from the perspective of the harm caused, but the problem is that the situation of this accident is very bad. From either angle, the accident should have been avoidable.
If the dispatcher can resolutely follow the rules and regulations, if the dispatcher can effectively implement his duties, if the duty officer does not take these wrong orders for granted, or if the conductor only asks a question before the departure, these accidents may not occur. Therefore, the investigation team said in the next investigation report that in the future, no matter what the reason, it is necessary to resolutely avoid similar accidents again.
China's railway industry has developed in the course of lessons learned again and again, and only by summing up the spirit that should be carried forward in the future and the situations that should be avoided can we promote the healthy growth of railway organs.
Nowadays, Gongzhuling Station can no longer hear the discussion about this incident, and several small stations around it have been abandoned. Perhaps the incident did not leave any traces in the local area, but there is no doubt that this accident needs to sound the alarm bell for a long time.