'Titanic of train disasters': Italy wartime tragedy

[johnthefireman]

I know Phillip enjoys reading about railway accidents!

'Titanic of train disasters': Italy finally commemorates hushed-up wartime tragedy that killed more than 600 people

I think "hushed up" is journalistic licence. I've certainly read about this disaster in railway books.

As a poster on the Google uk.railway group says:

I don't know how hushed-up it was. It's in several books on railway
accidents, including Peter Semmens' "Railway Disasters of the World".

I'm also pretty sure it's in P.M. Kalla Bishops book describing his
work in Italy with the British military when he was in charge of the
Italian railways at the end of WW2.

[philipmartin]

I know Phillip enjoys reading about railway accidents!

I've nearly caused a few of my own, (full disclosure.) The top picture is gruesome. I can't say that I enjoy reading about this one. It takes away my inclination towards humor. I'm surprised that I've never heard of carbon monoxide poisoning in railroad tunnels before. I wonder if Benny is familiar with this story?

[Benny]

BENNY IS NOT DEAD! (Only needs 38 hours days...)

Yes, I knew it, many years ago I read an exhaustive feature, with survivors witnesses, on an old copy of "Strade Ferrate" magazine.
According to this feature the tragedy happened because of various little facts that concurred to it.
1) because of the wartime, the scarce journey chances and the fault of foodstuff, it was tolerated that poor people was traveling on freight trains.
2) coal was of very bad quality with extremely toxic smoke and the Galleria delle Armi tunnel is curvy, on an incline and very humid.
3) in a previous station another locomotive was put at the head. One of the locos was of Austrian origin, given to Italy after WW1 (if l well remember it was a 476). This class had a very difficult to use steam regulator.
After leaving Balvano the train entered into the tunnel with the two locomotives in full effort; because of the bad coal, smoke saturated the air and humidity made wheels to slip. Drivers and firemen had to put wet handkerchiefs in their mouth to respire and one of them (the only driving teams survivor) fainted and dropped on the side of the track.
At this moment there had been a fatal misunderstanding: one of the drivers accelerated, to take the train upside out of the tunnel, and the other one, on the Austrian loco, wanted to return back. This locomotive was enough powerful, helped by the train weight, to win the other loco resistance and the driver inverted the leverages but the fault of oxygen made he cannot open the troubled regulator so the train came to a standstill and hundreds of people wee killed by the smoke.

Approximately two words a week but I'm following with the FNM topic, don't worry.

Ciao

[philipmartin]

I'm glad that you are still alive, Benny, and that I am still alive too. Thank you for the additional information you have given us about this tradegy.