Just over two years after the train accident that occurred on January 25, 2018 on a Trenord regional train in Pioltello (Milan), a derailment in Lombardy, this time in the province of Lodi, involved a Frecciarossa on high speed and caused two deaths and 31 injuries. And once again he raises the 'maintenance alarm' of the railway lines and of the 'rolling stock'. The first findings of the judicial police investigations carried out on the site of the derailment that occurred this morning at 5.34 in the territory of Ospitaletto Lodigiano (Lodi) which involved the High Speed Train 9595 Milan Central-Salerno, say that at the centre of the causes could be a poorly assembled or defective switch or even a poorly repaired switch. The 'zero point', in fact, where the flow problem occurred, and which was found 5-600 metres from the place where the 'derailed' convoy stopped, is located at a switch. Furthermore, last night, the stretch was reportedly undergoing maintenance, as reported by the Lodi prosecutor, Domenico Chiaro, by railway personnel. “Maintenance work,” the prosecutor said at a press conference, “is done because something has broken, otherwise there is no reason to be there at 4:XNUMX in the morning.” “If the switch had been straight ahead,” he added, “the train would not have derailed, it’s not hard to understand. It was not in a position to ensure the train could move freely.” There would seem to be too many coincidences not to suspect a direct cause, although until the end of the investigations and expert reports that will be ordered by the judicial authorities, no dynamics can be taken for granted. Certainly, Chiaro underlined, "it was not a voluntary act, the attack hypothesis is completely unfounded". Then there is another possibility and the prosecutor of Lodi explains it: "We are verifying – he said – the hypothesis of human error". According to the police, the locomotive of the train, which went off the tracks at 290 km/h, for reasons yet to be clarified, whether linked to a malfunction in the switch or to incorrect signalling, literally 'took off', detaching itself from the rest of the train and completely leaving its track, then ending up ruinously first against a trolley or some similar vehicle that was on a parallel track, and then against a railway building. The rest of the train would also have continued its journey parallel to the tracks, but outside its natural lane, with the second carriage at a certain point tilting to one side. The train 'derailment' is said to have occurred at a switch where just last night, or late yesterday evening, a 'switch', or a piece of the switch itself, was replaced or repaired. The presence of such a mechanism on a straight stretch would be due to the parallel running of several high-speed tracks along that stretch. Now all the material and places involved have been seized. “The interruption for the maintenance work ended before dawn, and shortly before the passage of the first train of the morning, precisely the Av 9595 – explains Adriano Coscia, General Secretary of Orsa Ferrovie – and regardless of what went wrong and who then physically intervened, it emerges once again clearly that in the face of cutting-edge equipment, the problem of rail transport lies in the maintenance. The ERTMS (European Rail Traffic Management System) was active on that stretch, one of the most advanced in Europe, which would have corrected any human error."
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