26 years ago, on the night of June 3-4, 1989, in the bearish Ural corner on the border Chelyabinsk region and Bashkiria, a pipeline through which liquefied gas was pumped from Western Siberia to the European part exploded Soviet Union. At the same moment, 900 meters from the scene of the incident, two resort trains, crowded with vacationers, were passing in opposite directions along the Trans-Siberian Railway. It was the worst train disaster in Soviet history, killing at least 575 people, including 181 children. Onliner.by talks about the incredible chain of random coincidences that led to it, which had monstrous consequences in their scale.

Early summer of 1989. While the still united country is living out its recent years, the friendship of peoples is bursting at the seams, the proletarians are actively disuniting, the only food in stores is canned “Bulls in tomato sauce", but pluralism and openness are in their heyday: tens of millions Soviet people cling to TV screens, watching with desperate interest the meetings of the First Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR. The crisis is, of course, a crisis, but the vacation is on schedule. Hundreds of seasonal resort trains are still rushing to the hot seas, where the population of the Union can still spend their full labor rubles on a well-deserved vacation.

All tickets for trains No. 211 Novosibirsk - Adler and No. 212 Adler - Novosibirsk have been sold. Twenty carriages of the first and eighteen carriages of the second were filled with families of Urals and Siberians who were just striving for the much-desired Black Sea coast of the Caucasus and had already rested there. They carried vacationers, rare business travelers, and young guys from the Chelyabinsk hockey team "Tractor-73", two-time national champions, who decided instead of a vacation to work in the grape harvest in sunny Moldova. In total, on that terrible June night, there were (only according to official data) 1,370 people inside the two trains, including 383 children. The numbers are most likely inaccurate, since separate tickets were not sold for children under five years of age.

At 1:14 a.m. on June 4, 1989, almost all passengers on both trains were already asleep. Some were tired after a long journey, others were just getting ready for it. No one was prepared for what happened in the next moment. And you cannot prepare for this under any circumstances.

“I woke up from falling from the second shelf onto the floor (it was already two o’clock in the morning according to local time), and everything around was already on fire. It seemed to me that I saw some nightmare: the skin on my hand is burning and slipping, a child engulfed in fire is crawling under my feet, a soldier with empty eye sockets is walking towards me with outstretched hands, I am crawling past a woman who cannot put out the fire own hair, and in the compartment there are no shelves, no doors, no windows..."- one of the miraculously surviving passengers later told reporters.

The explosion, the power of which, according to official estimates, was 300 tons of TNT, literally destroyed two trains, which at that very moment met at the 1710th kilometer of the Trans-Siberian Railway on the Asha - Ulu-Telyak section, near the border of the Chelyabinsk region and Bashkiria. Eleven cars were thrown off the rails, seven of them were completely burned. The remaining cars burned out inside, they were broken in the shape of an arc, the rails were twisted into knots. And in parallel with this, tens and hundreds of unsuspecting people died a painful death.

Pipeline PK-1086 Western Siberia- Ural - Volga region was built in 1984 and was originally intended for oil transportation. Already at the last moment, almost before the facility was put into operation, the Ministry of Oil Industry of the USSR, guided by a logic understandable only to it, decided to repurpose the oil pipeline into a product pipeline. In practice, this meant that instead of oil, a so-called “broad fraction of light hydrocarbons” - a mixture of liquefied gases(propane and butane) and heavier hydrocarbons. Although the facility changed its specialization, it was built as ultra-reliable with a view to future high blood pressure inside. However, already at the design stage, the first mistake was made in a chain of those that five years later led to the largest tragedy on railways Soviet Union.

At 1,852 kilometers long, a whopping 273 kilometers of the pipeline passed in close proximity to the railways. In addition, in a number of cases the object came dangerously close to populated areas, including quite major cities. For example, in the section from kilometer 1428 to kilometer 1431, PK-1086 passed less than a kilometer from the Bashkir village of Sredny Kazayak. Gross violation safety standards were discovered after the launch of the product pipeline. Construction of a special bypass around the village began only the following year, 1985.

In October 1985, during the earthworks when opening PK-1086 at the 1431st kilometer of its length, powerful excavators working on the highly protected pipe caused significant damage to it mechanical damage, for which the product pipeline was not designed at all. Moreover, after the construction of the bypass was completed, the insulation of the section that was opened and left open, in violation of building codes, was not checked.

Four years after those events, a narrow gap 1.7 meters long appeared in the damaged section of the product pipeline. The propane-butane mixture began to flow through it into environment, evaporate, mix with the air and, being heavier than it, accumulate in the lowland through which the Trans-Siberian Railway passed 900 meters to the south. Very close to the strategic railway line, along which passenger and freight trains passed every few minutes, a real invisible “gas lake” formed.

The drivers drew the attention of the site dispatchers to strong smell gas in the area of ​​the 1710th kilometer of the road, as well as a drop in pressure in the pipeline was noted. Instead of accepting emergency measures to stop traffic and eliminate the leak, both duty services chose not to pay attention to what was happening. Moreover, the organization operating PK-1086 even increased the gas supply to it to compensate for the pressure drop. As propane and butane continued to accumulate, disaster became inevitable.

The Novosibirsk - Adler and Adler - Novosibirsk trains could not possibly meet at this fateful point. Under no circumstances if they followed the schedule. But train 212 was late due to technical reasons, and train 211 was forced to make an emergency stop at one of the intermediate stations to disembark a passenger who had gone into labor, which also resulted in a shift in the schedule. An absolutely incredible coincidence, unthinkable even in the most cruel nightmares, coupled with a blatant violation technological discipline nevertheless, it happened.

Two late trains met at the damned 1710th kilometer of the Trans-Siberian Railway at 1:14 am. An accidental spark from the pantograph of one of the electric locomotives, or a spark from the train braking after a long descent into a lowland, or even a cigarette butt thrown out of the window was enough to ignite the “gas lake”. At the moment the trains met, a massive explosion of the accumulated propane-butane mixture occurred, and the Ural forest turned into hell.

A policeman from Asha, a city 11 kilometers from the crash site, later told reporters: “I was awakened by a flash of terrible brightness. There was a glow on the horizon. A couple of tens of seconds later, a blast wave reached Asha, breaking a lot of glass. I realized that something terrible had happened. A few minutes later I was already at the city police department, together with the guys I rushed to the “duty room” and rushed towards the glow. What we saw is impossible to imagine even with a sick imagination! The trees burned like giant candles, and the cherry-red carriages smoked along the embankment. There was an absolutely impossible single cry of pain and horror from hundreds of dying and burned people. The forest was burning, the sleepers were burning, people were burning. We rushed to catch the rushing “living torches,” knock the fire off them, and bring them closer to the road and away from the fire. Apocalypse…".

More than 250 people instantly burned in this gigantic fire. No one can say the exact numbers, because the temperature at the epicenter of the disaster exceeded 1000 degrees - there was literally nothing left of some passengers. Another 317 people died later in hospitals from terrible burns. The worst thing is that almost a third of all victims were children.

People died in families, children - in entire classes, along with the teachers who accompanied them on vacation. Parents often didn’t even have anything left to bury. 623 people were injured varying degrees severity, many of them remained disabled for life.

Despite the fact that the scene of the tragedy was in a relatively inaccessible area, the evacuation of the victims was organized quite quickly. Dozens of helicopters were working, the victims of the disaster were taken out by trucks, even by an uncoupled electric locomotive of a freight train that stood at a nearby station and allowed those same Adler passenger trains to pass. The number of victims could have been even greater if it had not been for a modern burn center, which opened in Ufa shortly before the incident. Doctors, police, railway workers, finally ordinary people, volunteers from neighboring communities worked around the clock.

Rail transport has been around for two centuries and continues to improve. Trains and electric trains are becoming faster, more convenient, and more accessible. But security seems to remain at the same level. Every year across the globe, various railway accidents claim the lives of hundreds of people. Alexey Naryshkin recalled the most terrible disasters:

TO serious incidents on railways is not always caused by a technical malfunction or the notorious “ human factor" On December 26, 2004, the cause of the worst disaster in the history of this transport was a natural disaster. That day, the Queen of the Sea Line passenger train, as always, departed from the capital of Sri Lanka, Colombo, to the southern province. The route was actively used by both local residents and tourists. For them, this flight was a real attraction - they could admire the views of the Indian Ocean and the beauty of nature.

Near the village of Peraliya, the train made a long forced stop in front of the semaphore. By that time, the authorities already knew about the strongest earthquake in Indian Ocean, but it was not possible to contact the driver and prevent the tragedy - tsunami waves hit the train one after another. Their height reached 9 meters.

The worst railway disaster occurred in 2004 in Sri Lanka.

The train was washed off the tracks, it overturned and immediately filled with water. Multi-ton carriages were carried hundreds of meters from the coastline into the jungle. Few managed to escape the trap. About 200 passengers survived.

Rescuers were able to reach the heavily damaged area only on the third day. More than 1,700 people have been declared dead or missing. Relatives of the victims come every year to the memorial ceremony that takes place on the coast.

Most of the victims of this tragedy were free riders and speculators who tried to profit from the sale of scarce goods during the Second World War. world war. Steam locomotives then ran on low-quality coal. Their traction was low, the trains moved slowly, and driving uphill was generally difficult. Jumping into the carriage while it was moving was not particularly difficult.

On March 2, 1944, near the village of Balvano in southern Italy, an overloaded train became stuck in a long tunnel for almost an hour. Most of the passengers were poisoned by combustion products and suffocated. Those who were in the last carriages, closer to fresh air. No one then began to conduct a thorough investigation.

Free riders and speculators died in Italy in 1944

The train, as it turned out, was driven by two locomotives at once. Most likely, the uncoordinated actions of the drivers led to its complete stop.

The management of the Italian railways then developed a special procedure for passing tunnels and generally tightened safety requirements. Although at first they tried to hush up information about this tragedy. The authorities in Spain acted in the same way a little earlier, where a similar emergency occurred with another a large number deaths from asphyxia occurred at the very beginning of 1944.

India's railway network is one of the largest in the world. There are not enough trains, so residents get to work and home on rooftops or somehow attached to a carriage. This may be why the disaster in Bihar claimed the lives of more than 800 people.

On June 6, 1981, a passenger train was overturned by hurricane winds from the bridge into the Bagmati River. The rescue operation lasted for several days. Only two hundred bodies were discovered. Most of it was carried away by the current.

They spoke out in the press alternative versions what happened. Among the reasons is a faulty brake system. There was also speculation that the train crashed into the river when the driver suddenly braked a cow crossing the tracks.

No one was punished for this disaster, in which about 700 French soldiers died. Those who were tried to be brought to justice were eventually acquitted by the court. On December 12, 1917, military train No. 612 was returning from Italy. Employees were given a two-week vacation to celebrate Christmas with their loved ones.

In the commune of Madon, several more carriages were added to the train. The driver refused to take the overloaded train to Paris, guessing possible problems on the way, but then, under the threat of a tribunal, he still agreed. In the area of ​​Saint-Michel-de-Maurienne, the train began to descend the slope, accelerated too much and could no longer brake. On one of the sharp turns, the coupling on the train broke. The locomotive rushed on. Wooden carriages at full speed began to take turns flying off the rails and crashing into each other.

The candles lighting the carriages started a fire. The ammunition being transported began to explode and the fire flared up more and more. Everything was put out within a day. They tried to classify information about the tragedy, but four days later the newspapers already reported about the incident.

No other railway disaster in the USSR and in modern Russia cannot be compared in scale with the one that occurred on June 4, 1989 at the Ulu-Telyak station in the Iglinsky district of Bashkiria, 50 km from Ufa.

It all happened at night. During the passage of two passenger trains (“Novosibirsk-Adler” and “Adler-Novosibirsk”), a hydrocarbon gas reservoir exploded gas mixture which leaked from the gas pipeline. The fire could have occurred due to a spark resulting from braking.

The scale of the emergency was terrifying. According to unofficial data, the power of the explosion was approximately the same as in Hiroshima - about 12 kilotons.

The largest accident near Ufa claimed the lives of 575 people

The carriages were scattered near the tracks. Some were completely burned out. About 200 people died immediately, and several hundred more victims died from their injuries and burns in the following days.

In terms of the number of victims, the disaster is one of the five largest such incidents in the world. The official death toll is 575 people, almost a third are children (both trains were carrying summer camp guests).

With the development of scientific technical progress not only the burden on the environment increases, but also the level of danger to humans. Increasing the speed of life requires and increased speeds movement. Horse-drawn carriages were replaced by automobiles, high-speed trains and jet airliners. News of tragedies on the roads and in the air, train accidents frighten and terrify. But despite the two-hundred-year history of development railway transport, it remains the safest so far. Is this so and what is the likelihood of being at the epicenter of a train accident? Let’s talk in this article.

Statistics and survey

Statistics are a tricky thing. The evaluation criteria can be based on the most different indicators: number of casualties per kilometers traveled or per man-hours. Let us present statistical data on the ratio of victims to the number of passengers. In this assessment, the railway is in third place in terms of travel safety. It is inferior to water transport and, paradoxically, aviation. But population surveys stubbornly give completely different figures. Only 15% of respondents believe that they can get into a railway accident. While concerns about road transport expressed by about 50% of respondents. And 85% of respondents are afraid to use the services of modern aviation.

Reasons have no nationality

Two centuries of railway travel show that train accidents have no nationality. It is worth considering separately terrorist attacks, and we will talk about them separately. The causes of tragedies leading to railway accidents and disasters most often include the following:

Dangerous Leaders

When analyzing the largest railway accidents, a combination of several factors attracts attention. And besides, each such tragedy is a unique case, a tragic coincidence of circumstances. But the statistics are merciless: 25% of railway accidents occur as a result of train derailment. The same amount accounts for collisions between railway transport and other vehicles. vehicles(horse-drawn, automobile and even bicycle). Fires, explosions and equipment failure take up about 10%, and the rest is human factor and control errors, which lead to trains leaving busy tracks and direct collisions.

The very first accident

As history goes, the first railroad accident occurred on November 8, 1833, in the suburbs of Hightstown (New Jersey, USA). A Camden and Amboy passenger train derailed as a result of a broken axle. By coincidence, the sixth President of the United States of America, John Quincy Adams (1767-1848), was traveling on the train. He was among many passengers injured, and two passengers died. An account for the victims of train accidents was opened and continues to this day.

Top world disasters

Throughout the history of the railway, many tragic events have occurred. We list the three most significant world tragedies by the number of passengers killed.

Peraliya (Sri Lanka). This tragedy, which occurred on December 26, 2004, is considered the deadliest to date. The number of victims is unknown; official sources put the figure at 2 thousand people. The Queen of the Sea train was swept away by a tsunami wave, thirty-ton carriages, two of which were carried into the ocean, and an eighty-ton diesel locomotive was thrown 50 meters. Rescuers reached the train only on the third day. Fifteen hundred passengers miraculously survived.

Al-Ayyat (Egypt). This train accident occurred on February 20, 2002. The train driver did not see the fire breaking out in one carriage, and the fire very quickly engulfed seven carriages overcrowded with passengers. People jumped out of the flaming train as it moved, because it had traveled about 10 kilometers more. According to official data, 380 people died, about a thousand were seriously burned and injured.

Bihar (India). In this case, the cause of the tragedy is love for our smaller brothers. The train driver made a sharp brake to avoid a collision with the animal. As a result, the entire train fell into the river. The tragedy of August 6, 1981 claimed the lives of everyone who was traveling on this train - 800 people.

It's not just passengers who are in danger.

Nishapur (Iran). A train carrying tanks of sulfur, gasoline, fertilizers and cotton derailed.

In addition to firefighters, many onlookers, politicians, and journalists flocked to the village of Khayam, where the train entered on February 18, 2004. And then the cars detonated: the explosion was equal to 180 tons of TNT. About 300 people were killed, up to 500 were injured, and the explosion was heard 70 kilometers from the epicenter.

The most terrible terrorist attack

Terrible railway accidents are the longed-for dream of terrorists. This is how suicide bombers decided to mark the 911 day after the tragedy of September 11, 2001, with four explosions on electric trains in Madrid (Spain). The explosions occurred on March 11, 2004 and claimed the lives of 192 citizens from 17 countries. About two thousand people were injured. No terrorist organization has ever claimed responsibility for these explosions.

The worst disaster in the USSR

Such a tragedy never happened again either on the territory of the Soviet Union or the CIS countries. And the cause of the train accident near Ufa was an accident on the Siberia-Ural-Volga region hydrocarbon pipeline, which led to the formation of a dense gas-air mixture in the area where trains passed. 18 cars of the Adler-Novosibirsk train then, on June 4, 1989, collided with the same passenger train of 20 cars going in the opposite direction. 1,284 passengers were caught in the epicenter of the tragedy, including almost 400 children. A tragic accident led to the fact that these trains met - one was late for technical reasons, and the second made an emergency stop (dropped off a woman in labor). When they caught up on the Ulyu-Telyak-Osha section of the road, a spark from the wheels led to an explosion of 300 tons of TNT to 12 kilotons. For information, the explosion in Hiroshima was 16 kilotons of TNT. Electric locomotives and 38 cars were simply destroyed. The shock wave threw 11 cars off the tracks. Century-old pines burned like matches. According to official data, in a train accident (1989) 575 passengers died, almost a thousand received injuries of varying severity and burns. Residents of the city of Asha, located 10 kilometers from the explosion, helped rescuers and victims throughout the rescue operation, which lasted almost a week. Although in the city itself the windows were knocked out by the blast wave residential buildings, and the fire from the fire, which engulfed 250 hectares of forest, was visible from a distance of 100 kilometers.

Death of athletes

This train accident near Ufa claimed the lives of 9 hockey players of the Chelyabinsk Traktor team. These boys, born in 1973, were candidates for the youth team of the Soviet Union and gold medalists of many tournaments. Since 1989, in memory of the fallen champions, an annual hockey tournament has been held in Chelyabinsk, which is one of the most prestigious among youth teams. A memorial was erected at the site of the tragedy (1992), and a monument to the victims was opened in the Novosibirsk carriage depot (2009). And in Russia, the development of railway hospitals in disaster medicine is becoming increasingly widespread. Trains still stop at the site of the tragedy today to honor the memory of all those who died in this terrible disaster.

A year earlier

Exactly one year before this disaster, June 4, 1988, due to non-compliance with transportation rules hazardous substances An explosion occurred at the Arzamas station (Gorky region) at 09.32 am. Three cars with hexogen exploded, which is 118 tons of explosive. The explosion crater was 26 meters in diameter. 151 residential buildings were destroyed, more than 800 families were left homeless. In addition to the completely destroyed roadway (250 meters), damage was caused to 2 hospitals, 49 kindergartens, and 14 schools. 91 people died, including 17 children.

Train accidents in Russia: 2017

January 18. The driver of the car pulled out in front of the train to cross the crossing. Even with emergency braking, it was not possible to avoid a collision. The driver and passenger of the car died.

January 30. A passenger car collided with an electric train in the Moscow region. Three people in the car were killed.

March 3. Amur region - a collision between a truck and a freight train, the carriages of which went off the tracks. Two passengers and the driver of the car were killed.

March 26. As a result of a collision between two trains at the Uchalinsky mining and processing plant (Bashkiria), two tanks containing diesel fuel derailed. One person was injured and four died.

April 8. The Moscow-Brest train collided with an electric train near Moscow. Three carriages of an electric train and a train locomotive derailed. 12 passengers out of 50 victims required hospitalization.

September 9. A KAMAZ and a passenger train collided at a crossing in Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug. Two people died in hospital, 20 passengers were injured.

Let's sum it up

Tragedies and disasters are inevitable with the development of technological progress. Increasing speeds of movement introduce potential danger into our lives. Everyone has to decide for themselves which transport to choose for transportation. As the floorboard says - what happens, cannot be avoided. Let there be less anxiety in our lives, and may troubles bypass us and the people dear to us. And for this, be a careful passenger and follow the rules that are written to ensure safety. And for drivers and maintenance personnel, the priority tasks should include compliance with the rules for servicing mechanisms and labor safety rules.

Rail transport ranks third after road and air transport in terms of traffic safety.

Causes of railway accidents

The most common causes of accidents in railway transport:
- natural physical wear and tear of technical equipment;
- violation of operating rules;
- increasing complexity of technologies;
- increase in the number, power and speed of vehicles;
- increase in population density near railway facilities, non-compliance by the population with safety rules.

The leading position, about 25%, among the main causes of accidents in railway transport, is occupied by derailments.
About 25% of derailments and accidents on the railroad are caused by train collisions with automobile and horse-drawn vehicles, railcars, and cyclists. Most often this happens at railway crossings.

Violations in the railway traffic control system lead to a train leaving a busy track and causing a collision. The reason for this may be a violation of the order of maneuvering work on station tracks.
The reason for many emergency situations in railway transport are explosions and fires.

Chronology of disasters

On June 12, 1965, a very large crash occurred on the Novinka-Chascha section near Leningrad. The station manager mistakenly released the trains towards each other; the drivers saw each other only 11 seconds before the collision.

On February 1, 1988, on the “Privolzhye - Filino” stretch near Yaroslavl, a freight train that was transporting highly toxic substances (TDS) crashed. 7 cars derailed, including 3 tanks with heptyl (TDS of the first toxicity class). The cause of the crash was unblocking of the arrow due to the fall of a destroyed buffer on it. As a result, a center of chemical contamination with an area of ​​over 5 thousand was formed. square meters. 3 thousand people were under threat of defeat. On restoration work it took almost 18 days.

On June 4, 1988, at 9:32 a.m., three carriages of a freight train traveling from Dzerzhinsk to Kazakhstan, with 118 tons of industrial explosives intended for mining enterprises, exploded at the Arzamas-1 station of the Gorky Railway. 91 people were killed, including 17 children, 840 were injured. 250 meters of the railway track, the railway station and station buildings, and nearby residential buildings were destroyed. The government commission did not establish the cause of the explosion.

In the same year, a passenger train crashed at Bologoye station. 31 people were killed and 182 were injured. On August 16, 1988, high-speed passenger train No. 159 "Aurora" on the Leningrad-Moscow route crashed on the Berezayka - Poplavenets section. In the crash, all 15 cars of the train were derailed. A fire broke out in the overturned restaurant carriage and spread to other carriages.

On October 4, 1988, at 4.30 am, an explosion occurred on the Sverdlovsk - Sortirovochny section. Two trains with coal and explosives took off into the air. According to official data alone, six people died: four at the scene of the accident, two already in the hospital. Thousands were seriously injured; the most common are shrapnel wounds to the eyes and face. Hundreds of families lost a roof over their heads.

On June 3, 1989, the largest railway accident occurred: when two oncoming trains passed on the Ulu-Telyak - Kazayak section (Bashkortostan). The reason is an explosion of a hydrocarbon-air mixture accumulated near and on the railway track. The energy of the explosion was equivalent to the explosion of 250-300 tons of TNT. At its epicenter were two passenger trains: Novosibirsk - Adler and Adler - Novosibirsk. 11 cars were thrown off the tracks, 7 of them burned completely, 26 cars burned out both inside and out. According to various sources, 575 or 645 people died.

In November 1989, at the Rudny station of the Murmansk branch of the Oktyabrskaya Railway, due to the negligence of the dispatcher, two freight locomotives collided. One locomotive crew was killed, and members of another received various injuries.

In March 1992, at the Podsosenka crossing of the Velikiye Luki - Rzhev section of the Oktyabrskaya Railway, a passenger train collided with an oncoming freight train. As a result, 43 people were killed and 108 were injured.

On March 1, 1993, a styrene tank overturned during a freight train accident in the Moscow region - toxic substance, the vapors of which strongly irritate the mucous membranes. There is a styrene leak. 39 people were injured, of whom 11 died.

On March 3, 1992, on the Oktyabrskaya Railway, fast passenger train No. 4 Riga-Moscow at the exit switches of the Podsosenki siding collided with a freight train from the opposite direction. 41 people were killed, 16 were seriously injured. Both locomotive crews were fatally injured. The crash occurred due to the passage of a prohibiting signal by the locomotive crew of the Riga-Moscow passenger train.

On November 19, 1993, in the Arkhangelsk region, on the Kizema-Loiga stretch, a handcar collided with the tail car of a freight train. Of the 25 people in the trolley, 24 were injured and one died.

On April 28, 1994, a train accident occurred 180 kilometers southeast of Ufa (Bashkiria): two freight trains collided on a narrow-gauge railway. The collision killed two people. The reason was a violation by the station manager of the rules for operating railway transport, which allowed the train to run through a red traffic light.

On August 11, 1994, 115 kilometers from Belgorod, on the Topoli - Urazovo section of the Southern Railway, a train accident occurred. Several tail cars broke away from a freight train coming from Ukraine and overturned onto a parallel track; an oncoming electric train crashed into them. 20 people were killed, 52 were injured.

On February 9, 1995, the Moscow-Kyiv passenger train made a forced stop on the Sukhinichi-Zhivodovka section of the Moscow Railway due to a malfunction of the electric locomotive. The train rolled down and collided with the locomotive of the Moscow-Khmelnitsky train. As a result of the impact, four passengers of the last carriage died at the scene of the accident, 11 passengers were injured varying degrees gravity.

July 20, 1995 on the railway near Sergach Nizhny Novgorod region On the Gorky Railway, two oncoming trains collided: a postal freight train and a freight train. Three liquefied gas tanks exploded. Six people were killed and 20 were injured.

On August 8, 1995, in the Krasnodar Territory, on the Tikhoretsk - Kavkazskaya section of the North Caucasus Railway, a freight train, not reaching two kilometers from the Kavkazskaya station, crashed. 16 cars derailed and overturned, four tanks with hydrogen peroxide and two with gasoline caught fire. Two and a half kilometers of the railway track were disabled.

On February 11, 1996, in Volokolamsk, near Moscow, at a railway crossing near the Bukholovo station, an electric train collided with a bus that was transporting a group of schoolchildren. Two children died, five schoolchildren and the bus driver were taken to intensive care.

On May 31, 1996, on the Litvinovo-Talmenka section of the Kemerovo Railway, four cement cars unhooked from a freight train and rolled into the station area, where a crowded train crashed into them. 100 people were injured, 17 died.

On July 8, 1998, a major disaster occurred in the Moscow region. In the area of ​​the Bekasovo-1 station, a gravel cleaning machine missed a semaphore signal. Having failed to let the train pass, it crashed into the train. The car was thrown onto the opposite line, under the wheels of an oncoming train. 3 people died. If the accident had not occurred at 7 a.m., there would have been many more casualties.

On April 4, 1999, near the Voevodskoye station (Mordovia), on the 642nd kilometer of the Kuibyshev railway, the Syzran-Ruzaevka freight train derailed. The accident occurred due to wear and tear on the railway track. 12 wagons loaded with passenger cars A VAZ, two platforms and a heated car overturned. About 250 meters of the canvas and 150 meters of the contact line were damaged.

On January 26, 2000, a collision occurred between passenger and freight trains on the Torbino - Mstinsky Bridge section of the Oktyabrskaya Railway. As a result of the accident, the assistant driver was killed and three people were injured.

On December 9, 2001, freight trains collided at the Gonzha station of the Transbaikal Railway in the Amur Region. The impact derailed the four tail cars of the first train. As a result of the disaster, two people died.

On September 25, 2001, on the Mechetenskaya - Ataman stretch, 130 kilometers southeast of Rostov-on-Don, six cars and the locomotive of passenger train No. 191 Rostov-Baku derailed. The cause of the accident was the absence of 25 meters of track rails, removed by unknown attackers.

On April 1, 2002, near the Yaroslavl station in Moscow, a collision occurred between a Moscow-Khabarovsk passenger train and a shunting diesel locomotive. Upon impact, the diesel locomotive's wheelset was torn off. For medical care 22 people applied.

On November 11, 2002, at the Baltiysky station in St. Petersburg, an electric train left the depot after repairs for a run-in. Due to a malfunction of the brake system, two carriages of the train left the tracks under the tented part of the station, where passengers were located. Four people were killed and nine were injured.

December 5, 2003 on a passenger train Kislovodsk - Mineralnye Vody, which was located near the central station of the city of Essentuki ( Stavropol region), an explosive device filled with metal objects with a power equal to 30 kilograms of TNT went off. 47 people died, more than 180 people received injuries of varying severity.

On December 18, 2003, at the 86th kilometer of the Ishcherskaya - Stoderevskaya railway section of the North Caucasus Railway (Naursky district of Chechnya), an explosive device went off under the locomotive of freight train No. 2503. There were no casualties.

On December 24, 2003, on the Tulun-Utai railway section (Irkutsk region), the Vladivostok-Novosibirsk train collided with a vehicle caught at the crossing by truck KamAZ. Three people died.

On June 12, 2005, at the 153rd kilometer of the railway on the Uzunovo - Bogatishchevo section, the Grozny - Moscow train was blown up. Four carriages derailed. 42 people sought medical help, five of whom were hospitalized. According to the FSB, a shellless explosive device with a capacity of three kilograms of TNT went off.

On June 15, 2005, on the Zubtsovo - Arestovo stretch, he derailed train with fuel oil, 10 tanks overturned and depressurized, up to 300 tons of fuel oil spilled onto the ground, of which about 2 tons ended up in the Gostyushka River, a tributary of the Vazuza River, which flows into the Volga River.

On July 11, 2007, in the Amur Region, on the stretch between the Urusha and Sgibeevo stations of the Mogochinsky branch of the Trans-Baikal Railway, while a freight train was moving, 12 tail cars broke away from the train and overturned. 300 meters of the railway track were destroyed and a power line support was damaged. There were no casualties.

On August 13, 2007, on the Burga - Malaya Vishera section of the Oktyabrskaya Railway, while high-speed train No. 166 "Nevsky Express" was passing, an accident occurred. Its cause was the undermining of the railway track by a homemade explosive device with a capacity of 8-9 kilograms of TNT. As a result of the explosion, the electric locomotive and all 12 cars derailed. 60 people were injured.

November 27, 2009 at about 10 pm near settlement Erzovka, on the 285th kilometer of the Oktyabrskaya Railway section, an explosion occurred under the locomotive of the Nevsky Express train. There were 661 passengers on the train at the time of the crash. The first cars, by inertia, passed through the explosion at high speed, the last three were practically crushed by the blast wave. There were about 200 people in these carriages at that moment. The wounded and survivors were evacuated by air by helicopters of the Ministry of Emergency Situations to hospitals in nearby settlements.

As of November 29, 25 people are known to have died, and another 26 are listed as missing. The list of victims admitted to hospitals in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Novgorod and Tver regions contains 104 names.

On July 31, 1815, the Philadelphia Disaster occurred, which became the first railroad disaster in history. We decided to give a list of the most terrible disasters on the railway throughout history.

Occurred on July 31, 1815 during a test of the Mechanical Traveler steam locomotive. The train developed a low speed and in order to impress the public, the creators decided to increase it by increasing the pressure in the boiler tank. The ensuing explosion killed 16 people. Among the dead were mainly workers, but several outside observers were also affected. In some sources, this accident is not considered a railway accident, since it did not occur on the main road, but at a special testing site. Be that as it may, the Philadelphia railway accident remains in history in first place in the number of deaths from a steam boiler explosion.

On May 8, 1842, the Versailles railway disaster occurred, killing more than fifty people. The terrible incident happened because the train derailed due to a faulty axle. At the time of the incident, the carriages were crowded with people, as the train was moving from Versailles after mass festivities were taking place in the city. Due to such a terrible coincidence, the number of victims turned out to be so colossal. After the first car derailed, the pusher at the rear of the train continued moving, causing a fire.

Occurred on October 22, 1875. One locomotive transported both people and oil; in poor visibility conditions, the driver did not see the traffic lights. By coincidence, the train flew onto an unfinished section of rails, after which it went downhill. Oil tanks caught fire, causing huge casualties. According to official data, 70 people died.

On December 28, 1879, one of the major disasters. Due to gusty, heavy winds, several spans of the bridge were blown out, causing the train to fall into the water. All 75 passengers in the carriages were killed.

On July 16, 1945, the largest railway disaster in German history occurred. A train carrying prisoners of war crashed into a US Army train, causing the train to derail, causing the carriages to catch fire and causing numerous casualties on both trains.

On August 6, 1952, one of the deadliest disasters in the USSR occurred, killing about 109 people. The disaster occurred because the train ran over a horse. According to official data, a train weighing a thousand tons was derailed because of the animal. In fact, the disaster occurred, among other things, due to the overload of the train, as well as the imperfection of the safety measures of that time.

Train crash at Harrow & Wealdstone station

On October 8, 1952, a train crash occurred in London. A train pulled into the train standing on the platform. Then a locomotive rushing at a speed of 80 kilometers per hour flew into the resulting traffic jam. The tragedy resulted in 340 casualties and 112 deaths.

On June 6, 1981, one of the worst train accidents in history occurred. Due to an attempt to stop in front of an animal running onto the road, as well as due to heavy winds, 7 carriages carrying about a thousand people were overturned into the water. About five thousand passengers died in the disaster.

The largest disaster in Russian history occurred on June 3, 1989. Due to an accident on the pipeline, when two oncoming trains passed, the air-fuel mixture that had accumulated in the lowland ignited, resulting in a powerful explosion that scattered the trains like matchboxes. The tragedy resulted in a gigantic fire that killed 645 people and disabled hundreds. About 200 children died during the crash. The force of the explosion was comparable to the power of the explosion atomic bomb in Hiroshima. The column of flame was visible hundreds of kilometers away.

On December 26, 2004, the largest and deadliest railway tragedy occurred. Due to an earthquake in the Indian Ocean and the resulting tsunami that hit the railway running along the coast, the train was washed into the ocean. About 2,000 people died.