Railways Africa

On 22 November, a packed subway train ran into the rear of another standing in the tunnel at Busan, South Korea, during the morning peak hour. The second set had been sent to rescue passengers stranded in the stationary train, which had broken down. The force of the impact derailed a number of coaches and [...]

A fuel train from Mandalay derailed near Chet-gyi station in north-west Burma, close to the border with India, on 9 November, resulting in the death of 25 people and injuries to 62. Press reports said seven tankcars of petrol and two carrying diesel overturned, with three exploding and catching fire.

On 24 August the Xinhua news agency reported that two passenger trains had collided at the Jiamusi station in Heilongjiang province, in the north-east of the country, injuring at least 24 people. Apparently a locomotive hauling four empty coaches ran into a stationary train while passengers were alighting.

At the end of July, a coach on India’s overnight Tamil Nadu Express from Delhi to Chennai caught fire at Nellore, about 500km south of Hyderabad. At least 32 people were reported dead. An electrical fault was suspected to be the cause but the railway minister said it could have been sabotage.

Thousands of rail commuters were stranded at the end of July by huge power disruptions in the north and east of India. The capital Delhi was among the states worst affected by two days of successive failures in the northern grid. Supply was also disrupted in Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, [...]

According to press reports from India, a landslide near Kasara in the Thane district caused a local train to run off the track. The Vidarbha Express, bound for Mumbai, ran into the derailment. Two people died and 30 were hurt, four seriously. Substantial delays to traffic resulted,

New Delhi’s “Airport Express”, the railway from the Indira Gandhi International Airport into the city, was to be closed “indefinitely” on 8 July, on account of cracks in the structure as well as unspecified technical problems. India’s first public-private-partnership metro project, it began operations in February 2011. According to press speculation about the “extreme” measure [...]

On 31 May it was reported that four people had died and about 100 were injured, some seriously, when five coaches of the Doon Express to Dehradun derailed near Mahrawa in the Jaunpur district of Uttar Pradesh, north-west India. Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said sabotage may have been the cause.

Early on Tuesday 22 May, the Hampi Express to Bangalore ran into a stationary goods train at Penneconda station in India’s Andhra Pradesh state. Four coaches were derailed and one caught fire. At least 24 people were killed – 16 in the fire – and 25 were reported hurt. The number of people who have [...]

On 9 May, a passenger train from the Turkish Mediterranean port city of Mersin ran into an empty passenger train at a station in the city of Adana, causing slight injuries to nine passengers and two crew.