The Yattalgoda train crash was an accident on a Sri Lankan rail line near the town of Kurunegala on 19 August 2001.
The Udarata Menike express passenger service from Badulla to Colombo Fort in Sri Lanka was a regular train route which ran on to Colombo. On the day of the accident, the train was grossly overcrowded, with hundreds of people clinging to the roof and sideboards because there was no room inside. The train was running over a newly repaired and replaced section of track at high speed, when the engine suddenly derailed at a bend, dragging three coaches with it.
Local people and emergency services made their way to the wreckage, and were able to pull many of the injured out of it. It did not catch fire, and the line was cleared rapidly. Fifteen people were killed in the crash, mostly among those who had been hanging onto the running boards and had been crushed by the falling train carriages. There were also at least forty people seriously injured in the crash, who were treated at local hospitals.
The accident was reported to be the result of the newly laid track, the gravel base of which had not had a chance to settle and harden through the passage of trains overhead. The train driver had not been informed of this, and so allowed a high speed on his extremely over-weight train, which caused the derailment when the gravel bed shifted after the engine had passed.
Sri Lanka holds the record for the worst ever train accident, the Queen of the Sea train disaster in 2004.
The Nuneaton rail crash occurred on 6 June 1975, on the West Coast Main Line just south of Nuneaton railway station in Warwickshire, England, United Kingdom.
The Sutton Coldfield train crash took place at about 16:13 on 23 January 1955 in Sutton Coldfield, Warwickshire, when an express passenger train traveling from York to Bristol, derailed due to excessive speed on a sharp curve.
The Sarai Banjara rail disaster occurred on 2 December 2000, when a derailed freight train crossed onto the opposite track early in the morning in Punjab, India. A Howrah–Amritsar Express a passenger train coming from other direction hit the freight train head-on at speed, killing 46 people and injuring at least 150.
The Thirsk rail crash occurred on 31 July 1967 at Thirsk, Yorkshire, England on the British Rail East Coast Main Line.
There have been a number of train accidents on the railway network of Victoria, Australia. Some of these are listed below.
The railways of New South Wales, Australia have had many incidents and accidents since their formation in 1831. There are close to 1000 names associated with rail-related deaths in NSW on the walls of the Australian Railway Monument in Werris Creek. Those killed were all employees of various NSW railways. The details below include deaths of employees and the general public.
The Grayrigg derailment was a fatal railway accident that occurred at approximately 20:15 GMT on 23 February 2007, just to the south of Grayrigg, Cumbria, in the North West England region of the United Kingdom. The accident investigation concluded that the derailment was caused by a faulty set of points on the Down Main running line, controlled from Lambrigg ground frame. The scheduled inspection on 18 February 2007 had not taken place and the faults had gone undetected.
The Sri Lanka Railway Department is Sri Lanka's railway owner and primary operator. As part of the Sri Lankan government, it is overseen by the Ministry of Transport. Founded in 1858 as the Ceylon Government Railway, it operates the nation's railways and links Colombo with other population centres and tourist destinations.
The 2005 Phú Lộc derailment was an accident to an express passenger train that derailed in central Vietnam on 12 March 2005 when it was running on the North–South Railway, killing 11 people and injuring hundreds, many of which were in a serious condition after the crash. The accident occurred in Phú Lộc District, Thừa Thiên–Huế Province as the train was traveling from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City. The accident was described as "the most tragic rail accident in Vietnam in the past 30 years", and "the country's worst-ever rail accident".
The 2011 Alawwa rail accident, occurred on the evening of Saturday 17 September 2011, when a passenger train, Sri Lanka Railways S11, drove into an observation car at the back of a stationary Intercity Express train near the Alawwa railway station, approximately 60 km (37 mi) northeast of Colombo. The accident resulted in the death of five people, including a French national, a Thai Buddhist monk and the train driver, with over 30 injured. The Intercity Express had been pushing a Rambukkana-bound train from Colombo, which had stalled near Alawwa. The accident may have been caused by human error, and the S11 train ran into the observation car at the end of the other train.
The Rockport train wreck occurred in Rockport in Mansfield Township, New Jersey, United States, about three miles outside of Hackettstown, on June 16, 1925. A violent storm washed debris onto a grade crossing, derailing a Lackawanna Railroad (DL&W) train. The crash killed 42 passengers and five crewmen and injured twenty-three others.
Sri Lanka Railways Class S11 is a diesel multiple-unit (DMU) train, built for Sri Lanka Railways by Integral Coach Factory and imported through RITES Ltd, an Indian state infrastructure corporation on a line of credit extended by the Indian Government. They were built to replace locomotive-hauled passenger trains. Twenty S11 DMUs were ordered to strengthen long-distance travel on the Coastal Line from Colombo to Matara.
The Santiago de Compostela derailment occurred on 24 July 2013, when an Alvia high-speed train traveling from Madrid to Ferrol, in the north-west of Spain, derailed at high speed on a bend about 4 kilometres (2.5 mi) outside of the railway station at Santiago de Compostela. Out of 222 people on board, 143 were injured and 79 died.
The Livraga derailment is the first and only railway accident to date that ever happened on the Italian high speed rail network. It took place on 6 February 2020 when a high-speed train derailed at Livraga, Lombardy, Italy. Two people died and 31 were injured.