The Vadodara train crash occurred on 21 April 2005 at the village of Samlaya near Vadodara in Gujarat when the Sabarmati Express passenger train crashed at high speed into a stationary goods train carrying cement.
The passenger train was carrying over 430 passengers to holy city of Varanasi, when at 3.30am it collided with the cement train which was on the same track. Local citizens rushed to help pull survivors from the wreckage, which did not catch fire. They were joined later in the day by soldiers armed with cutting equipment as well as police and medical personnel.
Initial reports claimed that 24 people had been killed in the crash, but these were subsequently scaled down to 17 or 18, with at least 80 people seriously injured and requiring hospitalisation. The railway authority authorised a payment of 100,000 rupees to the families of the dead, and other provisions for those less injured.
The cause of the crash was apparently the train's failure to stop at a signal warning the driver that there was an obstacle on the track ahead. The driver, Sita Ram, was killed in the crash, so his testimony will never be known, but the schools of thought on the cause of the crash are that either the driver did not see or did not pay attention to the signal, or that the signalman in Samlaya failed to produce the signal, or finally that the wiring from the box to the signal was faulty, thus mislaying the message.
The manager of the rail line concerned, M. Z. Ansari provoked controversy, by declaring just a few hours after the crash that "Prima facie the accident appears to have been caused by human error on the part of the staff at B Cabin in Samlaya", which caused much anger amongst the local people aiding the rescue operations, particularly since Mr Ansari was not at the site, and could not have known the full details of what had caused the crash.
The Ghotki rail crash occurred on 13 July 2005, at around 3:40am local time near Ghotki, Pakistan. No. 24 Dn train stopped at the station of Sarhad was hit from behind by the following Karachi Express train, causing several cars to derail; these were then hit by a third train running in the opposite direction (Tezgam). A total of seventeen train cars, carrying over 3000 passengers, were wrecked. Estimates of the death toll ranged as high as over 130. It was the worst train accident in Pakistan in fifteen years.
The Pécrot rail crash was a rail accident in the village of Pécrot, Belgium, that occurred on 27 March 2001 when two passenger trains collided head-on. The crash left 8 dead and 12 injured and was Belgium's worst rail disaster in a quarter of a century.
On the evening of 4 December 1957, two trains crashed in dense fog on the South Eastern Main Line near Lewisham in south-east London, causing the deaths of 90 people and injuring 173. An electric train to Hayes had stopped at a signal under the bridge, and the following steam train to Ramsgate crashed into it, destroying a carriage and causing the bridge to collapse onto the steam train. The bridge had to be completely removed; it was over a week before the lines under the bridge were reopened, and another month before the bridge was rebuilt and traffic allowed over it.
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.
On 21 April 2012 at 18:30 local time, two trains were involved in a head-on collision at Westerpark, near Sloterdijk, in the west of Amsterdam, Netherlands. Approximately 117 people were injured, one of whom later died in hospital. The collision is thought to have been caused by the driver of one of the trains passing a red signal.
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. Of the 178 people injured, the provisional number of deaths in hospital had reached 79 by the following 28 July.
The 2015 Uttar Pradesh train accident occurred on 20 March 2015. The Dehradun Varanasi Janata Express derailed near Bachhrawan in Raebareli, Uttar Pradesh, northern India, resulting in at least fifty-eight deaths and 150 people being injured. The accident was attributed to brake failure.
22°29′N73°18′E / 22.48°N 73.30°E