Why could the train driver not stop on the curve coming in to Santiago in 2013?
What made that journey different compared to the other 25 times the train driver had passed by that same spot in the same direction from Ourense to Santiago?
I’m not going to do a running dispatch for every day of the Santiago train crash trial, like I did for the Catalan separatist trial in 2019, but it’s interesting to listen to some key parts so many years later. Today the train driver, Francisco Garzón Amo, testified, and cried several times on the stand, notably when asked about the moment he was trapped in the train’s cabin, and later when he rememberd the victims and his powerlessness
Garzón Amo had been working for Renfe for 30 years when the accident happened and had first become a driver’s mate in 1998. He had been driving that train on that line, 082, between Santiago and Ourense, for four months. He had done nine round trips on the Alvia 730 model that crashed, and 26 in total including other models of train. He had driven in that direction on that line 26 times in total.
He did his training on that that train with just one engine locomotive and no wagons or passengers, on Track 2. The accident was on Track 1. Track 2 “always” had the right signalling. According to the driver, there was not the right signalling on Track 1. He did not train on Track 1. He said it was obligatory for him to carry the company mobile phone and to take calls about the train service, including those from the train inspector, to talk about matters relating to the journeys and passengers.
He denounced in court that he was taken to the cells at the police station with broken ribs after the accident so that the Home Secretary could give a press conference there: “it’s criminal that they took me out of the hospital with three broken ribs”. The judge did not allow that affront to authority, “that is not the object of this trial”, and he should not criticise the doctors
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