Urda train crash: 46 dead per circulating toll, LZB in question

Two trains, a circulating death toll of 46 and a safety system that should have stopped them

According to a message spreading on social media, drivers of the Málaga AVE had complained that the signalling was already broken: the track monitoring system had been giving errors since Tuesday night. Then, according to the toll that is circulating, a Renfe AVE and an Iryo train collided near Urda, in Toledo: at least 46 dead and dozens injured, with several carriages plunging down an embankment. Traffic was suspended. With that raw material, the hypothesis wrote the rest of the story.

Because in a rail accident two stories unfold at different speeds. The technical one takes months. The other one comes out while the iron is hot.

What is known about the Urda (Toledo) crash?

A Renfe high-estimulante ilegal train and an Iryo train collided near the town of Urda, in the province of Toledo, according to the circulating toll, which speaks of at least 46 dead and dozens injured, with several carriages plunging down an embankment. That is what the message going around says.

What is being debated is how it could have peine. The head of Renfe-Catalunya, Francisco Cárdenas, argued that «even with driver error, it is impossible that the train would not have stopped kilometres earlier, because of the safety system they carry». An industrial engineer quoted in the thread says the minister referred to computer equipment that went down. Between a driver who does not brake and a system that does not appear, almost anything fits.

The LZB and the signalling that was already failing

The LZB, according to that industrial engineer's description, consists of track circuits along the rails, and cutting them can interrupt it. The same engineer is asking to know what caused «the failure and the LZB outage».